Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Baroness Coffey and Melanie Onn(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
At the launch of the 25-year environment plan, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister identified that issue of the wide range of polymers used. I assure my hon. Friend that the Government are working, through officials, with the Waste and Resources Action Programme and the UK plastics pact to undertake the research and innovation required for manufacturers to work together to reduce the number of polymers, so that there are fewer of them and they can be recycled more readily.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Baroness Coffey and Melanie Onn(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
I, too, congratulate Surfers Against Sewage on not only its direct activity, but its ongoing campaigns. I was therefore pleased to meet Hugo Tagholm in the past year. Our beaches are of better quality than at any time since the industrial revolution. Last year, we introduced tougher bathing water standards, and even under those tough standards, 93.2% of England’s beaches were rated excellent or good. I visited the Itchen last month. I am aware of some of the challenges, including the pressures of abstraction, but we will do what we can to improve the ecological as well as the leisure quality of rivers and beaches.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
Further to the question from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), will the Secretary of State say exactly how he will ensure that products such as traditional Grimsby smoked fish, produced by the excellent Alfred Enderby’s traditional smokehouse in my constituency, retain their protected geographical indications?