I welcome the Minister to his portfolio. I had several meetings with his predecessor on this subject. I do not object to what is proposed in the motion, but I think it will be practically impossible to enforce. The Minister said that he had been to a landfill site, and I welcome that, but how is the provision to be enforced? In my experience, landfill tax fraud is one of the largest scandals that we have yet to address in this country. We must ensure that the policy works to reduce the amount that goes to landfill. We should all support that; I certainly do. In practice, however, there are no controls whatever. The jurisdiction over what goes into landfill falls between the Environment Agency and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. The Minister said that he had visited a landfill site, but it was obviously one that was well run. He should ask his officials to show him some that are not so well run.
The level of enforcement by both HMRC and the Environment Agency is woefully inadequate. There is also no control, or any onus, on those who are producing the waste either to ensure that the waste meets the targets or to bear any responsibility once it goes to a waste transfer station. What happens in a large number of cases is that the waste gets mixed with other waste. The waste then goes into landfill sites and is deemed to be at a lower rate than it is because no tests take place at some of the more unregulated sites. Worse than that, what is happening in practice is that when the waste arrives at the site—some large companies own a number of sites—it goes past the weighbridge and no landfill tax is paid on it at all. That requires close examination.
If we are to ensure the good intentions of this policy—and there are good intentions—we must ensure that the rules are enforced. I do not disagree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) said about the cuts at HMRC, but this is more to do with a confusion between the Environment Agency and HMRC. I urge the Minister to ask his Department how many waste operators have been fined for landfill tax fraud. I asked that question last year, and I think that there had been one. There is no enforcement at all, or even an appetite to deal with something that is depriving the taxpayer of huge revenues.
Another issue that is worrying for the long-term environmental sustainability of our country is what is going into these sites. High level waste is being mixed with, in some cases, dangerous and low grade waste. In some cases, we do not what is going into these sites.
The Minister only has to look on the internet or ask his officials to dig out some press cuttings to see some of the horror sites, which are up and down the country,
that have been overfilled. No action has been taken to recover the landfill tax, which has been avoided, or to study the environmental impact. Although I do welcome this measure, the Minister needs to look at the matter in greater detail, as massive fraud is taking place. Some of the people involved in that fraud know exactly what they are doing and are making money out of it. There are numerous examples of operators going to customers with prices that are completely impossible to meet if they were paying the landfill tax charges. The industry knows that and somehow turns a blind eye to it. In some cases, the livelihoods of decent operators who are paying the landfill tax and are following the system are being threatened by people who are avoiding paying the landfill tax by not declaring what they are putting into their sites.
I ask the Minister to have a serious look at this whole area. Although the policy is well intentioned, it does not work in practice. Will the Minister also ensure that, because the changes do not apply to Scotland, we do not have a transfer of waste across the border? I know that that is not the intention of the policy, but the lag in the change of legislation in Scotland could mean that that happens. If the Government want to crack down on tax avoidance, this is an area they should be looking at.
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