Packaging Manufacturers: Extended Producer Responsibility

Jacob Collier Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend makes a point that I was not aware of. I have been in contact with loads of different industries, but not that particular one. It seems as though it is the same sort of double payment that hospitality is facing. That absolutely needs to be addressed.

Businesses have also been told that they need to move towards reuse systems. I am sure that both the points we are raising will be mentioned by the Minister in her response. It is true that glass is the perfect material to reuse, but it is not within the power of the glass manufacturing sector to force producers to move to use reusable bottles. Let us be honest: widescale reuse systems in the UK will take significant buy-in from the whole supply chain and will take at least a decade to become a reality, by which point—let me also be honest again—we will not have a glass manufacturing sector in the UK to supply the reusable glass packaging.

The signal that the Government are giving to businesses is clear: switch away from glass right now. The result? We are seeing an evident and accelerated shift away from UK-made glass towards both cheaper imports, which now account for—I am really surprised by this—14% of the market, and increasingly towards plastic.

[Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her tireless campaigning on this issue. We are joined in the Public Gallery by GMB glassmakers—I declare an interest as a GMB member—who are at risk of losing their jobs if the measure goes ahead in its current form. Will my hon. Friend recognise the human impacts that could come if we do not see a change in policy, and pay tribute to those workers in the sector and GMB for their campaigning?

[Sarah Champion]

I absolutely support what my hon. Friend says. GMB and Beatson Clark have been fantastic on this issue, as have other unions. We should never forget the human impact of the debates that we have in this Chamber. When we talk about numbers, percentages and import tariffs, we forget that it is the people making the products who are suffering the most and facing the uncertainty.

A survey conducted by British Glass found that nearly half of businesses say that they have already switched away from glass, or plan to do so, due to EPR fees. Once those decisions are made, and once investment is committed to new packaging formats, they are unlikely to be reversed. Glass manufacturing is not easily replaced. Furnaces represent long-term capital investment—often hundreds of millions of pounds. Decisions about whether to rebuild or reinvest are already being delayed or cancelled, meaning hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in the UK is already being lost.

When production shifts overseas and capacity is lost, it is almost impossible to rebuild. I am not talking about short-term disruption. I am talking about permanent industrial decline. If left unchecked, the policy will not just reshape the packaging market; it will hollow out an entire industry. With that decline, as my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) said, comes something even more serious: job losses.