Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

Future decisions on which animal activities will fall into the scope of the legislation will need to be evidence-based and subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The Government continue to make animal welfare a priority. We are currently exploring a number of options to ensure that there is progress as soon as is practicable.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is bringing forward a system of extended producer responsibility to obligate brand owners, including food suppliers, to bear the cost of recycling the packaging that they place on the market. However, in some estimates, the cost to obligated businesses will be 10 times higher than under the current packaging waste recycling note system. Given that the cost will need to be passed to consumers, does the Minister share the concern that it will contribute to food price inflation?

[Robbie Moore]

It was good to meet my hon. Friend just this week to discuss that issue. I encourage all those in the packaging sector, and those involved in the industry, to keep feeding information to my officials. We are reviewing EPR at the moment—we have a dedicated roll-out plan for it—but we are very keen to hear from the industry.

Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. What did my hon. Friend the Minister make of the suggestion from the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) that there should be more private sector involvement in the operation of our EPR system?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has made valuable contributions to this discussion and debate. I cannot stress enough that we are working closely with industry and want to continue to do so. I have had a lot of conversations about this particular issue, and it is really important that we involve business as much as we can. I cannot say more now, but that has definitely been noted, because after all, businesses are the ones with the experience and the knowledge. We need them to get on board with us.

We want to incentivise reusable and refillable packaging. The hon. Member for Llanelli outlined in some detail the example of Wiltshire Farm Foods, which made really significant strides before all these schemes came on board, thinking outside the box and doing its own recycling, and so forth. There must be even more potential, one would have thought, for it to look at reusing its packaging and encouraging reuse takeaway-style. I would be happy to meet that company. It would be interesting to explore further what we might learn from it or how it could take on the model that I am suggesting to make it work. A next phase of policy development that we are looking at is to encourage the use of reusable packaging, because that is a really important part of this.

We appreciate that these reforms affect business operations. We have been listening to the feedback and have already amended the proposals, following the consultation. We will continue to work closely on the design of the scheme and the delivery. We have run some eight-week workshops, like speed dating, and lots of useful material has come out of that. We will be doing much more.

EPR is a longer-term endeavour in the continuous improvement and reform of our collection and packaging services and we are looking at other schemes around the world. I went with a whole team from DEFRA and others to Belgium to look at their system, as they are world leaders in this and have been running their scheme for a very long time. Ours is different because we are introducing it later, when lots of businesses have had their own thoughts and ideas. We cannot just completely copy what they are doing in Belgium, because we are a slightly different example, but we certainly learned some very good lessons from going there. We will continue to engage with business and industry.

Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The Secretary of State will know that the packaging sector and its customers welcome the measures in the plan to reduce littering and increase recycling rates. Does she agree that they will be at their most effective if they are introduced consistently and at the same time across all countries of the UK?

[Dr Coffey]

I understand the point that my hon. Friend is trying to make. We have to make progress in this country. We are trying to get consistency in the recycling process alongside the introduction of the EPR, but although there are many things that we and other parts of the UK agree on, we need to ensure that we have a plan that will deliver our recycling targets that we have set in law. We want to make this straightforward for our manufacturers. We need to press on with the important targets that we have passed into law in the past few days.

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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

The Department for Transport has already announced some plans to increase the speed of driver testing and to deal with some of those logistics issues. Secondly, we are working across Government to ensure that where isolation is needed we protect particularly important strategic infrastructure.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con) [V]]

I am sure the Secretary of State was shocked to see the huge volumes of litter left around Wembley and London’s west end after the Euro final. He referred earlier to extended producer responsibility for packaging. That seeks to put the blame for litter on manufacturers, making them responsible for the cost of the clean-up. Does he agree that this was all caused by illegal actions of the public, and while it is important to consider business responsibility, should the Government not also look to ensure that their citizens behave responsibly?

[George Eustice]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We all have a role to play in this; people should take responsibility for their litter. We have taken some steps, such as fixed penalty notices so we can issue on-the-spot fines to people who do litter, but we need a culture change in this area.

