Environment Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we on these Benches thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, for these amendments, which expose the fundamental flaws in the proposed enforcement powers of the environmental watchdog. We support all the amendments, particularly Amendment 107. As others have said, lawyers in this Chamber have eloquently made the case, so I will merely reflect on two points.

First, the Government have said that they want the OEP to be world-beating in its role. Yet a cursory review of its remit, as opposed to that of the body in Scotland, Environmental Standards Scotland, suggests that that is absolutely not the case and that the powers of the OEP are far more prescriptive than those of Environmental Standards Scotland, which has the power to take the steps that it considers appropriate—I repeat, the steps that “it” considers appropriate—to secure public authorities’ compliance with environmental law and how it is implemented or applied. So, if the Government want the OEP to be a world-beating watchdog, they need to look at the options rather more carefully in order to ensure that that is delivered.

Secondly, on Amendment 107, which seeks to remove the restriction on the ability of the court to grant remedies, such as squashing orders, where that could cause severe hardship, we agree very much with the noble and learned Lord, Lords Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who said that we should trust the judges. As it stands, the Bill fetters the discretion of the judiciary and radically alters the balance of power in favour of the Executive.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked: who bears the brunt of this weight in the change in the balance of power? He rightly reflected that it is nature—but, equally, it is the people of our country. It has been a fundamental cornerstone of British democracy that people have a right to environmental justice and to hold the Government to account. It is also a right guaranteed to the British public, given that we are signatories to the Aarhus convention. Therefore, as it stands, unless these amendments are accepted, we the British public will have weaker rights to environmental justice than we had previously under the European Union. We therefore urge the Government to accept these amendments and to ensure that the OEP has the robust powers that it needs in order to be—and, as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, to be seen to be—an effective and robust environmental watchdog.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I am grateful to the noble Lady, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, for tabling Amendment 104. It enables us to have a discussion about what penalties are appropriate to ensure compliance with environmental law and to ensure that breaches are dealt with appropriately.

We agree that, as the Bill is currently worded, issuing decision notices has nothing like the impact that we previously enjoyed in the EU, whereby Governments could incur substantial fines. As the Bill stands, decision notices are not binding and it is not clear that these would be an effective way in which to remedy failures to comply with environmental law. We believe that the OEP should have much broader powers to make judgments, case by case, about what an appropriate remedy should be, including making amends and repairs and, in some cases, paying a financial penalty. I rather liked the rather creative proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that the revenue from those fines could then go to the NHS.

A more substantial point about financial penalties is made in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. She gave an excellent insight into why these are necessary. We also agree with her that these decisions need to be enforceable and to send a clear message that would dissuade other public bodies from similarly breaching the law. The remedy should also require the public body to make a public declaration of the steps that it will take to put the matter right.

I know that the Government have consistently argued that financial penalties are not appropriate within the UK, as that would simply transfer money from one government pot of money to another. But we have to face the fact that it was a considerable deterrent in EU law and that nothing yet proposed in this Bill has anything like the same deterrent effect. As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said, penalty fines concentrate minds. Meanwhile, he and other noble Lords have all, in a powerfully co-ordinated way, taken apart the judicial processes in the Bill and exposed their weaknesses. They have made the case much better than I ever could. I am grateful to the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and the legal analysis offered from ClientEarth for setting out in some detail the failings in the judicial clauses of the Bill.

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[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I entirely share the concerns expressed with such clarity by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I am a total devotee of freedom of information; indeed, I managed to get a Second Reading of my Freedom of Information Bill in the House of Lords on 10 February 1999, rather in advance of the Government’s own. As the Minister knows from our previous discussions, I am also a total devotee of openness. Both those concerns of mine are engaged by the Bill as it is now written.

When it comes to environmental information, we ought to be more open, not less. Environmental information is so much a public matter and of such widespread individual public concern that we should not be looking, simply for the convenience of the system, to hide it away. I very much look forward to the Minister’s explanation of why the Bill is written as it is.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope to speak quite briefly on this issue. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Rooker for spelling out the case so thoroughly and for raising the important question of transparency. He has rightly underlined the importance of open government and of the OEP being seen to act in the public interest. That is particularly true on environmental matters, where in the past there has been a tendency to cover up environmental damage and pollution, and those accused have deliberately drawn out proceedings to delay prosecution.

