Global Plastics Treaty

John Lamont Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord]

The hon. Member makes an excellent point. I voted in favour of that initiative when it came before us, and the banning of disposable plastic vapes was very welcome.

Too much waste still ends up in incinerators. Sometimes, what we think will be repurposed or recycled is in fact burned. The number of incinerators in the UK has risen from 38 to 52 in the last five years. This is the dirtiest form of energy production, releasing more greenhouse gases than any other method.

While my constituents may have been enjoying their ice creams at Seaton or walking the south-west coast path during the recent heatwave, these hotter summers are a stark reminder of our collective failure to tackle climate change. If we can increase the amount of plastic we reuse and create the circular economy that my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) mentioned, we can use less disposable plastic and less single-use plastic, and therefore reduce carbon emissions.

Germany is the leading recycler of municipal waste in the European Union, which is partly down to its deposit refund scheme. Recycling rates on plastic bottles have reached an outstanding 98% in Germany. I have to acknowledge that it is thanks to the measures the Government introduced in January that a deposit return scheme for plastic and metal containers will go live in the UK in 2027. This scheme, which will offer a small refund for returning bottles and cans in the UK, is a practical step towards reusing plastic.

Although national action is welcome, we need to match our own UK action with international action, and the UK can be a real leader in this space. We can press for our ambition to be matched by other countries in the global plastics treaty negotiations. We must push for legally binding targets to reduce plastic production elsewhere, not just voluntary pledges. We offshore a lot of our production—including to China, which accounts for 40% of the world’s plastic production. We know that the carbon emissions produced as a result are staggering, and we must do something about them. If the Government are serious about deepening ties with Beijing, they must also be serious about holding it to account, and that starts with applying pressure at the global plastics treaty negotiations next month.

As we know, the US President has never been a great advocate for tackling climate change or reducing plastic waste. He made that abundantly clear in his attention-seeking stunt in February, when he proudly brought back plastic straws. At the heads of delegation meeting earlier this month, the US backtracked on its previous position. It walked away from earlier commitments on control measures and financing, and came out firmly against plastic production caps. The Prime Minister has explicitly cited family values as a foundation of his strong relationship with the US President. Could the Minister urge the Prime Minister to leverage that personal connection, and ask the President to consider not just global leadership, but the world that his own family will inherit? We have to consider young people in this picture, and for that we will need serious and concrete commitments at the global plastics treaty negotiations.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very good speech, much of which I agree with. I am sure that he, like me, visits many schools. Does he agree that when he visits them and speaks to young people, they are very, very concerned about the environment, and in particular plastic pollution? In many ways, our great hope is that their laser focus on this issue will be reflected in the policy of future generations and that plastic production is reduced.

[Richard Foord]

The hon. Gentleman is dead right. Children from Sidmouth primary school wrote to me earlier in the year, urging me to advocate for reduced plastic use and for cutting down our plastic use. I quoted them in a debate and the Minister for Nature, who is no longer in her place, summed up the debate with their words.

Let us be honest: voluntary efforts have failed. The World Wildlife Fund reports that in the past five years plastic pollution has increased by 50%, despite a 60% rise in national and voluntary initiatives. The treaty must therefore tackle the source of the problem—the production of plastic—and confront the power of the fossil fuel lobby, which is desperately trying to water down the talks. At last year’s round of negotiations, 220 fossil fuel lobbyists were present in Busan. Their goal was to protect their own profit, not the planet. We cannot allow short-term commercial interests to derail the long-term health of our oceans and communities. Plastic production is forecast to triple by 2040. If we do not act, no recycling scheme will be enough.

I will hand my last paragraph to the children at Sidmouth primary school. They want to see “deeds, not words”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing this debate. Let me highlight one point that he made about the circular economy. He said that if we get the regulation and the incentives right, it would be good not only for the environment, but for business and the economy. That is an important point to keep emphasising.

I would like to use the short amount of time that I have to talk about how we can connect this global issue to our local communities. Let me start with the global problem. Every year, more than 12 million tonnes of plastic are dumped in our oceans—I did hear 11 million tonnes from my right hon. Friend. Whichever it is, it is obviously on a huge scale. This is not just a statistic; it represents an utter crisis—one that affects marine life, ecosystems, and, ultimately, us as well.

To many people, a UN treaty might seem a bit abstract and remote. Some will even go as far as saying that it is not worth the debate time in this Chamber because it is too hard to imagine the average person bringing it up on the doorstep. However, I do not think that is right, because it matters and the population have shown that they care about this issue.

My right hon. Friend mentioned the popularity of Attenborough’s TV documentary and how that has ignited people’s interest. I certainly have this issue raised time and again with me. People have also noticed the impact on their local environment. Unlike my right hon. Friend, I do not have oceans anywhere near my London constituency, but I have a beautiful chalk stream that runs all the way through it. People see the litter and they care about it, and they see the plastic damage in particular. We have introduced new monitoring systems to understand the damage that some of these microplastics can do. People are incredibly proud of their local surroundings, and it is not too big a step for them to think about the oceans across the world when they are thinking about their local area.

