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 are taking to reduce the use of single-use plastics in packaging; and if she will make a statement.

As set out in our manifesto, we will introduce Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (EPR) in 2024, which will move the full cost of dealing with packaging waste produced by households to the packaging producers (applying the 'polluter-pays principle'). This places responsibility on producers for the cost of managing their packaging once it reaches its end of life and will encourage businesses to reduce how much packaging they use, to design and use packaging that is easily recyclable, and encourage use of reusable and refillable packaging, as a large proportion of plastic packaging is single use.