Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Amendment, etc.) Regulations 2025

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing these regulations, which I warmly welcome and support. In the case of her road haulier friend, I hope that he had good insurance and was able to recover the costs and get back on the road again. I have a couple of questions in order to understand more of the detail of how the regulations will work.

The Minister mentioned Amazon and eBay, but one that keeps bobbing up, although I have never actually used it, is Temu, which seems to be everywhere for everybody. I welcome what the Minister is proposing in respect of online marketplace operators, but my question is how it will work in connection with the electrical goods to which the regulations refer. When one makes a purchase—obviously, I have used one of the companies to which the Minister referred, which I do not want to advertise, as there are others available—at what stage will the regulations kick into effect? How will her department police the operations as smoothly as the regulations envisage?

Paragraph 5.5 of the Explanatory Memorandum clearly states:

“There are difficulties with enforcement of the 2013 Regulations against non-UK based suppliers”.


Obviously, one of the reasons that electrical goods are cheaper online is because the suppliers have not been paying for the costs of disposal. One question, therefore, is: will they now be more expensive as a result of the regulations, although people will be competing more fairly? It is no secret that the rise in online shopping has been one of the greatest challenges to traditional retailers up and down the country, including out-of-town shopping centres and market towns. I personally want to see market towns recover, although I know that there are a number of other issues, including parking. Paragraph 5.5 goes on to say:

“The intention of this SI is to ensure that OMP operators who facilitate these sales into the UK are responsible for those costs, ensuring the costs are distributed more fairly”.


Presumably, the reporting that the statutory instrument is making a requirement will ensure that such operators are in the system, so to speak.

The Minister has identified how flammable and how dangerous some of these items can be. My other question is: what is the normal disposal mechanism for, in particular, e-cigarettes, vapes, heated tobacco products and other similar items? In previous debates on statutory instruments in this very Room, we have discussed how important vaping is in getting people to switch from smoking and in the prevention of smoking in future, although there are obvious dangers where young people are vaping for the first time, which I know the Government are seeking to address.

It seems odd that, originally and currently, e-cigarettes, vapes and heated tobacco products fall within category 7 under the WEEE directive, which category also covers toys and leisure equipment. Will they be recategorised, so that vapes are taken out of that category? The Minister will not remember, but there was a toy safety directive when I was a Member of the European Parliament, and I was even a Member of the European Parliament when the WEEE directive appeared in its first incarnation. The toy safety directive covered such things as teddy bears’ eyes—if a child could eat them, they had to be carefully disposed of—and it impacted charity shops on the high street, which had to deal with them separately.

I should like to understand how these e-cigarettes, vapes and heated tobacco products will be disposed of and what the financial costs of the collection, treatment and recovery are estimated to be. Will the onus be on the user of these products to dispose of them safely and in a responsible manner?

With those few remarks, I wish the Minister well with the regulations, and I hope that they go on to make a positive impact.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I thank the Minister for her introduction. I have a few specific questions, particularly relating to online marketplaces.

We can probably all come up with a list of half a dozen large websites that we would expect to be selling these products, but I have a little awareness—possibly more than most Members of your Lordships House, but still not that great—of things such as Discord servers, which are not very visible or open to the public but require membership. A lot of selling, particularly to young people, may take place through these layers of the internet, which be at the top layer of the TikToks and eBays and so on. How will the Government ensure that we are not going to see the cheapest products ending up further and further down the chain of legibility to government and regulators. I would be interested in understanding a bit more about how the Government will enforce these regulations. How they will find the sellers and work out who owns them and who owns the websites? What level of enforcement is going to happen?

I take this opportunity to pay testimony to the work of Action on Smoking and Health. At an ASH event that I attended downstairs a week or so back, they had a disposable vape and a reusable vape, and the trick question was: which was which? They were indistinguishable. I also note recent reports that many shops that used to sell disposable vapes are now selling reusable ones, but the same shops do not sell refills. Such shops are just taking things called reusable vapes and still treating them as disposable vapes. If the Minister is unable to answer that now, I will understand if she wants to write to me. When we are talking about managing the waste problem, although there is a sense that we have dealt with the problem of single-use vapes because we have passed a law, I would question that. From what I have seen and has been said to me, how much have we changed the reality on the ground?

My other question comes from practical experience. Last week, I happened to be in the middle of Dudley town centre where I saw what is perhaps a measure of the socioeconomic usage of vaping. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred to the fact that vaping was supposed to be for people giving up cigarettes; the last statistic that I saw suggests that there are 1 million people in the UK who vape who have never smoked tobacco. In the middle of Dudley town centre, the borough council had provided a specific bin for the disposal of vapes.

My question to the Minister, therefore, follows on from the probably fairly modest extra revenue that these regulations will raise. How will we ensure that the funds raised actually go to the people incurring the costs? I am thinking of the financial impact on councils in particular—I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association—but also any other bodies that may be forced to deal with the disposal of what may or may not be single-use or reusable vapes.

Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

3rd reading
Tuesday 25th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I welcome the government amendment and the way in which the Government have listened to your Lordships’ House on this Bill and overseen considerable improvements. One was the inclusion, finally, of community energy, something your Lordships’ House has been fighting for through two Governments and several energy Bills.

However, an important issue arises at this moment relating to community energy. While the amendment that the Government have put down will help community energy to grow in the medium to long term, the sector faces an urgent short-term problem: the uncertainty of the community energy fund’s future. The fund began in January 2024 and has been very successful and heavily oversubscribed: more than 150 community energy projects have been awarded grants. More than 100 projects are ready to go and are eligible for funding, but they will not receive it because the initial £10 million is expected to run out in May. This is the only substantive mechanism helping community energy to grow, yet it has no future beyond this year.

I make no apologies at all for representing Community Energy here. Its members have asked me to say that we have seen so many times with energy policy over the years a boom-bust cycle of funding and defunding and then funding and defunding again. There is a short-term issue here, although the Government have expressed their support for the long term. So can the Minister give me a clear statement on how the Government will deal with the uncertainty over the community energy fund’s future? Can he assure me that there will be early action to deal with the enthusiasm that the fund has not been able to meet, and clear instructions on that in the statement of strategic priorities for Great British Energy, as required by Clause 5 of the Bill?

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister on bringing forward the amendment.

I support the words from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and ask the Minister what the current position is on the future of the community energy fund: the Government seem to support it, but we need to know how it will proceed and when it will come into effect. How comprehensive will the review, to which the amendment refers, be? It appears to be limited to finances, but can the Minister confirm that it will also cover sustainable development?

We heard for the first time, I think, on Report about the framework document, of which the noble Lord said at col. 1204 of Hansard that it will become available only after the Bill has received Royal Assent, yet it would seem to go to the very heart of sustainability and environmental protection, which are so key to this Bill. Can the Minister explain, if the framework document will indeed cover these points, because he linked it to the sustainable definition that he was using, as recognised by the UN, why it is not part of the Bill, why we have not had the opportunity to debate it, and what the relationship will be between the framework document and the contents of the amendment that he has just put forward?