My Lords, I thank everyone for their kind words about my introductory speech. I thank the Minister for his detailed response. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that I also worked on the Medicines and Medical Devices Act. Well done for picking up that cross-reference, because my understanding was that tampons, pads and reusable products were not medical devices under that Act. There is a complication there that we need to address.
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I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, for clearly listening so closely and taking to heart and to person what I said. Perhaps we can look forward to having a future discussion on that subject.
I was writing down what the Minister said in his response. I appreciate the intentions and the Government’s concerns here, but the words I kept writing down were “The Government have powers to regulate”, “We have a voluntary agreement in textiles 2030” and “The producer-pays principle is hoped to incentivise companies to improve their behaviour”. What we are talking about here is things that can happen, might happen and that the Government have the power to act on. What we do not have in legislation is a direction to the Government to act.