Environment Bill

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab) [V]]

The Government do not seem to appreciate the dire position we are in, for although our air is far cleaner today than at any point in our lives, some communities have not seen the benefits. My constituency is one of them. We know that deprivation and race make us more susceptible to pollution. We in Ealing, Southall are suffering because of that and, cruelly, the system keeps making things worse. This is a matter of justice and equity.

Last week, at the communities of colour meeting on air pollution, I met Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, a woman driven to secure change for her daughter Ella, who was killed by pollution. Her story is a powerful one that is sadly repeated all too often across the country, because there is never really a safe limit for air quality. Sadly, the most polluting activities tend to be left in the worst of places.

Campaigns such as CASH—Clean Air for Southall and Hayes—in my constituency are saying no and holding us all to account. For thousands living near the gasworks, this is an issue of equity. That is why action must be targeted on the areas with the most polluted air today. People are dying and this Government deny the problem.

Environmental justice has to be available to all, or it is available to no one. Please, Ministers, act so that the Environment Agency can. Act so that Public Health England can. You can give justice to thousands who are without it today. Your Government say that pollution contributes to more than 30,000 excess deaths a year. Ella’s is just one story in thousands. Act for all of them.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con) [V]]

I speak as chairman of the all-party group on the packaging manufacturing industry, an important part of the UK economy with sales of £11 billion and 85,000 employees, representing 3% of the workforce, and I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Packaging performs an important function. It is part of the delivery system within complex logistics to enable products to get safely and efficiently from the point of production to the consumer for use or consumption, and it has an important role in preventing damage in transit and extending the life of food products by keeping them fresher for longer. The industry is keen to ensure that the environmental impact of its product is minimised through, first, more recycling of all the materials used in packaging, and that should be carried out within the UK; and, secondly, reductions in the amount of packaging ending its life in the wrong place, which we know as litter, whether that is in the UK or in our oceans. For these reasons, I welcome the provisions in the resources and waste chapter of the Bill, but with so many of them contained in secondary legislation, I wonder whether I can ask for clarity from the Minister on a number of measures.

Will there be continued consultation with the industry on these measures, and will the Minister ensure that the UK industry can continue to remain competitive? There is no merit in simply transferring packaging manufacture overseas. On extensions to producer responsibility, we know that retailers and manufacturers will pay a bigger proportion—in fact, many times more—of the cost of recycling and disposing of packaging, a cost that previously fell on local councils. It is argued that that moves the burden from the taxpayer to the polluter, but it is not the packaging manufacturer that is the polluter—people are—and I hope that improved education and awareness of the local environment will accompany these measures.

We welcome the introduction of a deposit return scheme, but will the Minister confirm that this will be a UK-wide scheme, including Scotland, so that manufacturers do not have to carry two separate sets of stock? Will she advise whether there will be a single deposit, regardless of container size? Can she ensure that we will not simply divert recycling that currently takes place on the kerbside to the DRS? Will she ensure that we include consistent household recycling, including plastic films and flexibles? We know that different local authorities collecting different things has led to very substantial confusion, with only 14% of councils currently collecting flexible materials.

I look forward to the Minister’s clarification on many of these items in her winding-up speech at the end of the debate.

[Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab) [V]]

I support all the amendments put forward by my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and for Newport West (Ruth Jones) on air quality. The World Health Organisation has clearly stated that 40 of our towns are breaking the WHO limit for air pollution. We also know that 60% of people in England are living in areas where levels of toxic air pollution exceeded legal limits last year. We know that severe air pollution costs lives, with over 40,000 deaths a year being linked to air pollution.

The impacts of air pollution are not evenly distributed, either, with a disproportionate impact on deprived areas. Research has shown that those living in deprived areas are exposed to higher concentrations of air pollution, often because their homes are situated next to roads with higher concentrations of emissions. The Marmot report also highlighted that individuals in deprived areas suffer more adverse health impacts than those from less deprived areas, because of higher prevalence of underlying cardio, respiratory and other diseases. In my constituency of Enfield North we see the direct effect of poor air quality. In the Borough of Enfield, 6.6% of deaths are attributed to exposure to particulate matter 2.5 pollution. That means that 178 deaths per year in Enfield are linked to long-term exposure to toxic air pollution.

