Oral answer to question provided on Thursday, 2 November 2006 in the House of Lords, by Lord Rooker (Labour).

Plastic Bags

Answer: My Lords, possibly to try to get as much voluntary action as possible. The issue of packaging is almost the same as that of plastic bags. If they are made from fossil materials, they are a problem for the environment. It is possible to make such packaging and bags from non-fossil materials. We can grow the materials to make such products, and that actually helps the environment.

This is an answer to the Oral question asked on Thursday, 2 November 2006 by Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (Liberal Democrat).

Question: My Lords, does the Minister agree that just stopping the use of plastic bags is important and that cloth bags or baskets are a better option, as he suggested last time? However, the Government chose to implement the Food Industry Sustainability Strategy—which would have answered a lot of these problems, including those of packaging—only as a voluntary strategy although the industry was encouraging them to make it mandatory. Why did they resist that?

Secondary information