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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of (a) paying Extended Producer Responsibility fees on packaging supplied indirectly to business end users and (b) producers being charged for commercial waste disposal of that packaging on those producers.

In autumn last year my department published an updated assessment of the impact of introducing the Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging (pEPR) scheme on packaging producers as a whole, when the regulations were laid in parliament.

We are aware of industry concerns around producers being charged pEPR disposal fees for the management of packaging that is disposed of in commercial streams. At a roundtable with industry chaired by Minister Creagh on 10 June it was agreed to establish an industry led group to develop approaches to remove dual use packaging that is unlikely to end up in household waste stream from obligation. This work is now well advanced, and my department is carefully reviewing proposed approaches and will seek to balance sectoral ambitions against the operational integrity of the scheme.  We will continue to engage with industry during this process as we seek to establish a final approach.