I am grateful to Shadow Minister Ruth Jones MP for asking the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about Walley's Quarry.
Walley's has never been a party-political issue - it is a matter which affects everyone who has to live with it, and I would hope that any MP for Newcastle would be representing residents in the way that I have been. I met with Ruth in Westminster following her fact-finding visit to Newcastle and we both agreed to work together in order to maintain pressure on all the relevant authorities.
As a Shadow Minister, Ruth is guaranteed a question at every Defra Question Time (which sadly I am not) and I am pleased to see our major issue receiving attention once again.
The Secretary of State laid out what he and I have done so far and relayed that Defra are giving the Environment Agency as much help as possible, both with their monitoring and with the engineering requirements they are mandating of the operator. The priority remains to stop the stink as soon as possible via "Contain - Collect - Destroy". I know how much worse the extremely hot weather has made the problem over the last week, especially in terms of sleep.
As I have explained previously, the Secretary of State cannot direct the EA - who are an arms-length non-departmental public body - to take specific actions. This would be classed as political interference and could put both the current requirements and any subsequent court actions (e.g. a prosecution) at risk. In addition the Secretary of State has a quasi-judicial role - he would have to approve any prosecution by Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council under statutory nuisance, and therefore cannot say anything that might pre-judge that.