To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs pursuant to the answer of 15 January 2008, Official Report, column 1101W, on environmental protection, how much of the funding received by the Environment Agency has been spent on purposes related to the detection and prosecution of environmental offences, including fly-tipping in each of these years; and what the projected allocation is of future business resource efficiency and waste funding to the Environment Agency (a) in total and (b) for these purposes in the next three years. (189804)

From April 2008, the Business Resource Efficiency and Waste (BREW) programme will be amalgamated into a single, more focused approach of allocating DEFRA funding to increase resource efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

Funding to delivery bodies working on business resource efficiency will continue in the next spending period, beginning in 2008-09. The following table shows the allocation of BREW funding to the Environment Agency between 2005 and 2008 and the comparable amount of funding allocated to similar projects in 2008-09.

The table also shows how much of the money that was received by the Environment Agency under the BREW Programme was allocated to the detection and prosecution of environmental crime, with the comparable amount of funding allocated to similar projects in 2008-09 shown alongside.

DEFRA is still in discussion with the Environment Agency to finalise the use of funding that it is receiving in 2008-09 for activities formerly funded by the BREW Programme. The full indicative allocations for 2008-09 are as follows:

£1.5 million: Waste crime (includes £ 0.5 million capital expenditure)

£0.75 million: NetRegs—an internet based service providing free environmental guidance for small businesses in the UK to help them comply with environmental legislation.

£0.5 million: Waste protocols.

In recent years, the Environment Agency has typically spent approximately £14 million per annum on the enforcement and prosecution of illegal waste activity. This figure represents the full costs incurred by the Environment Agency and does not take into account any costs they may recover through the courts.