Second Delegated Legislation Committee — hearing of 16 June 2026: transcript & video

00:22 - 00:29

Speaker 1

Order. The draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026. I call the Minister to move the motion.

00:29 - 02:53

Speaker 2

Thank you very much indeed, Mr. Vickers. It's a pleasure to to serve under your chairmanship today. And before we begin, can I begin by wishing my friend and colleague, gosh, I've forgotten her constituency, a very happy, very large birth, well, quite small birthday. The member for Newcastle-under-Lyme North. Happy significant birthday milestone, and I look forward to celebrating with her later and at various points throughout the the week ahead.

I beg to move that the committee has considered the draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026, which were laid before this House on the 23rd of April this year. Now, over 200 million tonnes of waste are produced in the UK each year, and there is currently no comprehensive way of tracking it. Legislation relating to the transport, management, and description of waste has been introduced in a piecemeal fashion over the last 30 years. Large amounts of waste movement data are recorded through the current system are either not collected or only required to be submitted each quarter, and of course they're collected on a paper basis. As a result, at a national level, it's difficult to determine where waste is from and what happens to it.

And at a local level, difficult for waste producers to check that their waste has been handled appropriately. The system's lack of transparency gives waste criminals opportunities to undercut legitimate waste businesses and cause harm to our environment and communities. This crime costs the UK economy an estimated 1 billion pounds each year due to activities like fly-tipping, deliberate misclassification of waste to avoid paying landfill tax, illegal waste exports, and the operation of illegal waste sites. For investigations, regulators usually need to request individual waste records by serving legal notices, which is both time-consuming and prone to document falsification. So replacing the outdated paper-based systems will give the Environment Agency much-needed compliance oversight and help close the loopholes that rogue operators exploit.

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