The government has defended its decision to exclude glass from deposit return schemes in England and Northern Ireland, after a Conservative MP described the move as a “betrayal” of its manifesto for the environment.
A debate in parliament last week saw Conservative MPs clash over the u-turn, announced by Defra in April, despite Scotland and Wales both pressing ahead with plans for an “all-in” system including glass containers.
The row comes with the government due to publish a consultation response on its final DRS plans in the next few days.
Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering, accused ministers of pandering to lobbying from the glass industry.
“Quite simply, its exclusion would be a potential catastrophe for our natural spaces as we all look to stem the tide of drink container pollution,” he said.
“It also represents a direct betrayal of a promise made by the Conservative party to voters at the most recent general election, when we said in our manifesto that we would introduce a deposit return scheme for both plastic and glass drink containers.”
Hollobone also slammed a Treasury plan to charge VAT on the 20p deposits for DRS, with The Grocer having revealed the move could cost companies tens of millions.
“If the customer does not return the drinks container that they buy, the producer will receive only 17p back instead of the full 20p,” he said.
“The government will take the remaining 3p in VAT. If we factor in the estimated 28 billion containers on the UK market, that could mean as much as £185m lost from the scheme through unredeemed deposits.”
The British Soft Drinks Association (BSDA) has released a new poll showing more than two-thirds (68%) of consumers were less likely to take part in a deposit return scheme if they thought it was being used to raise taxes.
“A situation where the government ends up profiting from the failure of its own deposit return scheme is utterly outrageous,” said BSDA director general Gavin Partington. “What’s more, VAT being added to the deposit fee effectively imposes a stealth tax on drinks producers, backing industry into a corner and creating the very real scenario of price rises. Is that what this government wants, to punish hard-up consumers yet more?
“Along with the British public, we are pleading with the government to reverse its ludicrous decision to apply VAT to the deposit fee before it’s too late.”
Environment minister Jo Churchill said Defra had held talks with the Treasury, suggesting a u-turn on VAT could still happen.
However, she defended the plans not to include glass.
“Excluding glass offers us an opportunity to look at how we incentivise reusable schemes for glass,” she said. “Those containers that are not within the deposit return scheme are within the extended producer responsibility scheme, so exclusion does not in any way mean that we are not making policy to improve the reuse, recycling and resource efficiency of those things.”
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