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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she plans to take to ensure that the ban on the use of microbeads, announced by her Department on 3 September 2016, is comprehensive and effective; and if she will inform the House of the lessons learned from the ban on those products in the US.

We are currently running a consultation on our proposals which end on 28th February 2017. The US ban has not yet come into force, but we will continue to monitor its progress and look to learn any lessons from its approach.