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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to lay regulations on the use of microbeads.

On Friday 21st July, the Government published the summary of responses to our consultation on plans to ban the manufacture and sale of cosmetics and personal care products containing microbeads. We notified our proposals under the Technical Standards Directive (EU) and the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (WTO) on 28 July. This stage in the process takes 3 months and will end on 28 October subject to there being no valid objections. We intend to introduce legislation later this year.