My Lords, I beg to move that the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which were laid in draft before the House on 28 June, be approved. They amend part 2 of Schedule 9 to the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016. The Government committed to amending these regulations in the response to the 2021 consultation on the extended producer responsibility for packaging—EPR—scheme to obtain enhanced packaging waste data from materials facilities. The EPR scheme will move the cost of dealing with waste generated by households from local taxpayers and councils to businesses that handle and use packaging, making producers responsible for the packaging that they place on the market.
In 2020, Defra undertook a post-implementation review of part 2 of Schedule 9 to the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016. The review included a recommendation to explore the connections between materials facilities’ data reporting and the EPR scheme, and concluded that Defra would consider amending the regulations. These amendments will improve the quality and quantity of packaging waste data that materials facilities are required to collect, record and report. In turn, this will support fair and accurate cost assessments and payments through the EPR scheme.
I now turn to the details of this instrument. These amendments to the regulations will introduce enhanced sampling, recording and reporting requirements for materials facilities and increase the type of facilities in scope of the regulations. Materials facilities will be in scope of the amended regulations if they receive and manage at least 1,000 tonnes of household or household-type material a year for the primary purpose of reuse and recycling. The sampling requirements will include a higher input sampling frequency and more material categories for facilities to sample and report against. Materials facilities will also need to separately measure, record and report against packaging and deposit return scheme material proportions. This data will support packaging composition calculations or exemptions under EPR. The enhanced recording and reporting requirements will require materials facilities to provide more information on waste suppliers and samples taken, as well as to report all raw data to regulators to support improved analysis.
To give an example of this in practice, my local council, West Berkshire, contracts Veolia, a waste management company, to perform household waste collections. When a Veolia truck picks up household waste and delivers
it to a materials facility for reuse and recycling, that facility will sample the waste so that we know how much of it is EPR packaging material and how much is newspapers and magazines, deposit return containers, contamination or other non-packaging materials. The waste collected by Veolia from neighbouring councils or from its own commercial contracts with businesses would be sampled separately. This will help ensure that the EPR payments to my local council reflect the quality and quantity of packaging materials collected from households. This will provide valuable new information to help my local council optimise waste collection operations and, through EPR payments, provide a new means to incentivise councils to improve performance and ensure that producers get good value for money.
We consulted industry through the 2021 EPR consultation and continue to engage with the waste sector on these new legislative requirements and the implementation of the wider collection and packaging waste reforms. We have also published guidance on these requirements and will work closely with the Environment Agency to support facilities in preparing to meet the new requirements over the next year.
The Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 detail the regulatory functions available in monitoring and enforcing these regulations. These amending regulations apply to England and Wales only; Scotland and Northern Ireland are aligned in our policy intent regarding bringing in enhanced materials facility sampling requirements and waste data reporting to support EPR. My officials have worked closely at an official level with the relevant departments in the devolved Administrations in the development of this legislation.
These measures will be crucial for providing a mechanism to obtain the enhanced data on packaging and waste management services needed to achieve the effective implementation of EPR and realise the associated environmental benefits. I commend these draft regulations to the Committee. I beg to move.
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