A Deposit-return Scheme for Drink Containers

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:02 pm on 22 June 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:02, 22 June 2021

I thank Mike Hedges for that. The tradition in Glyncollen school of campaigning on these matters is a very real one. I remember a question on the floor of the Senedd here about the work that pupils in the school were doing to make sure that milk was supplied to the school in a reusable format, rather than in cartons that were thrown away. So, many congratulations for their continued interest in it. Had they been brought up in Carmarthen rather than Swansea, Llywydd, they would have been drinking Tovali Special rather than Corona pop. But the general point that Mike Hedges raised—and I think it was an echo of something that Janet Finch-Saunders said—is that we would like to see a UK scheme, because we think that that will work better for people here in Wales. It's easier for consumers, of course—a long and porous border, people shopping and living on both sides of it, an influx of people into Wales, during the summer months particularly. We want people to have a single system that they can easily understand. There is a fraud possibility if you have different systems on either side of the border, and a single system would help to eliminate that. And it would have lower implementation costs for businesses as well. For all of those reasons, we hope that the UK Government, who, a bit to our surprise and slightly at the last minute, put into their consultation, instead of the all-in scheme that we would like to see, an on-the-go scheme—Scotland are already committed to an all-in scheme; that is definitely our preference. We hope the UK Government will settle for that as well, as we originally believed would be the case, and then we will be able to have the UK-wide arrangements that Mike Hedges I think quite rightly advocates.