Written question asked by Lord Alton of Liverpool (Liberal Democrat), in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 4 June 1996. It was answered by James Clappison (Conservative) on Tuesday, 4 June 1996 on behalf of the Department of the Environment.

Dept of the Environment

Question: What representations he has received about the provision of a conscience clause in the draft regulations, now being prepared by his Department, under the Environment Act 1995, concerning the shared legal obligations and recovery in recycling of packaging waste.

Answer: Mr. Alton: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received about the provision of a conscience clause in the draft regulations, now being prepared by his Department, under the Environment Act 1995, concerning the shared legal obligations and recovery in recycling of packaging waste; and if he will make a statement.[30646] Mr. Clappison: I and colleagues are fully aware of concerns that the regulations which we are presently preparing on producer responsibility for packaging waste should not compel businesses to join a scheme if, for whatever reason, they do not wish to do so. I can offer a full reassurance on this matter. There will be two routes for businesses obligated under the regulations to discharge their obligation. They will be free to discharge it alone, or by joining a collective scheme. One of the central provisions of the enabling legislation was that the individual route should be a valid option for an individual business and tGET /undercon.gif HTTP/1.0 If-Modified-Since: Wednesday, 07-Aug-96 10:39:27 GMT; length=1133 Referer: http://hcl1.hclibrary.parliament.uk/Subject.htm Connection: Keep-Alive User-Agent: Mozilla/2.0 (Win16; I) Pragma: no-cache Host: hcl1.hclibrary.parliament.uk Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg his will be fully reflected in the regulations. This should become clear when the draft regulations are issued for consultation.

Secondary information