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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the inflationary impact of the packaging Extended Producer Responsibility scheme on products such as bottles of beer.

The Government published an updated assessment in October 2024 of the impact of introducing Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging. This assessed impacts on packaging producers as a whole but did not assess impacts on individual products such as bottles of beer or individual sectors such as brewing.

The assessment estimated that the impact of Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging on overall inflation would be small, with a central estimate of around 0.07% on CPI.

Pricing decisions are for individual producers and retailers. The Department continues to engage with the brewing, hospitality and wider packaging sectors as the scheme is implemented.