Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2005

My Lords, I regret that I cannot be as commendably brief as my noble friend when speaking to the previous order. I have one or two questions. The first I find fascinating but it must be asked. The regulations state that they:"““shall come into force on the day after the day on which they are made””." The problem that I have is that there is no date, even on the authorised version officially printed. So the first question for the Minister must be: on what date will the regulations come into effect? I am sure that he has the answer at his fingertips. The Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments has given the order a clean bill of health, which is good. Indeed, the comprehensive disclosure of information has been, in my view, quite amazing. Disregarding the 48 pages of regulations, which include five pages of interpretation and notices, there were 177 pages in the Explanatory Memorandum and regulatory impact assessment. We then had a further 28 pages of consultation analysis, some of which, I fear, was slightly devalued because it included some consultees admitting that they did not have expertise to comment on specifics or were not familiar enough with that area of business to provide in-depth comments. That is the reality of life. The Minister mentioned the problems at the retail end. Through the manufacturing and distribution process, it is relatively easily done, although it takes some concentrated work to deal with the packaging stream and, where it becomes redundant, to ensure that it is properly disposed of. At the retail end, it becomes a problem, although we are all familiar with bottle banks, can banks, plastic bottle banks, and so on and so forth. Most supermarkets have them in their car parks and they are dotted around the countryside. However, the fact is that still far too high a proportion of domestic waste is going to landfill. There is a great deal of work to be done in the area. I noted with pleasure that recovery of waste includes incineration and energy recovery. That is very worthwhile. However, I have a slight hesitation about energy recovery. If that means electricity production, that is one thing, but, as I have mentioned once before in the House, the south-east London combined heat and power installation was specifically designed to dispose of waste in the middle of a residential area and to provide electricity to the grid. It was supposed to provide heating to the houses in the vicinity. After 10 years or more of operation, it has not warmed one house. Although, in a sense, that is not relevant to these regulations, I assume that installations such as the south-east London combined heat and power installation will have the power to issue packaging waste recovery notes. Society at large is not recovering much of the energy that could be recovered. For some reason, it was never agreed how the heat would be distributed. I admit that that is a much wider issue than lies behind these regulations, but I would be most grateful for the noble Lord’s help on it. Finally, is the audit trail sufficiently robust and comprehensive to keep up with what is going on to ensure that records are properly kept and that what everyone says is happening is happening on the ground? It would be interesting to know whether this order requires an increase in resources to achieve that and, if possible, what it is. Without a proper audit trail, the system could break down. I hope that it will not. We support the orders, but I hope that the noble Lord will be able to help on my questions.