Single Use Carrier Bags Charges (England) Order 2015

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to raise a number of issues with the order. I do not think anybody would disagree that plastic bags, when chucked out of car windows or off cliffs, are unsightly, dangerous to marine life and wildlife, and generally a bad thing. However, the bags themselves do not find their way off the cliffs or out of car windows. It is a person who throws the bag out of the window. When a murderer stabs somebody to death with a Stanley knife, it is not the Stanley knife that kills the person but the murderer who pushes the Stanley knife into them.

There is a great deal of inconsistency, incoherence and muddle with this rushed order. I turn to the material itself. Plastic comes up pretty favourably in terms of overall impact as against paper, unless paper is considered to be used multiple times, which for shopping bags is highly unlikely. First, how can we have an order that applies to one material while discriminating against many other materials? Secondly, how does it fit in with EU law to single out one material for special treatment while leaving other materials unfettered? Similarly, on the 250 employees point, that is an interesting figure but pity the poor seagull choking to death on a plastic bag, only to be told, “I’m really sorry, pal, but it came from a local store of only 50 employees in the overall chain”. Or imagine the same seagull on another occasion, choking on a supermarket plastic bag only to be told, “It’s not great for you, pal, but someone did pay 5p for it so at least we have moved on there”.

Similarly, and on a point previously raised, how do these regulations sit alongside those already made in the devolved nations? If we are to have an approach to single-use plastic bags, it would seem sensible to have coherence across the country. We are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This really could be one small measure to connect across that United Kingdom.

Another point that has already been raised but is worth reiterating is the one about oxo- and biodegradable. What is the Minister’s view on how this can be effectively transitioned into the overall plastic bag policy and approach, and what will this do to the recycling process, apart from throw it into complete and utter chaos?

My noble friend the Minister described the 5p charge as a modest charge. He set out eloquently in his introduction the magnitude of this problem, but we have a modest charge. If you pay 5p, you can carry on with this behaviour quite happily. A 5p entry fee to chuck a bag out of a window—whatever you choose to do with it—is not really a high price. Does it really go to the heart of the stated aim of this order?

With regard to the redistribution, as set out by Defra, there are no powers for Defra to say anything about the redistribution of these funds. Who can say where they will go and what they should go on? Why should we create something that effectively gives businesses of more than 250 employees the right to set up a brand new branch of their corporate social responsibility policy, where they can choose wherever these 5ps go? They are not their 5ps, they are the 5ps of the customers who have been having to pay this to get the groceries they have already paid for home from the supermarket. It is a 5p tax on carrying your stuff home rather than having it in your arms or other bags because you happened to turn up with no bags. Those 5ps will be multiplied to give supermarkets and other businesses the right to set up virtue funds on whatever they choose to spend them on. Who will decide, who will determine and who will measure? Who will say whether these are good charities or organisations to have this money spent on? Who can say whether the so-called environmental causes that a lot of this money is likely to go to have a positive impact on the environmental aims so stated? Who can say?

Who can say whether the money even gets redistributed at all? As set out in the Defra paper, there is an “expectation” that that is where these 5ps will go. An expectation—what a marvellous concept. I apologise for coughing: a single-use bag got stuck in my throat to highlight the problem we are discussing. What sort of impact does an expectation have? We can save a lot of money with the new super-prisons and other institutions we are building by not putting any walls around them because we can have an expectation that the prisoners will stay within the grounds. An expectation—what oomph does that really have?

In conclusion, we are talking about single-use bags but what we have as currently drafted is a ragbag of an order that is incoherent and inconsistent. Does it really go to the heart of any environmental matters? I ask the Minister: what percentage of overall landfill is made up of single-use plastic bags? I hope my noble friend will be able to consider some of these points and get the order into a more coherent shape by the time it is laid.