As it stands, the Bill contains two prohibitions on disclosure of information. The first appears to override the existing right of access to information under the environmental information regulations. The second appears to contravene the Aarhus convention, the international treaty that underpins the EIR.

Under the Bill, the OEP has a clear obligation to monitor progress in environmental protection and investigate complaints of serious failure by public bodies, but it seems that the OEP could not disclose information obtained for these purposes unless the supplier of the information consented. Similarly, information obtained during the OEP’s enforcement activity would be kept secret until the OEP decided to take no further action. That appears to be much more of a blanket ban than the current provision of the EIR, which limits disclosure only if it would

“adversely affect the course of justice”.

The Explanatory Notes take a different view, claiming that Clause 42 is compliant with the Aarhus convention, but it creates a caveat based on a “confidentiality of proceedings” exception. It is not clear how that will be defined.

To avoid any confusion on the important issue of public access to information, and to protect the OEP from accusations of unnecessary secrecy, it makes sense to clarify in the Bill that the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and connected freedom of information Acts take precedence. We therefore welcome the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Wills that have been ably moved by my noble friend Lord Rooker. I hope the Minister will see the sense in these amendments, which would provide useful clarification of our obligations under national and international law.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for his introduction. He is right to emphasise the importance of transparency, a point made equally well by my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.

I reiterate the position on information disclosure for the OEP. The Government have been clear that the environmental information regulations and the Freedom of Information Act will apply to information held by the OEP and public authorities. The Bill does not in any sense override that legislation. The OEP would have to consider any request against the relevant legislation on a case-by-case basis.

The OEP will assess whether any exemption or exception to the relevant regime applies to the information. If so, it will consider whether a public interest weighing exercise is required under that exemption. If a public interest test is required, it will carry out a balancing exercise before deciding whether the public interest requires that the information should be disclosed or withheld.

Turning to Amendments 108A to 108D, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, although I agree that it is important that the OEP operates transparently, it must be allowed the discretion necessary to operate effectively. The OEP’s enforcement framework has been designed to resolve issues as effectively and efficiently as possible. To do so, it is important to have a safe space where public authorities can confidently share information and allow the OEP to explore potential pragmatic solutions before issuing formal notices. The noble Lord’s proposals would effectively remove that forum, meaning that public authorities might prefer to advance to more formal stages where information disclosure exemptions may apply due to confidentiality of proceedings. That would undermine the framework and result in slower resolution and poorer value from public funds.

On Amendment 114A, Clause 45(2)(a) excludes the disclosure of or access to information from the OEP’s remit. These matters are explicitly excluded in order to avoid overlap between the remit of the OEP and that of the Information Commissioner’s Office. This is further clarified in paragraph 383 of the Bill’s Explanatory Notes. The existing drafting of this provision allows greater flexibility to ensure that overlaps are avoided. Not only does it allow the OEP and courts to decide on the meaning of the exemption to the OEP’s remit on a case-by-case basis; it accounts for any future changes to relevant legislation that may cause overlap between the two bodies. The Information Commissioner’s Office will still have the remit to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

I hope that answers the noble Lord’s questions and I ask that he withdraw his amendment.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, briefly, I offer my support to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and thank her for tabling it and for sharing the very useful Bar Council briefing. I shall just draw a couple of points from that and make an additional point of my own.

One point to draw from that briefing is that there is a broad definition of environmental information within the Aarhus convention. The briefing rather weighs on some of our earlier debates, noting that it includes a non-exhaustive list of elements of the environment: air, water and soil. It also includes cultural sites and built structures, which very much weighed on a debate on day three perhaps—it all blurs—but one that we had earlier on the inclusion of culture within the frame of the Bill, for which noble Lords on all sides of the Committee strongly argued.

I also wanted to draw attention to the other point of the Aarhus convention, which says that

“public authorities may not withhold information, except for”—

and then follows what one would think of as a fairly standard list of exemptions. There is a very important restriction on those exemptions, which is that

“commercial confidentiality may not be invoked to withhold information that is relevant to the protection of the environment”.

Given the level of privatisation of so many aspects of our management of our environment—water companies come to mind most clearly, but there are many others—that may be a very important protection to ensure that this is fully included and complied with. It is worth noting that we are talking about an international convention to which we signed up, but we have recently had a lot of encounters in which the Government do not seem to regard themselves as being bound by international law and matters to which they have signed up.

