Plastic, mainly plastic bags and bottles, is estimated to account for more than 70% of the total number of marine debris in European seas. The charge will focus on plastic bags as this is a targeted, proportionate approach to the problem of carrier bag distribution and littering.

Paper bags make up less than 0.1% of carrier bags distributed in the UK by the seven major supermarket retailers. Overall, paper bags make up a very small proportion of total carrier bag numbers, the vast majority of which are single-use plastic bags.

Plastic carrier bags take the longest to degrade in the natural environment, therefore decomposition in the marine environment will be one of the considerations when setting a standard for a biodegradable plastic bag exempt from the charge.

The calculation of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from paper bags is available in the 2011 research report “Life cycle assessment of supermarket carrier bags”, which was commissioned and funded by the Environment Agency. This forms part of the evidence base for the impact assessment that will be available in due course. I have placed a copy of the report in the Library of the House.

According to records held by the Department’s major stationery suppliers, the Department has spent the following amounts on paper in each of the last five years.

In the last five years, the Department has held contracts with Office Depot and Banner for the supply of paper. The amounts in the above table relate to spend on paper with these suppliers only. The CPS is a devolved organisation and it is possible that additional paper outside of these contracts has been purchased. To obtain details of such purchases would involve the manual checking of individual invoices and would incur a disproportionate cost.

Expenditure in 2010 increased due to the merger of the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office with the CPS.

275 copies of the House of Lords Annual Report 2012-13 were printed, at a total cost of £3,703.35. This figure includes the costs of the design, origination, printing and finishing. There were no other production costs other than staff time and, as the House does not allocate staff costs to specific projects, it is not possible to estimate the cost of staff time associated with producing the Annual Report.

If the same number of copies of the Annual Report had been printed on the quality of paper used for the Official Report, the cost would have been £3,353.35. However, the lower grade paper is not suited to printing graphs or charts and so the overall quality of the product would have been substantially poorer.