Plastic Food and Drink Packaging

Debate between Graham Stringer and Neil Parish

Thursday 24th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention; she is an excellent member of the Select Committee and I know she has also done a great deal of work on food waste. This is important. We have all worked together with the authorities here to deliver a much better system, but we must ensure that we carry on to conclude it. That is why I ask whether the Minister will work with House authorities to help us to achieve a completely plastic-free Parliament. We have made a lot of progress, but we need to finalise it.

We also need consistency in recycling collections and simpler labelling for consumers—not just putting a green dot on things, because a green dot means nothing; it just means that somewhere along the line, something might have been recycled. It does not mean that that particular item is recyclable. When does the Minister expect new systems to be introduced—knowing her, it will be immediately—and will she commit to ensuring that businesses that produce 1 tonne of packaging per year report on how much packaging they place on the market? That is important, because a lot of plastic is coming through that is not being measured.

Finally, the most important message of our report is that reduction of plastic in the first place is the best way to prevent plastic pollution. Will the Minister work closely with the industry to ensure that we stop the use of unnecessary plastics in the first place?

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Would any hon. Members wishing to speak stand up so I can see them? [Interruption.] It looks as though we have plenty of time, so there is no need for any kind of time limit.

Unsustainable Packaging

Debate between Graham Stringer and Neil Parish

Monday 24th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for securing this timely debate and for his favourable quoting of me as Chair of the Select Committee. We are very much on the same page: I think we have to reduce plastics, and we have to get more compostable plastics, but we also have to be quite sensible in how we go about that. Let us use some carrots as well as sticks to try to persuade people to change their attitudes. I very much welcome the debate, which comes on the back of the petition on stopping the use of non-recyclable, unsustainable food packaging.

I would be told off by my Committee Clerks, if they were here, if I went into too much detail of what I thought the Committee might or might not decide after taking our evidence. However, naturally, I will go through the evidence that we have taken so far. We have really seen that we can actually reduce a great deal of the plastics we use. Whether they are recyclable or not, do we actually need the amount of plastic that we have? Some people here are younger than others, but most of us have grown up gradually using more and more plastic. I still remember glass bottles and things like that, which were recyclable and came with a deposit on them—Corona bottles and the like. I used to go around collecting them as a boy, especially if they washed up in the river, because I could then get the deposit back. All these things are useful, because people not only returned them but they collected them as well.

I was at an event last week where Water UK suggested having more fountains, and making sure that we carried a reusable water bottle around with us. Millions and billions of plastic bottles are used for mineral water. We probably have some of the best tap water in the world. Do we need all this bottled water? It has become a real fashion. I know it is very difficult to tell people that they are out of fashion, but they may well be now, if there are so many unnecessary plastic bottles.

[Graham Stringer]

Some time ago, I had lunch with Eddie Stobart—I may have got this figure slightly wrong, because it was a long time ago that we had lunch—but I think he said that at any one time on the motorways he had 40 lorries carrying nothing but water. It is an extraordinary waste of energy making the bottles and, as the hon. Gentleman says, we have high-quality water in virtually every corner of this country. I have tried at different times to persuade the House authorities to use tap water, not bottled water. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we could make a small contribution by not having bottled water at our Committee meetings?

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. The House could of course lead by having bottled tap water instead of mineral water. As a farmer and previously a dairy farmer, I can say that dairy farmers often joke that they would be better off if, instead of milking cows, they could find a spring on their farm and bottle the water, because more money can be made from bottling water than from keeping cows and producing milk. It is fair enough if people really want mineral water; perhaps some people need mineral water for health or other reasons, but we certainly do not need the amount that we consume and we do not need to have it in plastic bottles.

Of course, if we are going to have plastic bottles, let us ensure that they are properly recyclable. Some of the big companies—Pepsi and Coca-Cola—are looking at reverse vending machines. That is where someone takes a plastic bottle, puts it back through the vending machine, gets a deposit and another bottle can be made from that plastic. Of course, only 70% of that plastic can be used and it can only be recycled about twice. With everything in this world that we look at, we find, when we drill down, that it is not quite as recyclable and reusable as we believed it to be.

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Environmental Audit Committee, Health and Social Care Committee and Transport Committee

Debate between Graham Stringer and Neil Parish

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

We shall begin with the Select Committee statement. Neil Parish will speak on the publication of the joint report “Improving air quality” for up to 10 minutes, during which time no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call, in order, the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the Chair and the Health and Social Care Committee and the Chair of the Transport Committee.

Other Members may then put questions to Neil Parish. I will call him to respond to each of those in turn. Members can expect to be called only once. The Select Committee Chairs will be given more time, but if they can formulate their statement in the form of a question, that would be helpful. I now call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Neil Parish.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Stringer. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, I think for the first time. It is good that you had the benefit of being on the Joint Committee during the inquiry. I assure Members that I will not speak for 10 minutes, so as to allow more time for questions. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating this statement on our recent report, “Improving air quality”.

Before we begin, I am reminded that a year ago my Committee was taking evidence from the Minister when we were called to a Division. The unthinkable happened. We all stand here today because of the unflinching bravery of those on the frontline, in particular the courage of PC Keith Palmer. We carry on our work and we are all here today because we remember the great sacrifices that have been made to enable us to do so.

Clean air is a right and not a privilege. We launched a joint inquiry in October last year to examine the Government’s latest air quality strategy and whether it was adequate. I thank my fellow Select Committee Chairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) from the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) from the Transport Committee and the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) from the Environmental Audit Committee. I think we worked remarkably well together. I also thank the Committee staff for all their hard work in bringing it all together.

For too long, the United Kingdom has failed to meet legal air quality limits. That is simply not good enough. It was clear to us that Departments must work together to address this national health emergency. My fellow Chairs and I launched the joint inquiry to show that if we can work together, so can Government. We took evidence from expert witnesses, the Mayor of London, Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Transport, the Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government. It was clear to us that the Departments are not doing enough to protect the public from toxic air.

Poor air quality costs the UK some £20 billion a year, and it is a huge public health risk to all our constituents. Because of the failure to collaborate and to come up with an effective strategy, the Government are letting us down. Car manufacturers have contributed towards poor air quality for too long, and the Government have allowed that to happen and let them—in my opinion—off the hook. From the USA to Germany, car manufacturers have contributed millions of pounds to cleaning up their air. Why have we not had that contribution in this country?

Councils struggling with air quality need more leadership from Government to ensure that they have the resources to tackle the problem effectively. The Government must work more closely with councils to roll out vital infrastructure, especially electric vehicle charging points and fast-charging points. That would also help small and medium-sized enterprises and others if they wanted to convert to electric and hybrid vehicles, so that they had the charging points as well as the drivers.

All that must be included in a new clean air Act, which would concentrate the resources we so desperately need to clean up our air quality. A refusal to act is simply passing the buck. Our children and grandchildren deserve better. The Government should implement our recommendations and give us all the right to breathe cleaner air. I look forward to the Ministers’ responses to our report.