Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the Extended Producer Responsibility scheme on food price inflation.

HM Treasury does not produce forecasts of the UK economy. Forecasting the economy, including the impact of Government policy decisions, is the responsibility of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The OBR does not publish estimates of the impact of policy decisions, including the Extended Producer Responsibility, (EPR) on levels of food inflation.

There is an impact assessment of the EPR system published, where the system’s impact on inflation can be found. It estimates the impact on headline CPI at around 0.07% and does not provide a separate estimate for food inflation

The Bank of England’s August Monetary Policy Report notes that, under full pass-through of costs, packaging EPR would raise the level of food prices by a little over 0.5%.