The British couple detained in Iran have been charged with espionage, according to the Iranian judiciary news agency.

The pair were named by their family on Monday as Craig and Lindsay Foreman.

Iranian state media said last week that the couple were in custody in Iran’s southeastern city of Kerman on security-related charges.

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On a bright but chilly February morning, around a dozen volunteers gather by the beachfront at Minster, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.

In bobble hats and walking boots, they carry blue plastic bags and litter pickers.

They wander slowly past the dog walkers and brightly painted beach huts, combing the pebbles for waste. But the rubbish they’re looking for isn’t normal litter; it’s builders’ rubble and shredded household waste.

It was dumped en masse by the lorry load, at an illegal dump site further up the coast by Eastchurch Gap, between 2020 and 2023.

“It’s lots of guttering that washes up, whole pipes, tiny rawlplugs, decorators’ caulk, bits of plastic and cable ties – it’s disgusting,” says Chris, as he pulls out items from his bin bag – filled in just 20 minutes.

Belinda Lamb, who organises the clean-ups, describes seeing “shredded Christmas trees, bits of carpet, even the spongy material from playgrounds”.

“It’s really sad,” she says. “It’s having a huge impact on marine life – and probably our lives – because if fish are eating this plastic, then so are we.”

They tell me that five years ago, lorries started turning up to tip waste over the cliffs at an illegal dump site a few miles away at Eastchurch Gap.

Day after day the vehicles arrived, leaving behind mounds of rotting rubbish and plastic that fills the shoreline, gets picked up by the sea and flung out by the waves further down the beach.

Locals are angry, and feel let down. Volunteers repeat their clean-up work monthly – but the sea keeps washing it in. They fear the area, a site of scientific special interest, will be like this for decades.

“It should have been stopped immediately,” Elliott Jayes, the chair of Minster on Sea Parish Council, says.

“The Environment Agency should have been able to slap a stop notice on it, and it should then immediately stop and prosecutions start straight away.”

Investigations are ongoing at the site. In 2023, magistrates first granted the Environment Agency a six-month restriction order to close it down, which has since been extended.

The gate has been locked ever since, with concrete blocks installed to stop vehicles.

‘The new narcotics’

We don’t know who’s behind the Eastchurch Gap site, nor why they dumped the rubbish, but illegal tips are a huge problem across the country and one that’s increasingly being exploited by criminal gangs.

“What we’re seeing is actually more and more evidence of really serious organised criminal gangs operating in the waste sector, because it’s such a low risk, high reward activity,” explains Sam Corp from the Environmental Services Association.

It’s something the previous head of the Environment Agency called “the new narcotics”, and Sam says waste criminals can be involved in multiple offences, from money laundering to human trafficking.

It’s thought one-fifth of all waste in England is being illegally managed. That’s around 34 million tonnes a year, enough to fill about four million skips.

It’s understood to cost the economy around a billion pounds a year, with a further £3bn thought to hit legitimate operators from missed business.

Forms of waste crime include fly-tipping to avoid paying tax or high processing costs, as well as illegal fires and exporting waste to other countries with looser regulations.

But criminal gangs are also a sizable part of the problem.

Chief innovation and technical development officer for Suez, Stuart Hayward-Higham, explains how the gangs operate.

“Imagine you’re a business, so I come along and I say, ‘I’ll pick up your waste and deal with it’.

“You pay me as though I’m going to treat it properly. So maybe £50 to collect it, manage it, and £100 to treat it. I pick it up and instead of spending the money to treat it, or recycle it, I just throw it on the ground somewhere.

“Then I keep all the profit.”

He says criminals can set themselves up with a licence to manage waste for as little as £154, making hundreds of thousands – even millions of pounds – in this manner.

‘Low fines not a deterrent’

Despite the scale of the issue, Sam Corp doesn’t believe the authorities have enough resources.

“A £1bn problem merits a lot more than the £10m that the Environment Agency gets to tackle this issue every year,” he says.

“We need regulations to be much tougher and stronger and more strongly enforced. And even if you do get caught, the penalties are far too low and they’re not enough of a deterrent.”

He says the criminals “see fines as a legitimate business expense”.

Of the 1,453 illegal dump sites recorded by the Environment Agency in the last decade, just 64 led to some form of enforcement.

Thirteen were prosecutions, 14 saw warning letters sent and 26 were logged as leading to “advice and guidance”.

Some 319 of the sites were thought to be linked to organised crime, 130 were hazardous waste, and 261 were in rivers.

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In response, an Environment Agency spokesperson called waste crime “toxic”.

“It causes widespread and significant harm to people, places, the environment, and the economy,” they said.

“We are determined to make life harder for criminals by disrupting and stopping illegal activity through tough enforcement action and prosecutions.

“Last year we successfully shut down 462 illegal waste sites, bringing the total number in operation to the lowest on record.”

A “US security guarantee” is the only path to peace in Ukraine, Sir Keir Starmer has said.

Speaking in Paris after an emergency summit with European leaders, the prime minister said a “US backstop” is the “only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again”.

And he said the future of Ukraine is not the only thing at stake.

“It is an existential question for Europe as a whole, and therefore vital for Britain’s national interests,” he added.

“This is a once in a generation moment for the collective security of our continent.”

It is a “new era”, he said, in which nations cannot “cling hopelessly to the comforts of the past”.

Any peace deal for Ukraine must “safeguard its sovereignty” and deter Russian leader Vladimir Putin from engaging in “further aggression in the future”, Sir Keir added.

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The prime minister joined the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and the European Union at the Elysee Palace in Paris, alongside NATO secretary general Mark Rutte.

The meeting was called by French President Emmanuel Macron after Donald Trump shocked continental leaders by arranging bilateral talks between the US and Russia – excluding Europe and Ukraine.

The talks are set to begin in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

Sir Keir however insisted that “Europe must play its role”, adding: “I’m prepared to consider committing British forces on the ground alongside others if there is a lasting peace agreement.

“So I will go to Washington next week to meet President Trump and discuss what we see as the key elements of a lasting peace.”

It is “clear the US is not going to leave NATO”, Sir Keir said.

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He added: “But we Europeans will have to do more. The issue of burden sharing is not new, but it is now pressing and Europeans will have to step up, both in terms of spending and the capabilities that we provide.

“I spoke to President Zelenskyy on Friday. I will do so again in the coming days. And we envisage further [engagement] with European colleagues when I return from the US.”

Britain will “take a leading responsibility, as we always have”, the prime minister said, adding that “democracy must prevail”.

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Mr Trump stunned Ukraine and Europe last week when he announced he had called Mr Putin to discuss ending the war, without consulting them.

Leaders have been left scrambling to confront a new future in which they have less US protection and support and must do more to ensure the security of their own continent.

Asked by Sky News’s Europe correspondent, Adam Parsons, whether the US has undermined the UK, Europe and Ukraine by unilaterally starting talks with Russia, Sir Keir said the US wanted “lasting peace”, as did Ukraine, before reiterating his point about a “US backstop” being necessary to support any security guarantees.

‘Completely premature’

However, despite three hours of emergency talks, European leaders left the meeting without a common view on possible peacekeeping troops in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the idea of deploying European peacekeepers as “completely premature” and said it was “completely the wrong time to have this discussion”.

He added that people were “talking over Ukraine’s head” and said he would be minded to support increased defence spending only if that was what European states wanted.

Similarly, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen said their country was “open to discussing many things” but they stressed they were still very far off deploying their own soldiers to Ukraine.