Despite the work of proactive local authorities, pioneering new initiatives like school streets, parklets, low-traffic neighbourhoods or the 60-acre Enfield Chase woodland created by the Labour-run Enfield Council planting almost 200,000 trees, and the work of Mayor of London in introducing the ultra low emission zone, action cannot just take place at a local level; it needs to be backed by national and international legislation. It is too important not to be.

These amendments on air pollution, which I am urging the Government to support today, do not represent a radical step but the bare minimum that we must do as a country. The impact of the amendments would be to establish the WHO legal standard. In the fight against coronavirus, we have shown that working in partnership with international colleagues is vital. Addressing air quality and protecting the environment is no different. We have the opportunity to set the country forward on a course that will protect lives and advocate stronger environmental protections. This is not just an issue about public health; it is something that impacts our daily lives. We must vote in support of these amendments to ensure that we lead the way, instead of hiding away.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for asking about the Environment Bill. As we say constantly, it will be returning very soon, but we do have an out-date for it, which is 1 December, so she can just work backwards from that, and I look forward to seeing her in the Chamber. On the point about the World Health Organisation, she should remember that these are guidelines. We have been praised for our outstanding clean air strategy, which is considered world-leading, and there is an absolute commitment to this. I think she came to one of the evidence sessions where we heard how complicated it is to set the actual target. There are many contributors to this particulate matter, and we have to look at them all before we set the target.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to reduce plastic pollution.

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to reduce plastic pollution.

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

We are committed to tackling plastic pollution. We introduced a microbeads ban and reduced single-use plastic carrier bag usage by 95% in main supermarkets. We are also increasing the single-use carrier bag charge to 10p and extending it to all retailers. We restricted the supply of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds the other day, and we are seeking further powers in the Environment Bill to charge for single-use plastic items, making recycling more consistent, and we will be reforming packaging waste regulations.

[Mark Pawsey]

It has been suggested that one way of reducing pollution is to make greater use of oxo-degradable plastic. This involves using an additive in conventional plastics that causes them to break down and fragment into microplastics that, in the marine environment, can be digested by organisms. In addition, oxo-degradable material in the waste stream is a contaminant and causes a reduction in the levels of recycling. Will the Minister commit the Government to acting on the call from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and join the EU in banning the use of oxo-degradable plastic?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The Government recognise that innovative packaging types can help reduce the environmental impact of plastic if disposed of in the right way, and I know that he has a lot of knowledge in this area owing to his constituency connections. However, there is currently only limited reliable published evidence on the environmental impacts of oxo-biodegradable plastics—that is a mouthful. DEFRA and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy published a call for evidence last year to better understand the effects of these and compostable plastics on the environment, and we will be publishing the results later on in the autumn.

Environmental Protection

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That the draft Environmental Protection (Plastic Straws, Cotton Buds and Stirrers) (England) Regulations 2020, which were laid before this House on 19 May, be approved.

Before I begin my remarks, I want to address the issue of why the draft regulations are being brought before the House now instead of earlier in the year. Originally, the regulations were laid in March this year and set to come into force in April. However, in light of the unprecedented situation that this country has faced due to covid-19, they were delayed to reduce the burden placed on industry and to avoid adding further to the demands placed on local authorities.

Many businesses should have been prepared for the ban, given that our plans have been widely publicised, but we received correspondence from many stating that supply chains had faced disruption from the widespread outbreak of covid-19, so sourcing alternatives to single-use plastics had been challenging. We were asked to delay entry into force for a short time while at the peak of this crisis.

