We have committed to maintaining our environmental standards, and will always keep a weather eye on what is going on in Europe. We will be moving on in our own way, but it is crucial to maintain very high standards in all these areas and we have committed to do so in the waste strategy, the Environment Bill and the 25-year environment plan.
I hear Members say, “It is all very well having all these consultations, but how do you bring them into practice?” As I have mentioned, we will make these measures a reality through the Environment Bill. All the measures I have mentioned—deposit returns, producer responsibility and consistent gathering—will come forward in that Bill, which will be quite radical in getting rid of the “take, make, use, throw away” world that we live in and introducing a much more circular economy. To respond to the point made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), many of those measures will, of course, result in less waste being produced in the first place.
Much has been said about consumer confusion, and my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton and the shadow Minister mentioned biodegradable plastics in particular, which I hope will be addressed as part of
dealing with the labelling issue. It is an area in which data is so important—what is biodegradable? What do things break down into? What do they produce in the soil, and what runs off into the water? All those questions need to be carefully researched. As a consequence, the Government published a call for evidence in July 2019 to help consider the development of the standards and the certification that might be given to biodegradable and compostable plastics. That call for evidence has only just closed, on 14 October, and its findings will be published in due course.
I was very interested in the point about nappies made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas)—I used washable nappies for my first child, and it nearly killed me because it was such hard work. We will need to address the issue of proper biodegradable nappies in the future. I also wanted to mention the 5p charge, which demonstrated how bringing in such a measure can cause a paradigm shift, making the whole of society change how it acts.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton mentioned his water fountains, and I commend him on those; they are a great idea for his local area. He may want to contact Water UK, which advises on introducing water fountains in public and the refillable bottle scheme in cafes and shops. The shadow Minister and I share our bottles in common, and I was one of the people who worked on the plastic-free Parliament initiative—lots of Members did that, across all parties—and on giving up plastics for Lent, which was very hard. Those are great initiatives, and they are moving forward.
I also commend the UK Plastics Pact, the first initiative of its kind in any European country, which is run by the Waste & Resources Action Programme and supported by 80 Members. It contains key issues and objectives for 2025, including the elimination of problematic or unnecessary single-use packaging through design and innovation; for 100% of plastics packaging to be reusable, recyclable and re-compostable; for 70% of plastics packaging to be recycled and composted; and for there to be an average of 30% recycled content across all plastics packaging. Its endeavours are excellent. I know that Scotland was an early member of that group, and it has got a lot of support from businesses including Waitrose, Morrisons and Tesco. Many of those companies are trialling loose and unpacked vegetables. I still use my Somerset wicker basket, which I try to mention in any debate I can possibly get it into, rather than plastic bags. I have run a one-woman campaign on this all my life; we should all have a wicker basket, which also help to take in carbon through growing the willow for the baskets.
A lot of funding and effort is going into research and development and into innovation, which are absolutely key to reducing our plastic use, as has rightly been said by the shadow Minister and many other Members. Already, £20 million has gone into a plastics research and innovation fund, £20 million into a plastics and waste innovation fund, and £60 million into the smart sustainable plastic packaging challenge. A lot is going on in this space, and I commend and welcome it.
This is a complex area, but I assure Members that I feel we are making progress. If Members join in with the Environment Bill, we will get some measures through that will change our lives.
2.59 pm