My final point is the real, life-and-death seriousness of this. I shall refer to a case to which many people, including my noble friend, have referred to previously, which is the tragic death of nine-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. I want to quote just one sentence from the coroner’s conclusion, which said:

“There was a lack of information given to Ella’s mother that possibly contributed to her death.”


Very often, when people are thinking about information about the environment being available, they are thinking in broad public health terms—they are thinking of campaigners, whom the Green Party is often supporting, fighting big issues. We are also talking about matters of life and death, and people being able to protect themselves and their children if information is available to them.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for allowing us to have this brief debate. She has rightly raised the fact that the OEP should have some continuing role in monitoring and factoring in our obligations under international environmental law. These obligations, including Aarhus, still exist despite us leaving the EU—and these are not technical questions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, as just illustrated so vividly. If the Government are not minded to accept this amendment, it would be helpful if they could spell out how the role of the OEP and its enforcement functions with regard to our international obligations will appear in the Bill. I therefore look forward to the Minister’s response.

However, since I have the floor, I briefly echo the concerns of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, about all the business on the Bill ending up at Report. I just say very kindly to the Minister that, in the past, it has been a much more iterative process. It is really not very helpful that the Minister seems to be giving us a blanket no to all the amendments we are debating. Normally, there is a little more give and take. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and he must develop his own style, but I fear that he is storing up more problems than is necessary at Report if he does not take the Chamber with him. This might just be a matter of tone, but I give him just a little helpful advice about how we might proceed.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering for Amendment 113F and reassure noble Lords that the Government are fully committed to the important aims of the Aarhus convention and fulfilling our obligations under this agreement.

The definition of environmental law in the Environment Bill has been designed with the primary purpose of defining the scope of the OEP. The OEP’s remit is to oversee the implementation of domestic legislation, rather than international law. Separate mechanisms exist to regulate compliance with international agreements.

Where the OEP determines a complaint to be outside its scope and considers that the complaint is regarding a failure to comply with the convention, the OEP would be expected to advise the complainant to approach the Aarhus convention compliance committee. This committee considers complaints related to obligations under the Aarhus convention, which is international law, and submits recommendations to the full meeting of the parties.

I assure my noble friend that where the provisions of the Aarhus convention have been given effect in UK law and meet the definition of environmental law, they will fall within the remit of the OEP. The OEP will consider which legislation falls within the definition on a case-by-case basis.

There are, of course, areas in which, appropriately, provisions implementing the convention may not be included in the OEP’s remit. For example, under Clause 45(2)(a) provisions on the

“disclosure of or access to information”

are specifically excluded from the definition of environmental law and therefore from the OEP’s remit. This is to avoid overlap with the role of the Information Commissioner’s Office, as we discussed in one of our earlier debates. Amending the definition as proposed would therefore result in confusion, including over the functions of the OEP and the Information Commissioner’s Office.

In response to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on air pollution, Defra makes air pollution information available through a range of channels. It also informs a network of charities, including the Asthma UK and British Lung Foundation partnership, the British Heart Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and the British Thoracic Society, when elevated air pollution levels are forecast to ensure that information reaches the most vulnerable. It will not be bullet-proof or foolproof, but the attempt is there and the mechanism is there to provide that information to those who need it. More broadly, there are several ways in which the public can access air quality information, including through mainstream media, air quality alert systems and dedicated websites, such as those of the UK air and health charities and numerous campaigns. There are a number of alert systems, including in Manchester and London, that people can sign up to, often funded by local authorities. As I say, this is not a bullet-proof or foolproof process. Like everyone in the Committee’s, my heart goes out to Ella’s family. What happened to her absolutely needs to be the basis for all kinds of lessons learned and adds another layer of urgency to the work we are doing through this Bill in relation to air quality.

This group concludes the governance part of the Bill. I have appreciated the interest of all parties in the Committee in this important part of the Bill. I conclude by reaffirming that my door is open to continued discussions on these and other essential issues.