Delaying regulations was only a temporary measure in response to the crisis. Our commitment to turning the tide on the widespread use of single-use plastics is as strong as ever, and we seek to limit our impact on the natural environment.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I spent my working career supplying food service packaging items, and I see today as a pretty sad day. Having sold many straws and plastic stirrers in my working career, I find it of concern that if I supply a plastic drink stirrer I am guilty of an offence and would be liable on summary conviction to a fine. I think that is a pretty disappointing state to be in. I thank the Minister for the delay, because for many of the suppliers of these products, their customers have not been able to use the products as a consequence of the hospitality sector being shut down. The delay that she has introduced is very welcome.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know how much work he does with the packaging industry, which, it has to be recognised, is indeed an important part of our economy. I welcome the fact that he recognises that this measure is much needed. Indeed, we brought the whole industry on board with us, and we listened to it. That is why we are giving this slight extension in bringing in the regulations: it was specifically at the request of the industry.

Turning to the purpose of this SI, the Government are committed to eliminating plastic waste and the terrible effects that can result from plastic being in the environment. Single-use plastic items—products that are made wholly or partly from plastic and designed to be used only once—are increasingly common, and their use and inappropriate disposal continue to raise significant environmental issues. Unlike other materials such as paper or wood, plastic can persist in the environment for hundreds of years. Therefore, if released into the environment, items such as plastic straws can endanger wildlife and damage habitats, and small pieces of plastic items can often be ingested by animals. Furthermore, plastic that escapes into the environment will eventually break down into microplastics, which are permeating our food chain as well as ending up in our soils and the sea. The full impacts of this are still being uncovered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend. This is all part of the whole new world that we are moving into of creating a circular economy where we research what we are making and design it so that we can reuse it, repair it or make it last longer. That is why the Environment Bill is so important, because it will contain many of the measures to reach this stage through the resources and waste strategy. I must also praise the company in his constituency that he mentioned.

[Mark Pawsey]

Does my hon. Friend agree that plastic is a problem and waste is a problem, but people are also a problem? People are not disposing of these products appropriately and they are getting into the wrong place. Would an education process to get people to put the right product in the right box and get it recycled be part of her endeavour?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Just before the Minister replies, I want to make sure that hon. and right hon. Members are paying attention to the remit of the SI, if I can put it that way.

Environment Bill

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anna McMorrin]

I congratulate my hon. Friend’s local council and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill on the fantastic work they are doing. I am really proud that my own local authority, Cardiff Council, is doing groundbreaking work through a clean air plan to tackle air pollution levels. Cardiff Council has just been awarded £21 million from the Labour Welsh Government to invest in practical measures, such as retrofitting, taxi migration and transport initiatives. This is really groundbreaking stuff, which is absolutely needed.

Climate change is no longer a theory. It is a reality beating at our door. The recent floods across our country have shown it is not just something that happens to other people in far-flung places. It is happening right here. We have a moral, social and ethical obligation to the generations who will follow us to meet the environmental challenges of today and leave behind a healthier, more sustainable environment for tomorrow. This long awaited Environment Bill is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strengthen our environmental standards at home, modernise waste and recycling strategies, and show global leadership at a time when it is so sorely needed. At COP26, we can show the world what we are doing.

There are some welcome measures in the Bill, but I am afraid it fails to show the promised gold standard stipulated by the Environment Secretary’s predecessor. I am not suggesting that any of this is easy. It is not easy to change the way that we do things to meet the climate challenge, but I am suggesting that it is absolutely imperative that we take urgent, radical action to build a sustainable environment and economy for the long term, to safeguard our planet for future generations—offering also opportunities for people, our communities and our businesses. That need not be an either/or scenario. I do not know for how many years I have been making speeches about either the environment or the economy. It need not be either/or; it can be both.

Today I want to focus on one of the Bill’s key elements: waste and resource efficiency and phasing out unsustainable packaging. The UK has been using and wasting resources at unsustainable levels; we are far behind the recycling rates of many of our European neighbours. There is a rising imperative for Government, business and consumers to think and act radically when it comes to plastics and packaging, waste and recycling.

