Global Plastics Treaty

Debate between Simon Opher and Sarah Dyke

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Global Plastics Treaty.

I thank you, Dr Huq, for chairing this debate, and the Minister for attending. Plastic pollution is putting all of Earth’s systems under stress. There is no corner of the world, from the top of Mount Everest to the bottom of the ocean, that is untouched by plastic pollution. Microplastics are accumulating in our bodies, in our vital organs, and in breast milk and placentas, and current levels of plastic production expose us to more than 16,000 harmful chemicals daily and to increasing volumes of microplastics.

Plastic pollution is putting the Earth’s ecosystems and natural processes under serious strain, worsening climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification and land use—and if you think the situation is bad now, it could be much worse in decades to come. Plastic production, which is already far too high for our planet’s systems to cope with, is set to triple by 2050. The impact on climate change will be monumental. In its current state and with its current growth trajectory, plastic production will make achieving net zero impossible.

Plastic production already has a global warming impact four times greater than that of the aviation industry, with 90% of emissions coming during the production process. By 2050, half of global oil demand will come from petrochemicals. Plastic production is out of control, and everyone agrees that there is a problem. In 2022, 175 countries agreed to come together to hammer out a global treaty to address plastic pollution, but after two years and with four out of five scheduled rounds of negotiations completed, we are still in the dark about what the treaty will really look like.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for bringing forward this important debate. The last Government oversaw soaring rates of plastic incineration, and delays to modest waste reforms such as deposit return schemes, while also refusing to support proposals to cut plastic production by 40% by 2040, which were put forward at the last round of the treaty negotiations. Does the hon. Member agree that the new Government must raise their ambition levels, and that the best way to do so is to deliver a global plastics treaty that meaningfully cuts plastic production?

[Dr Opher]

I certainly do agree with you, and it is one reason that I am delivering this speech; thank you for that.

It might seem obvious that plastic pollution cannot be addressed without significant cuts to the production of plastics, but that is the most controversial and politically challenging aspect of the treaty. Those involved want us to believe that we can recycle our way out of this crisis—something we know not to be true. Plastic can be recycled only a finite number of times, simply delaying the inevitable moment when it is burned or dumped in landfill, or even escapes into our environment. The fact is that oversupply of virgin plastics at ever lower prices is undermining the UK’s ambition to create a circular economy here in the UK.

Earlier this week, the BBC reported that a recycling site in Avonmouth, near Bristol—which is near my constituency of Stroud—is closing down due to low recycling rates and challenging market conditions. Last month, the industry body Plastics Recyclers Europe raised the alarm about a downward trend in plastics recycling as a result of the global glut of cheap virgin plastics. Flooding the world with cheap plastic allows no space for reuse and refill systems, and the recycling industry, to develop.

Here in the UK, we deal with an excess of plastic waste by burning it and dumping it on poorer countries that do not have the infrastructure to deal with it. Both practices were allowed to increase under the previous Government, as the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) said, and the public are rightly outraged. That is why many of my constituents have written to me about plastic pollution, and more than half a million people have signed a petition calling for a strong global plastics treaty.

Earlier this year, over 220,000 people decided to take part in the Big Plastic Count—a massive citizen science project where individuals count every piece of plastic waste that they dispose of for a week. The results showed that the UK throws away 1.7 billion pieces of plastic each week, with 58% of that being incinerated, producing toxic fumes and greenhouse gases. Incineration is the UK’s dirtiest form of power generation, and incinerators are three times more likely to be placed in poorer neighbourhoods, as was the case with the one built recently in the Stroud area.

Fortunately, the new Government have taken bold steps to tackle plastic pollution. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has made zero waste one of the Department’s core missions, and has set up a circular economy taskforce.

[Sarah Dyke]

My constituent Catherine Conway is the founder of GoUnpackaged, the world’s first modern zero-waste shop, which is hugely reducing the use of single-use plastics. She is also part of the Refill Coalition, which is developing and testing a standardised solution to deliver refills at scale in store and online. Does the hon. Member agree that zero-waste solutions such as these have a big role to play in accelerating the transition to a more circular economy that maximises the recovery, reuse, recycling and remanufacturing of products?

[Dr Opher]

Thank you—

Rural Bus Services

Debate between Simon Opher and Sarah Dyke

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Dyke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Once again, I will come to that a little later.

I have spoken previously in this place about the rural premium that residents are forced to pay because they live in the countryside. The severe lack of decent bus services just increases people’s reliance on private cars, which they of course need to fill with fuel and maintain, thus increasing that premium. The Countryside Alliance research from 2022 found that rural households were spending almost £800 a year more on fuel than people in urban areas, and up to 6p more per litre of fuel.

Before I move on, I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a serving Somerset councillor. Somerset council receives around £25.15 per head from central Government to invest in bus services, while Campaign for Better Transport research reveals that 12 local authorities get around double that. One local authority receives more than £300 per head to spend on bus services.

Rural areas have a multitude of factors resulting in poor public transport connections. The lack of funding, sparsity of routes and smaller population centres have resulted in one in four bus routes ceasing to exist in county and rural areas over the 11 years between 2010-11 and 2021-22. A 2021 survey of rural residents revealed that only 18% felt they had access to frequent and reliable bus routes; 44% felt that bus routes had decreased over the previous three years; and 38% said that they did not use buses at all, due to the lack of frequent services.

That illustrates one of the issues that providers in rural areas consistently grapple with when trying to increase provision or save existing bus routes. Rural bus routes are less profitable, due to the smaller patronage. That means that routes are likely to be removed from service or be infrequent, so local people simply do not have the faith they need to use the local bus network. They do not trust that a bus will arrive, or know when it will arrive, so patronage drops, resulting in the route closing.

Key to improving the journey experience is providing easy access to information about bus timetables, clean buses, improved bus stops and bus stations, integration with other modes of transport, and giving priority to buses, especially in and around urban areas.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I just wanted to say—

[Dr Opher]

Sorry. We have experienced a lot of problems with cross-border rural buses in our area. The hon. Lady mentioned local authorities. If there are two local authorities, it creates enormous problems. In Wotton-under-Edge, we have just lost the 84/85 bus service because we cannot get agreement from all the different local authorities to fund it. That is putting a severe strain on rural populations. I would ask for that to be considered.

[Sarah Dyke]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I absolutely agree that collaboration with contiguous authorities is crucial. We must also provide confidence in bus services to increase footfall and make them more sustainable. I would like to thank the Somerset Bus Partnership for all the work it does to promote bus travel in my county.

In Glastonbury and Somerton, and across Somerset, we are facing a near-constant annual cycle where bus routes are threatened with closure and changes. Every year, the council and bus companies negotiate to come to an agreement to keep the route open for another year. If an agreement is reached, the bus route is saved for a whole cycle of events, until that cycle of events starts again, as a contract comes up for renewal a year later.

Earlier this year, I campaigned to save the 54, 58, 58A, 25 and 28 bus routes, which run through my constituency. Thankfully, Somerset council and First Bus South were able to reach an agreement to keep the routes, but some have had timetable changes imposed on them. Inevitably, some of those routes will be under threat yet again when the agreement needs renewal later this year. That is simply unsustainable.