It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas), whose constituency includes the Scilly Isles.
Plastic packaging and its impacts on the environment, for many of us and certainly in my case, burst into our consciousness when Sir David Attenborough put a spotlight on the impacts that our activities are having beneath the waves. Perhaps it is because my hon. Friend and I both represent coastal constituencies that that really hit home.
I probably do not have quite as much coast around my constituency as he does, but I do have in my area the extremely sunny Selsey, the Witterings, which also has blue flag beaches, Bracklesham Bay, Chichester harbour itself, which is an area of outstanding natural beauty, and Bosham. This issue really matters to people in my constituency, because the coast really matters—for many reasons, ranging from tourism to fishing.
Those programmes about plastic really did cut through. So much so that some surveys have even suggested—get this—that the British public care more about plastic pollution than Brexit. Obviously, being in this place, we find that incredibly hard to believe, but apparently 82% of people are now trying to reduce the amount of plastic packaging that they throw away, and I know from meeting people across my constituency that they feel the same. Everyone wants to do the right thing. I am always struck by the fact that the British people are very good at trying to do the right thing, but often we confuse them with mixed messages. The education that we give is not sufficient. The situation is so difficult because we have introduced systems that are non-standardised and are incredibly difficult for people to follow.
The recent report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), whom I thank for securing this debate, highlights the huge amount of work ahead of us if we are truly to get to grips with this issue. I fully agree with many of the recommendations in the report. It was a very thorough report, on which the Chair and the other members of the Select Committee are to be congratulated.