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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of progress by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop a UN plastics treaty.

The UK is proud to have supported the proposal by Rwanda and Peru that led to the ambitious resolution on ending plastic pollution agreed at the 5th session of the United Nations Environment Assembly in March 2022.

A series of Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) meetings is now underway to negotiate the content of the treaty, with good progress being made. The second of five planned INC meetings will take place 29 May – 2 June in Paris, with the aim of concluding negotiations by the end of 2024. Whilst the timeline to agree this global Treaty is short, this reflects the urgency needed to tackle plastic pollution, alongside the strong global political will for an agreement.

The UK supports a combination of international obligations and national measures across the whole plastic lifecycle to ensure that the Treaty can adequately address the transboundary nature of plastic pollution. As one of the founding members of the high ambition coalition of countries calling for an end to plastic pollution by 2040, the UK will do all we can to press for the agreement of a high ambition Treaty by the end of 2024.