As has already been mentioned, not just adults are starting to care more. This is a totemic issue for the next generation. I recently received a bundle of passionate letters from a year 4 class at Culvers House primary school. I say passionate because, at times, I think they were a little harsh on me. I will not take it personally, because I think they were directing their anger at politicians in general. They were at pains to point out that we were not doing enough or moving fast enough. They were quite clear about their demands, and they went into a lot of detail. They told me about their concern for our oceans, for the turtles and fish that are harmed by plastic, and for the future of the planet. Reading their letters one afternoon, I found them pretty powerful and it reminded me of the duty that we all have to act now.

When we talk about the global plastics treaty, it is important that we keep making it relevant to our local communities. It is clearly a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a legally binding agreement that tackles plastic processing at every stage of the lifecycle. For the agreement to work, it has to be ambitious, enforceable, and supported by everybody. Taking the public with us on this issue is going to get more difficult. There are people even in this Chamber who will push back against it, saying that it is a waste of time, that it is a problem to be solved by others elsewhere, but we will have to keep building that support.

In doing so, we have to reverse where the pressure is brought to bear. For a long time, the pressure has been on all of us to be more responsible consumers. Consumers have played their part. They have been willing to put up with recycling yoghurt pots, washing them out in the sink. They have taken on wooden forks and spoons. They have even put up with paper straws. They have done so, despite the pain that all of those things can be compared with what we had before. They have played their part and now it is our turn in this place to put the pressure back on to producers to make sure that they play their part as well. That does not mean that we should not listen to producers when they highlight problems with the schemes we create—for instance, the Government’s extended producer responsibility schemes, which are meant to introduce financial responsibility across the full lifecycle of products. There are sometimes issues with the implementation of schemes. I am hearing from pubs and the hospitality industry about the undue burden that can be placed on small businesses, and we need to work out mechanisms for correcting unintended consequences of such policies.

[John Lamont]

The hon. Member is making a very good speech. I agree with him about the need to take the public and business with us. In Scotland we had a real challenge with the deposit return scheme that the Scottish Government tried to impose, because business was up in arms about it, and it was going to impact on the internal market. Does he agree that that is an example of where it can go very badly wrong if we do not take the public and business with us?

[Bobby Dean]

I do agree; if we close our ears, we will miss these problems, frustrate the public and lose their support. If we listen hard, we can fix the schemes and rescue the action we want to take in this place to help the whole environment. If we do not do that, the other side will win the argument and shut down the sort of initiatives we need to see. We need to keep listening as we introduce these schemes and make sure that the public and small businesses do not feel fatigued by them.

I hope I am making clear that this is not just about treaties and targets but about protecting our rivers and oceans across the world. It is about linking to our communities and maintaining their support and listening to the voices of young people, like those in year 4 at Culvers House primary school. I want to end with something that I have definitely stolen from a work experience student this week. She said to me that we are burdening future generations with plastic debt, and it is about time we started paying it back.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

Of course—absolutely. We are always working in collaboration, and we will do everything we can to ensure that. It is an important principle that has been established, and I am determined to ensure that it is successful.

Next month, at the resumed fifth session of the intergovernmental negotiating committee, we will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to agree an ambitious and effective international agreement to end plastic pollution. We want a treaty that tackles the full life cycle of plastics and promotes a circular economy. The UK has been a key advocate for an effective treaty throughout and is a founding member of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution—a coalition of nearly 70 countries from across all regions of the world.

At INC5, the UK joined over 80 other ambitious countries to make clear the weight of support for an ambitious treaty. Recently, at the UN ocean conference in Nice, we joined nearly 100 countries in signing the Nice wake-up call for an ambitious international treaty to end plastic pollution. Those demonstrate the commitment to reaching an agreement at INC5.2 in August and the weight of support for an ambitious treaty. I am proud of the leadership role that the UK has taken in the negotiations, and we continue to take significant action to drive ambition and demonstrate leadership.

[John Lamont]

The Minister is right to highlight the leading role that the UK has played in this matter, under both the current Government and, in particular, the previous Government. The last negotiations and progress towards the treaty came to a halt because Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia basically imposed a time limit, which meant that the treaty could not be agreed. What discussions are taking place behind the scenes to ensure that countries like those three will not do the same and stall our agreement on the treaty this time?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s well-informed intervention. I assure him that negotiations and discussions are ongoing, and we are determined to ensure that we get a good outcome.

As well as leading early work to develop criteria for problematic plastic products since the second negotiating session, INC2, the UK is co-leading work with Chile to progress discussions on product design, and co-leading work with Panama on releases and leakages of plastic.