Before I ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment, I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. There are plenty of areas in which I expect the Bill will improve, but it is not within the gift of a Minister unilaterally to decide which amendments should be accepted. I do not think there is any doubt in the department I work for that there are areas in which the Bill can and should be improved. Plenty of very helpful amendments and suggestions have been put forward by the Committee. With that, I ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

119: Schedule 4, page 160, line 8, at end insert—
“(1A) When making regulations imposing producer responsibility obligations, the relevant national authority must have regard to the public interest in such obligations being operational by 1 January 2024.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment aims to ensure that the new packaging producer responsibility system is in place for the beginning of 2024, given that the final compliance year of the current package will end on 31 December 2023.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, we now move on to the next part of the Bill, dealing with resource efficiency. I very much look forward not only to the coming debate on my amendments but to the debates on a number of groups in the days to come. For now, in moving Amendment 119 in my name, I add my support to the other amendments in this group.

Amendment 119 is simple but important. It adds to Schedule 4 the requirement that a new extended producer responsibility scheme should be introduced by 1 January 2024. It sounds technical, but it is a fundamental part of delivering a circular economy.

This new charging system will place a powerful onus on manufacturers to ensure that they design their products so that they can be re-used, dismantled or recycled at the end of life. It will move waste up the hierarchy and cut down on the unnecessary use of resources. It will ensure that they pay the full cost of disposal of their packaging, which will encourage them to cut down on unnecessary packaging, and it will provide additional charges for materials which cannot be recycled. It will include requirements on labelling to ensure consumers are clearly directed as to how to dispose of the item. It would also, potentially, provide additional charges on producers of materials which are routinely littered. It would indeed ensure that the polluter pays. I know these issues are very dear to the hearts of your Lordships. Incidentally, I tabled a number of Written Questions last week about the absolute scandal of Amazon destroying millions of items of unused stock simply because they did not want to pay to store them. I hope a scheme such as this would catch Amazon in its net as well.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I apologise for not addressing that point earlier. I think my noble friend has almost answered her own question: the key for most of these products will be in the labelling. As she said, we need clear labelling. That is where most consumers will get the information they need about a specific product. She disagrees—but if labelling is clear, I think consumers will be much more likely to treat products in the way that they are supposed to be treated. However, that is clearly not the extent of the consultation or outreach that we will do. If she wants details about the plans coming up, I will write to her; I hope that is okay.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate. We have heard some excellent proposals about how we can, for example, improve the labelling of items to make sure that we recycle and reuse efficiently. The noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Chidgey, and others are rightly concerned about what is being flushed down our drains—the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, gave us some vivid examples of the consequences of non-flushable items clogging up our sewers. We clearly need action on wet wipes. The statistic that we are flushing 7 million wet wipes a day down the drains is truly shocking. How can so many consumers not know the damage that is being done by these actions? It is a matter of communication as much as anything. I did not see the “Panorama” programme, but I saw the chunk of fatberg that was on show at the Museum of London a couple of years ago and I can verify that it was truly horrific.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, raised an important point about the proper labelling of products with an agreed improved design—he is quite right about that. He points to the success of energy-efficiency labelling and we can all identify with the urgent need for consistency and clarity of labelling. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, echoes this need for clarity and for the detail of the resource efficiency of products so that people can make informed choices. He is right that we should ensure that products such as domestic equipment should be designed for long life. We should know what we are buying and what the ultimate lifespan of these materials is.

As the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said, it should be easy to do a great deal better on this issue. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked what the Government are doing on labelling. I understand that there is already considerable work going on to agree a consistent labelling regime, but maybe the Government should make it more of a priority to choose a system and sign off the design so that we can all see it in practice.

The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, is pursuing the same approach as I have taken in my amendment, which is to try to pin down the Minister and the Government on dates—in this case, on the use of single-use plastics. I agree absolutely that it should be possible for the Government to publish such a scheme by the end of the year. The issue of single use is going to be a running theme through a number of groups as we debate them in the coming hours and days.

I was quite taken by what the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, said about the perverse application of the internal market, which was surely never intended for the use that it is now being put to, which is stopping the Welsh Senedd taking more immediate action on single use. I am not sure whether the Minister addressed that issue, but it was never intended, I am sure, that the internal market should have that effect.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, raised the huge issue of disposable nappies and the environmental damage that they create by being dumped in huge quantities in landfill or misplaced in other recyclable waste streams. She gave us some shocking examples about their impact on the environment. I pay tribute to the work of the Nappy Alliance and all others who have campaigned tirelessly on this issue. We urgently need a cultural shift to using reusable nappies, as well as better information about the materials and packaging used in disposable nappies. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, many people think they are made from paper and do not realise that they have a plastic content. I thank the Minister for updating us on the work that the department is doing on this problem, but clearly there is far more to be done.

