Environmental Protection

Debate between Peter Kyle and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Monday 15th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Opposition will not oppose the regulation today, but we would like to place on record our disappointment at a number of missed opportunities. There are two elements to the statutory instrument—the plastics and the single use. This regulation deals only with removing the plastics and does not attempt to deal with or solve the problem of our single- use economy that we need to tackle. It fails to recognise the waste hierarchy of reduction first, and just aims at legislating, in a piecemeal way, one item after another.

Of course, we agree that plastics have become unsustainable. In 1950, we produced 1.7 million tonnes, and now we produce 350 million tonnes. The Minister has already talked about the number of items that we produce, including the 1.8 billion plastic-stemmed cotton buds, of which 10% are flushed down toilets, with a devastating impact on marine life when some, inevitably, get out of the system.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend and I represent opposite ends of the same city. As a coastal city, we are at the receiving end of some of that rubbish and disposable plastic as it washes up on the beaches. Does he agree that this is a very important step forward, but it is only a step forward and there is a long way to go in order to clean up the beaches that he and I represent?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I totally agree, and we both will have been on beach clean-ups and seen the awful amount of rubbish that is either left there or has washed up.

With the work of nature documentaries such as “The Blue Planet”, and environmental organisations such as Friends of the Earth, Keep Britain Tidy, Surfers Against Sewage and others, the public mood has shifted dramatically on plastics. I remember in 2002 at the world summit on sustainable development our talking about not being able to garner public support for action on plastics. How things have changed, and that is to be celebrated. That is why, of course, the Government have been able to pledge, in their 25-year environment plan, to eliminate avoidable plastics by 2040. Will the Minister set interim targets for this plan and will she bring forward further plans to demonstrate how she will achieve the overall target? Without milestones, there is a danger that we will not realise that we are off course before it is too late.

I would like to hear from the Minister what assessment her Department has made on the impact of covid on the use of plastics. Companies such as Just Eat and Deliveroo are reporting huge increases in sales. I have seen restaurants that were no longer using plastics but have returned to plastic items. While of course we recognise that there is a public health emergency, we need to do all we can to lower transmissions while ensuring that businesses have confidence in their knowledge about the risks of items, but let us return to the age-old—centuries-old—idea of a washable spoon, rather than a paper, plastic or wooden stirrer. It does not seem beyond the wit of man to return to something that we have used for a very long time—