Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I am not committing to visiting the hon. Lady’s constituency, but I am very concerned about what she just relayed. I have already asked for the Environment Agency to meet for a deep dive on the flooding budget. There is a frequently flooded fund, which can support constituencies such as hers, and we need to make sure we are delivering effective action. That also goes for councils, which need to make sure they have cleared the gullies, so that we do not get these levels of surface water flooding.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

T3.   I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The packaging industry is ready to play its part in creating a world-class recycling system, and extended producer responsibility with a deposit return scheme and consistent household collections of waste will achieve that, but Government responses to consultations on the latter two are still awaited. Given that businesses are expected to do their bit by starting to record complicated packaging data for EPR from 1 January next year, in just six weeks’ time, could the Secretary of State say when the responses to those schemes will be available?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

Following consultations on the two schemes my hon. Friend mentions, intensive work is going on in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to make all the schemes link up, because these are complicated issues. I can assure him that we are aiming to publish our responses to the outstanding consultations by the end of this year.