Plastic: Recycling

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, there has been a common theme among Conservative spokespersons to criticise the performance of the Welsh Assembly Government, and they have recently had to apologise for that. Is this not an area where perhaps those same Conservative spokespersons should be asked to praise the Welsh Assembly Government, who are pioneers in this field? The Government have been rather tardy in following them, so there has been a great loss during the years that the Government failed to follow the lead of the Welsh Assembly Government.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am a unionist and therefore, wherever things are going well, wherever it is in the country, I am delighted. I have looked into this. In Wales a lot of the recycling percentage—it comes down to weight—is down to the fact that it has done far more food and garden waste recycling. That is why it has a higher recycling rate: 58% compared with 44.9% in England. I am very pleased that there is success in Wales on that. We certainly want to improve that, but there are plenty of local authorities in England with recycling rates of over 60% and I congratulate all local authorities that are recycling, whether it is plastic, food or other materials.