I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to this interesting and useful debate, which has been conducted in a positive and constructive spirit. The contributions from all the Front-Bench speakers were very welcome. I was particularly enthused by the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), and his passion for change, and I was very much taken by the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) and her talk of a plastic calamity or crisis.
I will conclude by returning to the petitioners. When they say:
“The British public WANTS to recycle but we can’t get away from the vast amounts of waste that poorly designed packaging creates”,
they are putting out a plea to us to get this right. When they say,
“appoint people to design alternatives”,
I am not sure who they have in mind, but if we do get it right,
“the UK will thank you!”
That is something with which we could all agree.
I will end on a slight note of difference: I do not entirely agree with the Minister that we are in exactly the same place. I suspect that in the end, the Opposition are a touch more interventionist—in fact, we are much more interventionist.