Selaine Saxby
Main Page: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)Department Debates - View all Selaine Saxby's debates with the Leader of the House
(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important matter again. Concern about crime affecting retail workers is shared across the House. He pays tribute to the retail workers who stayed at work throughout the pandemic—the service that they gave to the nation was second to none. Like NHS workers, they made huge sacrifices and took risks—initially, they were unaware of the level of risk that they were taking—to ensure that the rest of us could have access to essential supplies. When it comes to time for debate, it is rather easy for me this week. The Queen’s Speech debate is going on, and that is an opportunity of several days’ length for people to raise any and all issues that they think are important. This is definitely an important issue.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con) [V]
As the MP for North Devon, I am proud to represent some of the best beaches in the country, and I have pledged 10 hours of my time to join volunteers in cleaning them up during Keep Britain Tidy’s great British spring clean. Microplastics and nurdles are too small to be picked up by our wonderful volunteers, but they still cause great harm to nature and are finding their way into our food chain. Will my right hon. Friend consider allocating Government time to discussing how we can fix that problem at source, perhaps with new legislation in the Government’s Environment Bill?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. It is obviously important to protect the marine environment from litter and it is one of the Government’s priorities, which is why we introduced our robust ban on microbeads in rinse-off personal care products in 2018, preventing billions of tiny pieces of harmful plastic from entering the ocean.
My hon. Friend is fantastic in her war against litter. I say to her that we will fight litter on the beaches; we will fight litter on the landing grounds; we will fight litter in the fields and in the hills; we will never surrender to litter.