Environment Bill

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

In conclusion, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the progress that is at last being made on plastics with this Bill—and I think there are a lot of powers in the Bill—but I urge him to focus on the detail and actually to deliver. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for initiating this debate, but I believe that her objectives could be better met by other means.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, given the hour, I will try not to duplicate the contributions of others. I will speak to Amendment 8, which I have signed, and I support Amendments 10 and 36 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and others. The noble Baroness introduced this important group of amendments with knowledge and passion. Others have also spoken with passion and repeated their comments from Committee.

Plastic pollution is all around us, yet we seem unable of our own free will to tackle its use, reduce its impact and move to alternatives. It is therefore imperative that we use the opportunity of the Environment Bill to take bold steps to legislate to ensure that plastic use and pollution are reduced as quickly and effectively as possible. It is, of course, true that not all single-use items are made of plastic. Other items have a limited use, and it is time to move away from a throw-away society. Plastic is the most invidious and long-lasting material, contaminating our countryside, waterways and seas. It kills our wildlife, which becomes entangled in its web, and poisons those animals and birds that unwittingly eat it.

A target for reducing the use of plastics must be set for December 2030. This target must be stringent to be effective. Vital to achieving reduction in the use of plastics is a properly thought-out plastics strategy. This should be laid before Parliament by March 2023. This is not an unreasonable target for completion. Plastic reduction was trailed in the 25-year environment plan, and much work has been done on this subject already.

I welcome the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and agree that we should not be exporting our waste to other countries; I spoke to that in Committee. Microplastics are present in all areas of our life: our oceans, landscapes and mountains. All around us, microplastics are polluting our lives and wildlife. Plastic bottles and polystyrene packaging and food wrap, however well designed, are still causing pollution. Microplastics, which occur from plastics breaking down into tiny pieces, must be tackled. Legislation to ban microbeads in wash-off products was welcome, but this dealt with only 1% of plastic pollution, whereas beverage litter contributes to 33% and tyre dust to 18%. It is really time that we met this challenge head on and produced both targets for plastics reduction and a proper plastics strategy to ensure that this happens, with milestones to ensure that progress is being made.

The country as a whole is extremely concerned about the use of plastic and the pollution it produces, the effect it is having on our wildlife and the unsightly detritus around our countryside. Now is the time to show that the Government are taking this matter seriously. If the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, presses the amendment to a vote, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches will be supporting her.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate. The Government of course share the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, regarding plastic pollution, and we are already working hard to address this urgent issue. Building on the action taken to date on the most commonly littered items, we announced just a few weeks ago that we will carry out a consultation this autumn on banning single-use plastic plates, cutlery and polystyrene drinks containers. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, will be pleased with the last one, and I confirm that the answer to his question is yes: we already have the power to extend that ban to any items that cause environmental damage. I strongly agree with his condemnation of the foam used to protect televisions, sachets and all the rest of it. I hope that we will be able to go much further than we currently have.

The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, made the point about the carbon footprint of plastic versus the alternatives. He is right in some circumstances—a paper bag versus a plastic bag, for example—but it is not just about carbon, as a number of noble Lords have said. The damage that plastic does when it gets into the environment goes far beyond its carbon impact, as we saw in those extraordinary David Attenborough images.

Regarding Amendments 8, 10 and 36, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, the Government’s view is that publishing a separate plastics strategy and setting a plastics target in isolation from the wider waste agenda risks detracting from the action that we are taking now to achieve our overarching circular economy ambitions. It is worth emphasising that our profligate attitude to resources is doing immeasurable harm to the natural world, and not just our use of plastic. Extraction and processing of those resources in the round contributes to about half of the total global greenhouse gas emissions, as well as 90% of biodiversity loss. And the problem is growing. Globally, we extract three times the amount of resources from nature as we did in 1970, and that figure is set to double again within a generation unless we change course.

The Government are committed to reviewing the resources and waste strategy every five years, and this provides an opportunity to set out further detail on our approach to tackling plastic pollution within our transition to a circular economy. The Bill already requires the Government to set and achieve at least one long-term target on resource efficiency and waste reduction, and we intend to set a target to reduce consumption of all materials, including plastic. In addition, the Government are already exploring packaging recycling targets, under the proposals for extended producer responsibility for packaging. We have made progress to increase reuse and recycling and combat unnecessary single-use plastics. The Government introduced bans on plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds last year, and I have already outlined our next steps to build on that. Following the success of the carrier bag charge in reducing consumption of single-use carrier bags by 95% in the main supermarkets by 2020, the Government have increased and extended it to all retailers in May this year.

In addition, this Bill includes a number of measures targeting all stages of a product’s lifecycle, which will enable the Government to further tackle plastics and plastic waste as well as drive toward a more circular economy. These measures include powers to enable us to apply extended producer responsibility across a wide range of material and product streams, introduce deposit return schemes and establish greater consistency in the recycling system—a point made by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. The Bill will also allow us to place charges on single-use plastic items, set minimum resource efficiency and information requirements for products, and ban the export of plastic waste to non-OECD countries.

In response to a comment made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, local authorities have always been, and will always be, under pressure, but we have committed that any additional cost incurred as a consequence of this Bill will be covered by central government.

On the international front, we are very much engaged in trying to encourage other countries to tackle their waste problems. We set up the Commonwealth Clean Oceans Alliance, and well over half of Commonwealth members have signed up and committed to it. Many of them have already introduced legislation to reduce single-use plastics. We are one of the leading countries calling for an international plastics treaty—a sort of Kyoto agreement for plastic—and we are very active members and funders of the Global Ghost Gear Initiative. More than half of the waste in our oceans is actually ghost gear, abandoned fishing gear, as opposed to plastic bags and the like. We are doing a great deal internationally. We can and should do more, but we are objectively world leaders in relation to the international campaign.

This Bill provides a robust approach for ambitious targets and takes action to achieve them. The amendments are therefore worthy but unnecessary. I hope the examples that I have put forward reassure the noble Baroness that we are very much on the case in tackling single-use plastic as well as plastic more broadly, and I beg that she withdraws her amendment.