Single Use Carrier Bags Charges (England) Order 2015

Baroness Golding Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Golding (Lab)]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak, but I think I should, following my Welsh cousin’s contribution. Some time ago, I went on holiday to Wales and found myself being charged 10p for a plastic bag. I made some inquiries among my Welsh friends. It cost 10p in north Wales, 5p in mid-Wales, 2p in south Wales and nothing if you knew the shopkeeper well. I had my doubts about the whole system already, but I remembered that, in north Wales, I had looked at where the money from the plastic bags was going—into the shopkeeper’s till. There was no way that you could tell where the money from the plastic bag went eventually or how the shopkeeper paid it. There was a little box on the counter where you put the money for the plastic bag, but the shopkeeper took the money and put it in the till. That was my experience in Wales. When I went back home to England, I had a good look around for these plastic bags that the Welsh had been tossing around on the seashore, in the streets and everywhere else—supposedly. In one month, I found one plastic bag blowing around in a car park. That was the only sign I had that plastic bags were being thrown around.

I think the whole idea is nonsense. It is the customer who is paying again, and paying twice. The shopkeeper has already paid for the plastic bag and covered that in the cost that he is charging for whatever you are buying. You are paying twice, and the shopkeeper is getting back the money that he has already paid for the plastic bag. Everybody should be happy but the customer should never be happy about being charged for plastic bags.