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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to re-establish the Litter Innovation Fund on a long-term basis with annual funding grants.

Across two rounds of the Litter Innovation Fund, a total of £215,244 was awarded to a range of projects designed to pilot and evaluate innovative new ways to tackle litter. At present, there are no plans to run any further rounds of the Litter Innovation Fund.

UK Research & Innovation's Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge, which is funded by HM Government, has launched a new £2.5 million Future Plastic Packaging Solutions competition for research and innovation projects seeking grant funding from £30,000 to £250,000. In this round, UKRI is particularly interested in proposals focused on preventing, mitigating, or measuring plastic packaging litter pollution, among other things.