In the previous Parliament, I presented my Packaging (Extended Producer Responsibility) Bill. UK Government figures had been shown to underestimate drastically how much plastic packaging waste Britain generates. A study by Eunomia, the waste experts, estimates that just 31% of waste is currently recycled. Where does that waste go? Much is exported and shipped overseas, and dumped into our precious oceans, washed up on the pristine shores of the Arctic and Antarctic. While the Bill sets targets on waste reduction and resource efficiency, there is more of a focus on end-of-life solutions, rather than tackling types of packaging, and the use and reuse of plastic packaging. That continues to place a disproportionate burden of waste collection and costs on local authorities.

The coalition of waste industry experts and local authorities that I set up around my Bill all believe that the Bill before us does not adequately deal with the reform of waste as it should. We desperately need radical reform of the system across the country. Producers need to take responsibility, from the packaging they produce to the clean-up at the end of the life cycle. This is the Government’s opportunity to be ambitious—to show the UK to be a world leader. It would be a great shame if they did not take this opportunity. Such reform is not in the Bill as it stands.

The current system has failed to get to grips with export waste. I am not confident that the Bill in any way toughens our stance on the restrictions on exporting waste. Even the most well intentioned of producers who ship plastic waste overseas to be recycled and treated correctly, lose control and ultimately lose sight of whether that waste was appropriately disposed of. The Secretary of State, in his opening remarks, said that he had toughened up that area, but I cannot see that in the Bill: we have gone from “prohibit” and “restrict” to providing for regulation. I ask the Secretary of State and the Minister: what does that mean? What does that regulation look like? How does it adequately meet the needs? It does not, as I see it.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady be supporting or opposing the Bill in the Lobby this evening?

[Anna McMorrin]

I am absolutely opposed to a lot of things in the Bill, because it does not speak to what our industry—our producers—need. So I will be thinking very carefully and taking that decision at the end of the debate.

We must build on our recycling industry here in the UK. The answer to that problem cannot simply be that the Government will tackle the problem by causing more materials to be sent to landfill or the incinerator. Although end-of-life solutions are important, the ultimate objective must be to decrease the volume of single-use plastics, improve design and recyclability and see large-scale investment and infrastructure capacity here in the UK, and not ship things off overseas. We must address the core reason why so much plastic is shipped overseas: 356 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2018 alone.

In England, councils, restricted financially, have been less able to invest in recycling facilities, so much of the growth in the waste disposal sector has been achieved by exporting waste. In many cases, a failed austerity agenda has created that growing dependence on export markets. I am fortunate that in Wales the Welsh Government have been ambitious and introduced those hard recycling targets and invested in recycling, but for this to work we will need fundamental reform across the whole UK. I want this UK Government to take innovative steps to make radical change.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on the Office for Environmental Protection. Where is its independence in holding Governments to account and what consequences will there be when the Government fail to meet targets? It will be a toothless regulator with fewer powers than the European Commission. How can we hope to meet the challenge of the climate emergency with such a weak regulator? The Bill lacks ambition. It lacks legally binding targets and fails at every level. If we want people to take Government and Parliament seriously, we need to wake up and to toughen up the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who told us about the situation that her constituents are facing. It has also been a pleasure to listen to the maiden speeches, and I observe that today must be “west midlands day”, because I have heard many excellent speeches from new colleagues from the region. I welcome the Bill and its protections, which will improve air and water quality, restore habitats, create the Office for Environmental Protection, and introduce measures to deal with the impact of plastic waste, on which I will focus.

As somebody who spent 30 years in the packaging industry and as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the packaging manufacturing industry, I recognise public concerns about litter and where plastic waste ends up. I heard about that on the doorstep during the general election, because litter in our communities has an impact on local environments and the plastic waste finding its way into the oceans has an impact on the global environment. Both are harmful, but both represent the waste of a valuable resource. I have heard many Members today talk about the harm and damage caused by packaging ending up in the wrong place, but I want to take a moment to consider the role of packaging, because we sometimes forget what it is for.