Finally, I welcome the many comments from around the Chamber in support of my amendment, but the Minister will not be surprised to hear that I am a little disappointed in his response. I do not doubt his personal commitment, but the truth is that the introduction of extended producer responsibility has already been delayed. It has been three years since it was first proposed, and our deadline will take another three years, so it is absolutely reasonable. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, she would have introduced a much more immediate deadline. I understand that we have to allow time for producers to adjust, but if we do not set a deadline there is a real danger that they will simply drag their feet in the consultations and we will find that we are consulting more and more without an immediate deadline to focus individual minds. I have to say that we feel that there should be more ambition and that our date and deadline is a reasonable deadline for producers to deliver.

As a final point on that, noble Lords just said that the use of “may” was standard phraseology, but there are some “musts” in the Bill, so we could have had a “must” on this occasion. Perhaps that is something we can look at when we return, as we inevitably will, to this issue on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 119 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

130A: Schedule 7, page 175, line 30, leave out “or supply” and insert “, supply or use in the supply chain”
Member’s explanatory statement
These amendment seeks greater transparency on the part of supermarkets in terms of plastic packaging.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

In moving Amendment 130A, I shall speak also to Amendments 130B and 141A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, and Amendment 139, in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. As with the various other amendments in this group, they seek concrete, practical steps to reduce plastic pollution, primarily by reducing plastic production. What is not produced in the first place cannot later pollute.

Amendments 130A and 130B seek to strengthen the Bill to enforce full transparency from businesses with more than 250 employees about the plastic they use at every point in the supply chain. We are not wedded to that threshold, but it is the same one used by the Government; for example, as a threshold for making declarations on the gender pay gap. A threshold of that order means that we are not imposing huge burdens on tiny companies but just asking a small thing of the large companies which are the primary plastic polluters.

UK supermarkets use some 114 billion pieces of throwaway plastic packaging each year. Anti-plastic campaigners A Plastic Planet have worked out that this equates to 653,000 tonnes of plastic waste—the equivalent of almost 3,000 747 jumbo jets.

This avalanche of plastic is not just in the packaging we take home with us from the supermarket. It wraps pallets of food in transit, and it sits on shelves, wrapping pretty much everything we buy, pushing sales while creating a toxic legacy for our planet. That is why Amendment 130B refers to

“primary, secondary and tertiary plastic packaging”,

which is the jargon, respectively, for packaging we take home, packaging used to promote sales and packaging used to transport goods before products make it to the shelves.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

Do we have plans? We are committed to extending our bans on unnecessary single-use packaging and have a 25-year environment plan to phase out all unnecessary use of plastic, not just single-use plastic, so in that sense, yes, we do have a plan. The noble Baroness is right that there will need to be continuous pressure. I think that pressure will continue to grow from consumers, voters and from parliamentarians of all parties to accelerate those bans and expand their remit. From my point of view, I have ambition and hope that we will expand that approach as far and wide as we possibly can and as quickly as we can.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for the support for my noble friend Lady Ritchie’s amendments, particularly on action for transparency and for tackling the use of sachets.

The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, made a very important point: we need a holistic approach to the banning of all single-use products. That point was very well made. He also quite rightly made the point that it is often hard to know the composition of the materials you are dealing with, particularly single-use materials. Some of them conspire to look like wood but they are not always wood, for example.

The noble Viscount also decried the huge amount of packaging that comes with online purchases. I could see loads of heads nodding when he mentioned that. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, rightly pointed out that polystyrene is also massively overused in packaging when other materials that can be more easily recycled are available. We very much support his plea for a ban in that regard.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, quite rightly reminded us that history will judge us badly if we do not tackle plastic and that we may well find out that, historically, it is seen as damaging as asbestos. She is quite right about that. As the Minister said, we do not quite know the full effects of plastic in the environment yet. We are yet to find out some of those horrors.

The noble Baroness also quite rightly pointed out some of the difficulties with biodegradable and compostable plastics, which break down differently in the waste stream. There is a lack of guidance for waste managers and a lack of information for consumers at the present time. It is important to tackle that issue if we are to encourage the use of compostable plastic in the future; I was interested to hear what the Minister had to say on that.

