Gareth Snell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 5 Sept 2024 · Waste Crime: Staffordshire · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentlemen is in a position of unparalleled knowledge compared with all of us, having been the Minister, at which time he advocated for immediate closure. I think the quarry should be closed immediately, and he has said that he does. What was he missing as the Minister? What lever that was just out of reach would have immediately brought about the closure of the site? If legislative change is needed then we can write that Bill here and now and take it to the House and try to get it passed, but the hon. Gentleman has been there and knows why it could not happen. What else would he have needed to get the job done?

• 5 Sept 2024 · Waste Crime: Staffordshire · Hansard source

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  I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has just said. We should not think about fly-tipping simply as community blight. It is not just about the sofa abandoned down the back alley; it is about cross-country, cross-border organised crime that is making millions of pounds for people in our communities who, frankly, have no interest in our communities. She made the point rather eloquently about the requirement for our police and crime commissioners to understand that this is an important issue that they must prioritise and tackle. On the fly-tipping point that my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle-under-Lyme and for Stoke-on-Trent South raised, I return to its longer-term impact. Fly-tipping is a waste crime that takes place in Staffordshire, and the House of Commons Library note that accompanies the debate gives the rather sad fact from the 2022-23 figures that almost half of all fly-tipping incidents across the whole of Staffordshire took place in Stoke-on-Trent. That is not a record that I am particularly proud of or would want to be associated with my city. That is why I am glad that upon its election in 2023, under the expert leadership of Councillor Amjid Wazir, the deputy leader of the council, the city council launched a clean-up campaign against illegal dumping in our towns under the moniker of “IDIOT”. “Don’t be an IDIOT” was the line. The council said, “Don’t dump in our towns. Don’t allow our community to be used by those criminal gangs that want to ruin our cities.” The outcome has been spectacular: we now have considerably fewer incidents of fly-tipping. That is not only because the council makes a concerted effort to clear it up, but because it has invested in an environmental crime unit that seeks to prosecute and fine those people who dump waste in our towns and cities. The council has tripled the number of fines it hands out, and it pursues people through the courts where they refuse to pay the fine. It makes it clear that if people wish to undertake illegal activity related to waste in Stoke-on-Trent at a community level, the council is coming for them and will fine them. I personally would like a name-and-shame campaign, but I have not quite won the battle with the council yet; give it time. What I would not want to be taken away from this debate is the idea that Staffordshire is the nation’s dustbin, and that it is strewn with all these terrible activities; because while we have these incidents, most of the people in our communities who live in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire want to see clean neighbourhoods. They go out every day and do a little bit of work to make their community better. They clean up fly-tipping, report an illegally dumped sofa, report the smells to the Environment Agency, and report to the police abandoned buildings that suddenly start having industrial waste put near them. They do that because they want—as does everyone else in my constituency, county and city—to live in a clean, tidy and safe place. When the Minister winds up, will she give me some sense of hope to take back to Stoke-on-Trent that this Government, with this Minister, will deliver on that aspiration for clean, safe streets in every community, and that she will let us know how we can help her achieve that?

• 5 Sept 2024 · Waste Crime: Staffordshire · Hansard source

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  You never forget your first time.

• 5 Sept 2024 · Waste Crime: Staffordshire · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention—and I am grateful to be able to call him my hon. Friend; last time I was in the Commons, I never thought I would have the opportunity to call a Member who represented Lichfield my hon. Friend, and doing so fills my heart with glee. He is absolutely right. This debate could easily have been about waste crime anywhere in the country, because duplicitous operators who seek to make money off the backs of our communities without any care or attention are everywhere. I am sure that the new Minister will be clamping down on them hard. I turn to how we do that. While we can all air our grievances about the sites in our constituencies, I want to spend a few moments focusing on what comes next. I tend to agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said about the fitness for purpose of the Environment Agency, but I will be slightly more generous to it than he was. He rightly has a grievance with it over the operation of Walleys Quarry, but I think there is a bigger problem about the way we do regulatory enforcement in this country. The Environment Agency is an example that we can use to demonstrate that. Every so often, Unchecked UK produces a document about the enforcement gap, looking at how regulatory organisations and agencies have done less and less enforcement over time. In its 2020 enforcement gap report, Unchecked UK found that between 2010 and 2020, the number of staff working for the Environment Agency decreased by 32%, so one in three staff disappeared. It also found that over the same period of time, the Environment Agency’s budget decreased by 63%. As a result, the number of prosecutions it could undertake decreased by 88%. The number of enforcement notices it was able to levy went down by 69.5%, and it could only take 44% of them through to prosecution because it lacked the capacity to undertake the necessary regulatory enforcement work. While we must not excuse the actions of those who perpetrate waste crime around our country, it is not impossible to see why they think it is a lucrative way to spend their time and energy. The likelihood of their getting caught, of an enforcement notice being levied upon them or of a prosecution being brought has gone down and down over the past 10 years. It is not just the Environment Agency that has had this problem. Local authorities around the country, which have a really important environmental health role and can quite often take small-scale actions in communities to prevent much larger destructive activities, have suffered the same blight. Over the past 10 years, 32% of environmental health staff in local authorities have been lost. That means that many enforcement and regulatory agencies react to problems, but they are unable to take proactive and preventive work to avoid things becoming problems in the first place.

• 5 Sept 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  BTecs provide a vital route to higher and further education for thousands of learners throughout the country, and it was welcome news that the Education Secretary has announced a pause and review of the ad hoc cancellation programme initiated by the last Government, but may I gently remind my right hon. Friend that colleges need to know now what qualifications they can offer next September? Could she, through her office, arrange for a statement to be made by the Education Secretary, and for a general debate to take place in Government time so that we can all celebrate the BTec courses that our young are people taking in our constituencies?

• 4 Sept 2024 · Police Station Closure: Sutton Coldfield · Hansard source

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  Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern that in my constituency we do not have a single publicly accessible police station? They have been closed under a programme led by our previous police and crime commissioner. We have never had a Labour police and crime commissioner in Staffordshire; our police and crime commissioner has always been a Conservative. Would the right hon. Gentleman hold my commissioner accountable for those closures in the same way that he seeks to hold his commissioner accountable for his?

• 2 Sept 2024 · Technology in Public Services · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 2 Sept 2024 · Technology in Public Services · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is making a fine speech, but could he say a little bit about the cross-Government conversations that should be happening about upskilling and the opportunities for workers? What is cutting-edge technology today can be obsolete in six to 12 months’ time. Is there a plan for a rolling programme of training and upskilling, so that workers who work with technology can keep pace with it as it develops over time?

• 2 Sept 2024 · Technology in Public Services · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman has talked about the morale of the civil service. Would he care to tell us how he thinks that was affected by a former Prime Minister’s referring to the civil service as “the blob”, and by Cabinet Ministers walking around their offices leaving passive-aggressive little notes asking, “Where are you?” It is very easy to make the snide comments that the hon. Gentleman is making, but it is not very relevant, is it?

• 23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source

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  Oh, go on!

• 18 Jul 2024 · Post Office Horizon Scandal · Hansard source

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  Referring to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), what role does the Minister think this Government can find for third party organisations, such as WhistleblowersUK or those organisations that work with people to highlight such scandals? As my hon. Friend pointed out, this was a systematic failure across Government and society, and we simply cannot allow it to happen again.