Packaging enables the safe transfer of goods, particularly of food items, ensuring that they are received by the customer in peak condition. The second important role of packaging is not only to provide customers with convenience when picking up their daily food needs, but to give them information about what the product contains. That is of particular importance for food, given concerns about food allergies, nutritional content and sell-by dates, but instructions for use are important in respect of other items. However, that information is absent when people fill their own containers, for which there is a trend in retail.

The final role of packaging is to prevent food waste. Recent innovations, such as resealable packs for cheese and meat, are important in enabling households to get the most out of their food budgets and ensuring that purchased food is consumed. We must not forget that the disposal of food waste is a problem because it creates gases. There is a case for suggesting that the harmful gases given off by food waste cause more environmental harm than an inert plastic product bobbing about in the ocean. I am not suggesting that that is desirable, but we need to consider the relative harms.

If we accept that there is a role for packaging, we need to consider the steps to minimise its impact. The Bill encourages a reduction in the amount of packaging and refers to recycling. There has always been an incentive for manufacturers to use the least amount of material to do the job that the packaging is being asked to do, and the industry has undergone a process called lightweighting over many years. For example, starting in 2007, Coca-Cola worked with WRAP to reduce the weight of the 500 ml bottle from 26 grams to 24 grams, saving 8% of raw material and reducing the need for 1,400 tonnes of PET a year.

A large part of the Bill is about improving recycling in several ways. First, it extends producer responsibilities by increasing obligations on packaging manufacturers. The industry accepts that it needs to do more and has transformed its approach since the days when I worked in the sector, when there was little regard for what happened once the product had been used.

Consistency in local authority domestic waste collection is also important. People are confused by what goes where, and variation leads to confusion. That needs to be addressed, and I support the intention to simplify labelling on packaging so that what can and cannot be recycled, and which bin to put things in, becomes clearer to consumers. There also needs to be consistency in the use of terms. Why say that something is recyclable if the facilities do not exist to recycle it?

Part 3 addresses deposit return schemes. There are details to consider, but almost all producers in the industry accept DRS. Coca-Cola has an ambition to ensure that all its packaging is recovered so that more is recycled and none ends up as waste or litter, and in early 2017 it confirmed its support for a well-designed DRS.

A DRS must consider a number of items. It must have clear objectives, and it must increase the quality and quantity of the material collected. Quality is about making sure that there is less contamination, and I disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson)—biodegradable plastic is not helpful, because it is a contaminant in the waste stream.

Secondly, on increasing quantity, there is no point incurring the costs of a DRS—reverse vending machines cost up to £15,000 each—if it does not increase the amount of material recycled. There is real concern about displacement and the fact that people who currently put bottles in their domestic household waste stream will take them to the supermarket to get their deposit back, which will not increase the amount that is recycled.

We need to consider the number of return points and whether there will be one at all sales points. Will cafés and restaurants be included? Will the scheme provide an exemption for small retailers that lack the space to install a reverse vending machine? There are serious questions for the Minister about who will pay for it. Given the lower volumes from smaller retailers, how will we make certain that it is cost-neutral for them? The Minister needs to sort out what happens to unredeemed deposits. Not every bottle deposited will be redeemed, so where will those bottles go? Who will manage it?

Finally, we need to ensure consistency with Scotland. I did not hear the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) say that it would make much more sense and be better for consumers, retailers and beverage producers if we had a UK-wide system. Britvic, which produces soft drinks in my constituency, says that it will otherwise need two separate stock units, one for Scotland and one for England and Wales, which does not make sense.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers]

As I have said, in our trade negotiations we will ensure that the outcome works for farmers and for the nation as a whole. We will defend our standards in future trade negotiations.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

As part of her proposals for a deposit return scheme, has the Secretary of State sought to persuade her counterpart in the Scottish Government that the interests of consumers, producers and administrators will be best served by a system that covers the country—the UK—as a whole?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. Scotland introduced its scheme first. We are consulting to ensure our scheme is absolutely fit for purpose. We want ours to completely align and we are very much lining up with manufacturers and processors to get the right system that suits them.