I am so glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, raised the issue of plastic face masks. It was shocking to hear that we are throwing away 3 million face masks a minute. I know that the Minister is passionate about this, as he demonstrated earlier in the debate. I do not know whether we could get away with announcing a complete ban on plastic face masks but perhaps we could have a quick win—maybe a world first—if we required all workplaces to provide all of their staff with reusable masks. That would be a fairly easy way to intervene in the current obsession with people using disposable masks.

The Minister said that there were already some requirements on supermarket reporting and he detailed some of them, but our amendment would go further, to all large employers. I hope he would agree that there is a real need to tackle the greenwash claims that abound among some employers and supermarkets. We need to have the facts out in the open to shine some light. What was the comment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell: sunshine is the best disinfectant? That is what we need: some more light shone on these claims.

Did the Minister mention our sachets campaign? That is the thing that got the most support from around the Chamber. Maybe that could be another quick win, if the Minister was so inclined to have a sachet ban. Quite honestly, I do not think that most people would miss them if they were not there.

I will report back to the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, on the nature of the comments made today, but in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 130A withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

133: Schedule 8, page 179, line 11, at end insert—
“(1A) When making regulations establishing a deposit scheme, the relevant national authority must have regard to the public interest in such a scheme being operational by 1 January 2023.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment aims to accelerate the establishment of deposit return schemes, which a recent government consultation suggests will not be operational until late 2024 at the earliest.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 133 I will also speak to Amendment 133A in my name. I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, for adding their names.

These amendments would accelerate to 1 January 2023 the introduction of deposit return schemes and set minimum criteria for the composition and size of the containers to be included in such schemes. These criteria are the equivalent of those already being introduced in Scotland and supported by the Welsh Government. This would make it easier for businesses, retailers and consumers to access consistent and compatible schemes, which would result in improved take-up. It would incentivise consumers to take their empty drinks containers to return points hosted by retailers. The technology already exists for reverse vending machines that can collect empty bottles and return deposits, as well as sell the original filled bottles. Trials are already running of refill schemes to ensure the same bottles can be reused.

Schedule 8 already includes outline proposals for a deposit return scheme. As ever, the weasel word “may” is in the provision, as in:

“The relevant national authority may by regulations establish deposit schemes”.


We know that the Government’s resource and waste strategy supports the idea of deposit return schemes. As the Minister said in his letter of 10 June, such a scheme will

“help reduce the amount of littering in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, boost recycling levels, and allow high quality materials to be collected in greater quantities.”

We agree with this analysis, but once again we are concerned that the Government’s timetable for action will slip. Already, by their own admission, the scheme has been delayed. They are now saying that the scheme will not be introduced until late 2024 at the earliest—in other words, in the next Parliament. This means that they will break their pledge in the 2019 Conservative manifesto to introduce a deposit return scheme. It also means that six and a half years will have passed since it first became policy.

Meanwhile, Scotland is pushing ahead and, once again, England is being left behind. This is why Amendment 133 proposes an introduction date of January 2023, to avoid further delay, and why Amendment 133A would introduce consistency across the four nations. There has never been a greater need for such a scheme. The Government’s own figures show that every year across the UK, consumers use an estimated 14 billion plastic drinks bottles, 9 billion drinks cans and 5 billion glass bottles. Meanwhile, fewer than half of plastic bottles in the UK are recycled, and we know that much of the remainder end up as litter or landfill. In contrast, as the Government concede in their fact sheet, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands have achieved collection rates, including recycling rates, of 98%, 92% and 95% respectively for plastic bottles through the introduction of deposit return schemes.

We also know that the most effective bottle return schemes include all the major sizes and material types, not just plastic. This was confirmed by the Government’s own impact assessment in 2019, which found that the most comprehensive schemes offered the biggest financial benefits. But we also have to ensure that the introduction of such schemes does not have perverse consequences. For example, deposit schemes should complement existing collection schemes and build on the success of the glass and aluminium recycling schemes already in existence. This is why we welcome the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which would vary the deposit fee depending on the size of the container. We also want to ensure that there is not a switch from glass to plastic bottles, given the efficient closed-loop systems already in place for recycled glass, which is collected separately from kerbsides and bottle banks. Our aim in all this should be to cut down on single-use plastic and develop closed-loop recycling for all materials captured through a deposit scheme. I hope noble Lords will see the sense in these proposals and I beg to move.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the debate on this amendment be adjourned.