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 is taking to calculate the cost to (a) consumers and (b) the environment of planned obsolescence of electronic products manufactured in the UK.

The Government is not trying to calculate the cost of planned obsolescence of electronic products in the UK. However, the UK supports work on this issue under the European Commission’s Circular Economy Action Plan, which includes a commitment to prepare an independent testing programme under Horizon 2020 to help identify the issues relating to planned obsolescence and to find ways to address them.