𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Peers have delivered a crushing blow to Labour by voting to change an “utterly preposterous” law that forces farmers to pay for clearing fly-tipping dumped on their own land. The House of Lords left ministers red-faced yesterday in a major win for rural communities campaigners say have been left blighted by injustice.

Fly-tipping is one of the only crimes where the victim has to dip into their own pocket to pay for damage done to them. It means farmers who fall foul of fly-tippers are currently legally obligated to clear the waste dumped on their own land by crooks. And if they don’t clean it up, council grandees can prosecute them for someone else’s mess. Rural campaigners have branded the system “utterly preposterous” and say victims of the crime stand to be penalised by the law with farmers and rural communities forced to shoulder the costs.

But the House of Lords has frustrated the government by passing amendments that change the system. The victory comes just months after official figures revealed that there are now some 1.26million incidents of the crime recorded last year. Less than 1 in every 5 of them saw any punishment for the offenders.

One amendment, put down by Lord Davies of Gower, demands that offenders will be liable for the costs incurred through loss of damage, and another, by Viscount Goschen, requires local authorities to collect fly-tipped waste and try to get the cost back from the tipper.

Ensure our latest politics headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as Preferred Source in your Google search settings.

Both amendments passed despite government opposition, and if they become law then penalising the victims of this crime would no longer be allowed. But campaigners warn that Labour could still try and override the changes when the bill heads back to the Commons.

Johnnie Furse, a spokesman at the Countryside Alliance, said: “The government has a real opportunity here to end the ridiculous current system in which farmers and rural people are penalised for being victims of waste crime.”

He added: “Accepting these amendments would do much to repair the government’s broken relationship with the countryside, showing rural communities that the government does care about about justice for the people who live and work there.”

A DEFRA spokesman said that the “waste criminals who blight our countryside and undermine our hard-working farmers have gone unpunished for too long” adding that the environment agency had seen a budget increase of some 50%.

They stressed they would be working closely with the sector to prevent fly-tipping on private land.