Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2008

I certainly welcome the Minister’s confirmation of the increased percentage of recycling, rising from 30 to 63 per cent, which marks an important improvement over quite a long period, but still leaves room to make further progress. It shows how bad we were at recycling in the past, and how much we are mending our reputation. On consultation with the European Union, how certain are we that under the Commission’s purview of the implementation of these directives this will be an acceptable new definition? When reading through the Explanatory Notes to the 2007 regulations, I was slightly perturbed by paragraph 7.5, which gives the Environment Agency more discretion on the sound evidence that exported packaging waste will be reprocessed under conditions that are broadly equivalent to EC requirements. The regulations seem to follow that. It is almost a way of changing the rules in order to meet the target, and I am concerned that there is a little of that flavour here. I would be particularly interested to hear from the Minister what proportion of these metals are being exported and what he believes is our potential to move that trade back for processing in this country. In terms of miles travelled in export and the resultant energy used and the carbon footprint, that would be a much better solution. Also, I would be interested to know about the destinations for this waste. Does it go to the other side of the globe or elsewhere in Europe? In his introduction to the regulations, the Minister used the phrase, ““market intelligence suggests””, which is a slightly inexact form of appraisal of where the waste is going. Is there an inspection regime to check where the waste is destined for? Given the rise in the value of recyclable metals, it is unlikely that they will be thrown away or disposed of in an inappropriate fashion. I am also interested in the Minister’s answers to the questions put to him by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who asked whether the goods are completely legitimate and what the Government are doing to ensure that only legal waste is being exported. However, I welcome the regulations and hope that this regime will prove to be a more effective way of dealing with recycling, but what I hope it is not is a means by which to change the rules just to meet the targets.