from Sunday Herald, 10 March 2013
Scotland has been labelled a “soft touch” for polluters because
the fines for environmental crimes imposed by Scottish courts are 36% lower
than in England and Wales.
A new report by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) reveals that the average fine for pollution offences in 2011-12 was £5,926, compared to £9,336 south of the border. Fines have been consistently much lower in Scotland for the last three years (see table below).
Environmentalists say that this means it’s easier for criminals to get way with wrecking the environment in Scotland. Sepa accepts there is a problem, but insists it is being tackled.
Sepa’s enforcement report for 2011-12, posted online, says that it referred 37 cases to procurator fiscals, served 124 statutory enforcement notices and 160 final warning letters. Most action was taken against waste companies for illegal dumping, fly-tipping or transfers.
The Highland Park whisky distillery was fined £15,000 for discharging diesel oil into a stream in Orkney, and the Caledonian Cheese Company in Stranraer was fined £20,000 for failing to upgrade its effluent treatment plant. Of those convicted by sheriff courts for environment offences, four were in Edinburgh, three in Perth, two in Glasgow, two in Hamilton and two in Dunfermline.
Dr Richard Dixon, the director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, warned that the comparatively low fines were failing to deter crimes that could seriously endanger human health and the environment. “Even when an environmental crime is successfully being prosecuted in Scotland the perpetrators are getting away with fines of not much more than half the level they would face in England,” he said.
“The potential fines are pretty much the same between the two systems so you can only conclude that the Scottish legal system is not yet taking environmental crimes seriously enough.”
Dixon called on Scottish ministers to make sure that polluters really paid. “Scotland is currently a soft touch if you want to get away with trashing the environment for the sake of a quick profit,” he said.
This was denied, however, by Sepa’s director of operations, Calum MacDonald. “There is an ongoing issue here that we are trying to tackle,” he told the Sunday Herald.
Sepa was working with the Crown Office, procurator fiscals, the police and the Sheriff courts, he said. “But sentencing is entirely a matter for the judiciary, and the Scottish and English legal systems are different.”
MacDonald has been asked by the Scottish environment minister, Richard Lochhead, to lead an environmental crime task force. It is expected to make recommendations to ministers in June on how to improve the effectiveness of the current system.
“Environmental crime is being taken increasingly seriously,” he said. “We are paying particular attention to the waste industry and will hit those who don’t play by the rules as hard as we possibly can.”
One operator, Doonin Plant, was fined £90,000 in August 2010 for disposing of waste at a site in North Lanarkshire in a manner likely to cause pollution or harm to human health. The same company was fined a record £200,000 in December 2012 for similar offences at Armadale in West Lothian, though that is now under appeal.
In 2011-12 Sepa also imposed separate civil penalties totalling £84,500 on five companies for failing to abide by the rules of a scheme to cut climate pollution. The US chemical company, Rohm & Haas, was fined £37,103, the Scottish brewer, Tennent Caledonian, £30,390, and French-owned Allied Domecq Spirits and Wines £4,137.
According to Dixon, it was “scandalous” that well-known companies were failing to take seriously their responsibilities to cut climate pollution. “We clearly need a higher carbon price to wake up these serial offenders,” he said.
Fines for environmental crime
year / average fine in Scotland / average fine in England and Wales
2011-12 / £5,926 / £9,3362010-11/ £4,208 / £6,571
2009-10 / £4,285 / £7,193
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