Deposit Scheme for Drinks Containers (England and Northern Ireland) Regulations 2024

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the instrument before us. I support its contents but I want to clarify a couple of issues.

Can the Minister clarify the situation in Wales? I understand her to say that the scheme will not be offered in Wales and that the Government are no longer engaging with Wales. Do they have a commitment from Wales? I just want to clarify that because, obviously, the situation in Scotland is welcome.

I am grateful to both Coca-Cola and the Food and Drink Federation for their briefings and preparation for today; I am an officer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Food and Drink, which is why I asked them for a briefing. They welcome the concept but, in their view, it is important that it is rolled out across the United Kingdom.

The Minister referred to other jurisdictions. I am familiar with how the scheme operates in Denmark; it has had rather perverse consequences. I sometimes feel as though I could pay for my whole Danish holiday if I went around collecting all the bottles and cans left after picnics in parks across Copenhagen and took them back. The deposit—it is called Pant—is actually set at quite a high level, so it would be helpful to know what level the Minister and the Government have in mind. Obviously, it has to be set at a level that is affordable for the consumer, ensuring that they are willing to go back and return a container to the place where it was bought.

Obviously, we must have a deposit management organisation on side. Who will be the deposit management organisation in England? Will it be the supermarket? As consumers, we are concerned about the impact this will have on small convenience stores, which will perhaps not have the facilities to take these returned bottles or whatever after use. It would be helpful to have clarification on what the costs will be and who will provide the service, because they are going to require a very large facility to accommodate the containers being returned.

Coca-Cola is keen to see the DRS—the deposit return scheme—considered as part of the extended producer responsibility. Is that something the Minister can confirm this afternoon?

The Minister concluded by saying that the monitoring and enforcement will be done by, among others, trading standards and local authorities. Are the Government convinced that they will have the resources to do this? Obviously, it is an additional responsibility over and above what they are currently doing in relation to food standards and other commitments.

Finally, if glass is to be excluded at this time, when do the Government envisage glass being included? As I understand it, glass is included in most other jurisdictions, so a big chunk of deposit returns will be excluded if glass is not included.

With those few queries, I lend my support to the scheme.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for presenting the case for the deposit return scheme. I declare my interest as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in your Lordships’ House. I welcome this SI and agree with my noble friend that it will make a major contribution to the reduction of littering. Numerous cans and other types of litter are strewn across the countryside and nobody appears to take responsibility, apart from local neighbourhoods that engage in their own collection schemes. I laud them for doing so.

I have some questions in relation to Northern Ireland. Normally this would be a devolved measure. I suppose that the UK Government were trying to ensure that there was a collective approach on the part of the Government and the devolved nations and regions. Perhaps my noble friend could explain the purpose of including the devolved nations and regions. Also, will the money collected from this scheme in Northern Ireland go to the Treasury, or will it go to the Department of Finance, where it can be invested in local schemes, and into the general exchequer for the delivery of lots of different types of service? I am well aware of the value of the plastic bag scheme in reducing litter but also in terms of the money. It has added to the portfolio of money available for the enhancement of services.

Secondly, I have a couple of questions in relation to Wales, which, I note, has not signed up to this scheme. How can the interoperability of the four UK schemes and the avoidance of unique identifiers in the Welsh market be assured? With Welsh proposals not yet published, how can the October 2027 introduction date be assured to avoid material switching under the EPR scheme? Will the Government ensure that the divergence of the Welsh scheme does not impact the governance of the UK, Northern Ireland and Scotland deposit return scheme and the appointment of a scheme administrator?

Those are the issues that most interest me in this SI, which I strongly support.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I echo the comments made by the two previous contributors on compliance for small businesses, which is crucial. It is all very well for large companies to say, “Yes, we support these schemes”, but the burden will often fall heavily on the small retailer, in one form or another. I should start with a mea culpa, in that I was head of personnel for Coca-Cola when it introduced the first ever plastic bottles into this country, so it is all my fault. For the benefit of my noble friend next to me, in particular, the first plastic bottles produced in this country were made in a factory in Leeds—a bottling plant in Pudsey.

I therefore also have a memory of glass bottles and the system that worked then. The glass bottle return system had gone out of operation in most parts of the country when plastic bottles were introduced. At the risk of being accused of regionalism or being rude about the Scots, that system lasted longer in Scotland because that part of the country returned their products to the retailers to reclaim the deposits available.