TOUGHER new penalties for fly-tipping do not go far enough, Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has warned.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said they were unlikely to act as any serious deterrent or reduce the tonnage of rubbish that was now being dumped in the countryside.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced the upper limit of fines for fly-tipping will rise from £400 to £1,000 from the end of the month.

It is one of a range of measures which will also bring harsher penalties for littering, graffiti, and fly-posting.

But Mr Liddell-Grainger, who represents West Somerset and will be the Conservative candidate for the new Tiverton and Minehead constituency taking in much of the area around Wellington, said farmers suffering from repeated fly-tipping on their land would regard even a £1,000 fine as less than adequate.

He said: “It is a considerable sum to any individual but for the hard core of fly-tippers - the ones who makes a living from removing waste and distributing it around the countryside - it is still a modest amount of money and certainly not likely to make them give up their activities.”

Recent statistics showed waste crime was now costing the country about £1 billion a year.

Figures also revealed about a million fly-tipping incidents were recorded annually with the clean up costing more than £390 million.

Defra has also made £1.2 million of grants available across more than 30 local authorities for innovative projects cracking down on fly-tipping.

But Mr Liddell-Grainger said farmers who bore the brunt of the fly-tippers’ operations would regard the latest overhaul of penalties as half-hearted.

He said: “Fly-tipping is carried on by people who have no respect either for the countryside, for farmers, or indeed the law.

“We have to ensure they start respecting all three but we are not going to achieve that with fines which will do nothing to dissuade them from treating urban areas like a dump and inflicting cost and inconvenience on hundreds of farmers.

“If we introduced a minimum £5,000 fine for fly-tipping with the threat of jail for repeat offenders we might have a chance of making some real progress in eradicating this menace.”