Draft Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 General Committees

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. These draft regulations were laid before the House on 3 November, and they introduce amendments to extended producer responsibility for packaging—referred to as pEPR—in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The amendments mark a significant milestone in our journey towards a more circular, resource-resilient economy in which producers take greater responsibility for the packaging they place on the market, and in which waste is designed out from the beginning.

The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024 established a new framework for managing household packaging waste. They shifted the financial burden of disposal from taxpayers and local authorities to the businesses that supply the packaging. As a direct result, producers are now obligated to cover the cost of managing the packaging waste they have produced, and to ensure that a proportion of the packaging they supply is recycled, with evidence provided to the regulator.

The amendments before us today are designed to improve the fairness, clarity and operational efficiency of the scheme. They respond directly to feedback from producers, local authorities and other stakeholders, and they reflect our commitment to international best practice. I will highlight three key areas of reform in the amendments.

First, we are enabling the appointment of a producer responsibility organisation from 2026, which is a significant development. The producer responsibility organisation will be an independent not-for-profit body established with the support of producers to take on core responsibilities for the operation of the pEPR scheme. This responds to a critical request from industry and aligns with successful models seen in countries with mature extended producer responsibility systems, ensuring that producers are not only accountable but actively involved in shaping the system. The PRO will operate under conditions agreed by the four Governments, and it will work in close partnership with the scheme administrator, PackUK. Sovereign functions related to sign-off and ownership of data, models and fee-setting cannot be delegated to the producer responsibility organisation, and will be retained by PackUK.

Secondly, we are introducing a targeted expansion of the scheme’s offsetting provisions. Large producers that operate closed-loop recycling systems for food-grade plastics—a system whereby they collect their own food-grade plastic waste directly from consumers and send it for reprocessing into new food-grade recyclate—will now be able to deduct these closed-loop package tonnages from their disposal cost obligations.

Eligible producers will be able to resubmit data for the 2024 reporting year and receive revised invoices for the 2025 assessment year. We are doing this because we want to increase the recycled content in food-grade plastics. Despite sorting techniques, it is currently difficult for local authorities to keep plastic that is intended for food contact separate from other types of plastics, and the result is that food-grade plastics often get downcycled, so we lose that valuable material. Closed-loop recycling systems help to keep food-grade plastics separate and decrease our reliance on virgin plastics. The approach we have chosen supports moving the UK towards a circular economy.

Thirdly, we are making a series of technical amendments to improve the scheme’s operability and ensure clarity for producers. Those include refining the definition of fibre-based composite materials by introducing a threshold—where plastic layers constitute no more than 5% of the packaging by mass, the item will be treated as paper and card. That provides greater clarity for reporting and fee calculation.

We are clarifying obligations across producer classes, including how responsibilities transfer when businesses merge or change ownership. We are also strengthening enforcement powers to tackle non-compliant “free riders”, which are businesses that meet the producer threshold but fail to register or report data. Such entities gain an unfair advantage over compliant competitors and undermine the integrity of the system. The scheme administrator, PackUK, will now have powers to charge free riders and recover costs. Updating regulator fees to reflect increased activity and inflationary pressures, as well as the introduction of new services such as recyclability assessment methodology and digital infrastructure, also form part of the change.

The amendments do not change the core policy of pEPR; rather, they enhance its delivery and ensure that the system is fair, transparent and effective. They have been developed through extensive consultation and co-design sessions with stakeholders, which brought together producers, local authorities and others from across the packaging value chain to shape the future of the scheme. The amendments before us today strengthen our commitment to a circular economy, support innovation, reward sustainability and ensure that our packaging system works for the environment, the industry and the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I am happy to address some of the points that have been raised. I welcome that the official Opposition are broadly supportive of this system, and I will come to their questions in a minute. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton, sounded like she was in favour on principle but not quite in favour of this particular system. That is an interesting approach, but ripping up the whole thing and starting again would not help our recycling rates. I prefer to think that the best way forward is to keep refining what is happening, to see how it works and to see if there are obvious things that we need to change.

These draft regulations are part of that iteration, because they introduce, for example, a change on the closed loop for food-grade plastics, and they shift to a producer-run organisation so that we can integrate how packaging is produced and try to drive up recycling rates. These measures will be responsible for returning over £1 billion to local authorities through fees and structures that enable them to recycle waste collected at people’s doors.

The hon. Member for Epping Forest asked whether Ministers have met industry groups affected by dual use, and I hope to reassure him that the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), has done so. We recognise the strength of feeling on the need for a system that can be effectively monitored and enforced, given the impact of pEPR on packaging that remains in scope of fees.

Through our workshops, we are looking at what we can do to refine the system further to deal with the issues of double charging, as the shadow Minister put it. He asked what would happen if the PRO collapsed. PackUK can take control in the event of a catastrophe while it seeks to establish a successor, so that there does not have to be any other system.

We recognise the issues with glass, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli, and the issues with measuring by weight, on which we are in touch with producers. There is also Government support for energy costs in the industry, which will hopefully deal with some of the additional costs that traditional industries are having to shoulder. I hope my hon. Friend accepts that we will continue to keep all of this under review.

To conclude, the amendments made by these draft regulations are necessary to maintain the circular economy for packaging in the UK, to ensure that the key industry request that producers are involved in running the scheme is taken forward, and ultimately to ensure that materials and products are kept in use longer. I trust that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee understand and accept the need for these draft regulations, and accept that the changes will benefit the scheme.

[Dr Hudson]

As I mentioned, the Budget document talked about a consultation on this going into 2026. I raised with the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), in the Westminster Hall debate that such consultation needs to be urgent, rather than kicking the can down the track. Can the Minister reassure us that she and her DEFRA colleagues will urgently review the system and act to mitigate any adverse consequences? A consultation is good on paper, but unless it is urgent, stakeholders on the frontline are going to suffer.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

We are trying to take the scheme forward in a positive, iterative way. The consultation is not kicking the can down the road; it is recycling the can to see what we can do to ensure that the system is changed and iterated to fit more effectively, to drive up recycling rates in our economy and to move towards a circular economy. I hope the hon. Member feels reassured by that response.

[Sarah Dyke]

The Liberal Democrats have urged the Government to consider exempting pubs from the EPR, and to review the scheme’s scope and timeline to stop further damage to the hospitality sector, which we all know is already struggling. Will she commit to monitoring that progress as the scheme is rolled out so that pubs and the hospitality sector are not hit further?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I know that the responsible Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East, has met the industry, and that workshops have been held over recent weeks to urgently and carefully identify options that address the issues that the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton raises. We all need to find positive ways forward to address those issues. I hope she is reassured that my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East is on to that one and already taking action. I hope that, with those explanations, this measure has the support of the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.