My hon. Friend is absolutely right about these measures. By voting for them today—of course, they also need to go through the Lords—we will give our regulators all the tools that they need and that they have asked for to tackle this situation. He is right that it is a bit of a surprise that the Liberal Democrats are absent, but there we go. We will be able to remind people that, when Parliament was voting for this legislation, the Liberal Democrats were nowhere to be seen.
Secondly, there is currently no provision under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 for variable monetary penalties. The majority of Environment Agency investigations are conducted under those regulations, and at the moment the Environment Agency is limited in its enforcement options to giving warnings, advice, guidance or enforcement undertakings, or indeed having to go the whole hog and undertake formal criminal prosecutions.
The secondary legislation that we are debating will introduce variable monetary penalties to the 2016 regulations, ensuring a comprehensive, clear, effective and proportionate deterrent within the environmental civil sanctions regime. Penalties will be based on the degree of environmental harm and culpability, as well as the size of the operator. They are calibrated to act as a proportionate deterrent and punishment, and both instruments will require the environmental regulators to update and publish guidance that sets out their methodology for determining the penalty levels.