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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will introduce a date for banning the use of all single-use non-essential plastic items.

We have already introduced a restriction on the supply of plastic straws, drinks stirrers and cotton buds from October this year. In addition, we are scoping out additional items for which a ban would be a suitable and proportionate measure. The Environment Bill will also allow us to tackle problematic plastics through a variety of policy measures, including measures to impose charges on single-use plastic items; introduce a deposit return scheme for drinks containers; and make producers cover the costs of collecting and managing plastic packaging waste.

Generally, we prefer to help people and businesses make more sustainable choices, for example through better product labelling, rather than resorting to a charge or a ban. Plastic may be the best available material for some products and banning them may cause more harm than good. We expect the initiatives by industry, such as the UK Plastics Pact, combined with our reforms to work together to eliminate the most problematic plastics from use.

We will introduce a new world-leading tax on plastic packaging which will apply to businesses producing or importing plastic packaging which does not meet a minimum threshold of at least 30% recycled content, subject to further consultation, from April 2022. Together with the Government’s reform of the Packaging Producer Responsibility system, this will transform the economic incentives of producers by encouraging more use of recycled plastic and driving up recycling rates.