5. Statement by the Minister for Environment: The Environment in Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:04 pm on 17 April 2018.

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Photo of Mr Simon Thomas Mr Simon Thomas Plaid Cymru 5:04, 17 April 2018

A final point that the Minister has dealt with is the needs of a resource-efficient economy, on which I share her objectives, certainly. We do need to see the producer responsibility report as soon as possible. We need to understand, as well, how the Government is now going to react to the new infrastructure, if you like, around a deposit-return scheme. We've discussed the possibilities or feasibilities in Wales. We really are beyond that now; we have a UK-wide proposal. The Scottish Government, interestingly, has said that it wants to host, or see whether it can join with ourselves and other Governments to have, a summit on deposit-return so we can agree what a common UK framework is, and I'd really like to know today from the Minister whether she will respond to that invitation from Roseanna Cunningham and the Scottish Government and be part of a UK-wide summit to discuss this.

When it comes to plastics, of course, we're in the completely idiotic position that today we drink water from plastic bottles that contains plastic from previous plastic bottles. When you get to that situation, we really need to know that—something needs to be done. Though it's talked about again in this statement, the opportunity was missed to have a levy on single-use plastics in Wales as our innovative first tax, and now we need to move on, certainly, if we're not going to have that levy, into something that really addresses a deposit-return scheme, and builds on our success in recycling. Because the Minister will be aware that though we recycle something like 70 per cent of plastic bottles, those are only the 70 per cent that reach the recycling waste stream. A lot of them are simply disposed of either as rubbish or even on the streets or whatever—they may be in the bin, but they're not being recycled. So, the 70 per cent is a bit of a misleading target.

The final thing that I'd like to ask her is: she has talked in this statement about legislation and seeing the legislation opportunities—when does she see the opportunity arising for legislation that was talked about before Easter around preserving our European protections as we leave the European Union? When does she see that happening? And she also talked before Easter, only a month ago, about the potential for legislation for national parks around their use of natural resources. So, when does she see the opportunity for legislation on that matter?