Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to monitor and assess the impact of plastic waste in the ocean on marine life.

The UK monitors levels of marine litter on its beaches, sea surface and seafloor as part of the UK Marine Strategy. The UK Marine Strategy provides a legal framework for assessing and monitoring the status of our seas and to put in place the measures needed to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES). The UK had not reached Good Environmental Status (GES) for levels of marine litter under its most recent assessment in 2019. To help address this, we are introducing additional single-use plastic item bans, extended producer responsibility and deposit return schemes for plastic packaging, whilst also improving consistency in recycling and advocating for high ambition outcomes under a new global treaty on plastic pollution.

The UK also contributes to regional monitoring of the North-East Atlantic as a contracting party to The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) Convention. The latest OSPAR assessments which will contribute to OSPARs Quality Status Report of the North East Atlantic, to be published summer 2023, show there has been a significant decrease in beach litter over the last 6 years in the North-East Atlantic. In the Greater North Sea, the probability of seafloor litter collected has increased. There has been a significant decrease in marine litter on the sea surface between 2009 – 2018, so progress has been made towards the threshold level for impact on marine life.