The Government is committed to tackling waste crime and we are preparing significant reforms to continue to increase the pressure on illegal waste operators. We recently published our Government response to reform of the waste exemptions regime with the intention of closing loopholes and preventing exemptions from being misused to permit risky and illegal activity. Our planned electronic waste tracking reforms will make it harder than ever to mis-identify waste or dispose of it inappropriately. Planned changes to the Carriers, Brokers and Dealers licensing regime will modernise licensing and make it harder still for rogue operators to escape detection. These will come in addition to measures in the Environment Act 2021 which gives agencies stronger powers of entry and access to evidence in prosecuting waste crime as well as providing the Environment Agency with the ability to recover costs of investigation, intervention and enforcement at illegal or non-compliant waste sites.<\/p>
The Government also launched the Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC) in 2020. It brings together the Environment Agency, HM Revenue & Customs, the National Crime Agency, the police, waste regulators from across the UK and other operational partners to share intelligence and tasking to disrupt and prevent serious organised waste crime. In the three years since the JUWC launched it has worked with 102 partner organisations and engaged in 175 multi-agency days of action, which have resulted in 51 associated arrests by other agencies.<\/p>"} , "answeringMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4522", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Rebecca Pow"} } , "answeringMemberConstituency" : {"_value" : "Taunton Deane"} , "answeringMemberPrinted" : {"_value" : "Rebecca Pow"} , "dateOfAnswer" : {"_value" : "2023-03-13", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "isMinisterialCorrection" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "questionFirstAnswered" : [{"_value" : "2023-03-13T16:21:47.843Z", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} ]} , "answeringDeptId" : {"_value" : "13"} , "answeringDeptShortName" : {"_value" : "Environment, Food and Rural Affairs"} , "answeringDeptSortName" : {"_value" : "Environment, Food and Rural Affairs"} , "date" : {"_value" : "2023-03-07", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "hansardHeading" : {"_value" : "Waste: Crime"} , "houseId" : {"_value" : "1"} , "legislature" : [{"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/terms/25259", "prefLabel" : {"_value" : "House of Commons"} } ], "questionText" : "To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle waste crime.", "registeredInterest" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "tablingMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/1438", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Mr Kevan Jones"} } , "tablingMemberConstituency" : {"_value" : "North Durham"} , "tablingMemberPrinted" : [{"_value" : "Mr Kevan Jones"} ], "uin" : "160221"} ], "itemsPerPage" : 10, "page" : 0, "startIndex" : 1, "totalResults" : 1, "type" : "http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#Page"} }