A few days ago, the Environmental Audit Committee announced an inquiry into the Government’s “A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment”
Released in the first few weeks of 2018, the Government’s 25 year plan met with a muted response from many industry figures, including myself, for not outlining tangible measures for tackling the big environmental issues affecting this generation.
The plan effectively kicked the can down the road by suggesting policies will be included in the Resources and Waste Strategy due to be released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) later this year.
The EAC’s inquiry will “examine key decisions around the Plan’s overall ambition and approach” to ensure that “current targets aren’t dropped or missed, that legal protections are not weakened, and Government departments aren’t let off the hook”.
Specific questions will include:
- To what extent does the Plan set a sufficiently ambitious agenda across government?
- To what extent will the government’s proposals for reporting on the Plan allow for proper scrutiny of its performance?
- Are the commitments to legislative action in the Plan sufficient to ensure it will endure beyond the current Parliament?
- To what extent does the Plan set out effective delivery mechanisms to ensure Defra, other government departments and public bodies have the resources and responsibilities to meet it?
It is clear the EAC wants help from industry experts to understand whether the plan is helpful in moving the country forward, especially with the potential policy void caused by Brexit. The call for written evidence is likely to be following by an oral evidence session and a hearing with Government.
As Ecosurety was recently mentioned at an EAC session in relation to the lack of plastic reprocessing capacity in the UK, we will be responding to the inquiry as an expert in producer compliance before it closes at 5pm on 28 February 2018.
You can find out more about the inquiry here and you can submit evidence by following this link.
Robbie Staniforth
Innovation and Policy Director
Robbie is innovation and policy director at Ecosurety. Having spent years building an intimate understanding of the industry’s policies and politics, he uses this knowledge to help shape new legislation and oversees Ecosurety’s growing portfolio of cross-industry innovation projects including Podback and the Flexible Plastic Fund. He has worked closely with Defra during the most recent packaging consultations, outlining the impacts and required transitional arrangements of the UK’s new EPR system and is a member of the government’s Advisory Committee on Packaging (ACP). He is also a spokesperson for the company and regularly uses his influence to communicate the importance of environmental responsibility to external stakeholders.
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