Sarah Champion
MP for Rotherham · Labour · United Kingdom
“Today is a really good day. I have been in this Chamber for more than a decade, watching my industry being allowed to wither on the vine. Secretary of State, a huge thank you to you for understanding the potential in the Rotherham, Brinsworth, and Stocksbridge sites, which work hand in hand.”
“While they are grateful to be furloughed, they want to be working, and that means that they need to be fit the day that he says we can open the doors. They want to be ready to go. Can he also say a little about product accreditation? Literally every week, I have people from around the country calling in, trying to purchase steel.”
“I am still not giving way. The two clinicians, followed by the panel, will ensure that the person is of sound mind, and will make sure that this is something that they want to do. A lot of time has been taken up debating the issue of coercive control. I defer to my amazing hon.”
“I have watched the assisted dying debate for many years, since it started in Oregon. Many countries across the world now have assisted dying, including some of our Crown dependencies, and I am pleased that this Bill builds on the good and rejects the bad that can be seen.”
“Currently, the only choices available are these: if people have a lot of money and are physically able, they can go to Dignitas; otherwise, as was so powerfully and emotionally outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove), they can take their own life.”
“The end-of-life care it provides is absolutely incredible, but everything everybody has said about it being a postcode lottery is true. It depends on whether a facility is in your area, has space, and has funding. We need more funding, and we need universal palliative care, but that is not what this debate is about.”
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“I really welcome the statement and all the commitment that the Government are giving to nature. I know that the 30 by 30 plan is focused just on land, with the justification being that 40% of our waters are marine protected areas, but the Joint Nature Conservation Committee has said that less than 1% of our MPAs are assessed as being truly protected. Will the Minister please tell us when she will focus the next plan on marine protection, which one hopes would include a ban on bottom trawling?”
“As Chair of the International Development Committee, I wrote to the Home Office on this matter on 17 June as the sector was facing a terrifying landscape of legal uncertainty. Under the original drafting of the new offences, particularly on assisting or obtaining material benefit from a designated body, humanitarian actors were at risk. In conflict zones, where state-linked or designated actors hold territorial control, neutral humanitarian organisations are often required to engage in dangerous circumstances. That sometimes means that they must negotiate access, pay routine local utilities or permits, or provide medical care to all sides working in accordance with international humanitarian law. Under the Bill, humanitarian workers could have been prosecuted.”
“I rise to welcome Lords amendments 1 to 6 and to support the progress being made regarding the implications of this Bill on the vital work of the humanitarian sector. I place on record my thanks to Baroness Northover, Lord Alton, Lord Anderson, Baroness Helic and Baroness D’Souza for all their work in the other place. I would also like to pay credit to the courageous NGOs operating on the frontlines of global crises, who I know are following the progress of this Bill carefully to understand how it might impact on their work. With them in mind, I would like to express my regret that measures covering the humanitarian sector do not go further to provide robust, full legal protections.”
“Can the Minister give some assurance that, in the guidance, we will be able to see that in black and white, so that the defence is laid out for all to see?”
“It is right that the Government acknowledge that Israel’s presence in Palestine is illegal under international law, but for two years they have not responded to the ICJ’s advisory ruling that Israel’s actions towards Palestinians in the west bank may constitute forcible transfer. The Israeli Government expressly back the E1 scheme, which will necessarily displace tens of thousands of Palestinians and dissect the west bank. Netanyahu said of the plan: “We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us.” The UK’s current situation is unsustainable. Will the Minister acknowledge the Israeli Government’s role in the forcible transfer of Palestinians in the west bank and act accordingly with a full range of diplomatic interventions?”
“Residents of Catcliffe and Treeton in my constituency have suffered two devastating floods in the last decade or so. That means that, even if people are eligible for insurance from Flood Re, it is extremely expensive, and in some cases prohibitive. Can the Minister reassure us that that will not apply to, in particular, low-income householders, and that they will be able to obtain insurance? Let me finally put on record my gratitude to the volunteer flood wardens who, every time it rains, try to keep their communities safe.”
“I am very grateful that you have granted tonight’s debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and that we have so much time to discuss this important issue. Packaging extended producer responsibility, which I will call EPR, is a policy that genuinely has a laudable goal: the move towards a circular economy, in which recycling is the norm, waste is minimised and we shift away from environmentally harmful materials such as plastic—something that the House can get behind. If done right, EPR could deliver just that, but the reality of the scheme now being implemented by the Minister is altogether different. We are seeing jobs being lost, British businesses losing contracts and investment, an increase in carbon-intensive glass being imported and, ultimately, producers switching from infinitely recyclable materials to plastic.”
“I say to the Minister that I want Beatson Clark to thrive for another 275 years, but the reality is that the EPR is placing that future at risk.”
“I will indeed be talking about the pub industry. I thank all the Members who have been campaigning so hard on this particular point for the last two years. The hon. Member will need to read the speech afterwards—it will be brilliant. We will try to protect our hospitality industry. While this debate is not focused on a single material, I must declare a particular interest in glass. Next month, I will be really proud to attend an event marking the 275th anniversary of the founding of Beatson Clark. Since the earliest days of the industrial revolution, it has been manufacturing glass in my Rotherham constituency, providing generations of skilled, well-paid jobs to my constituents. Throughout world wars, economic decline, depression and indeed renewal, it has endured, helping to drive our regional economy.”
“I completely agree. Trying to level the playing field on this EPR measure is the one thing that I hope the Minister will give us comfort on today. Our hospitality industry is really suffering. More generally, I worry where the remaining places of community are in our towns, cities and villages. If we are not protecting the ones we have—the few we have—it is going to be a very dark future. Let me now get back to glass.”
“We all support the principle underpinning the EPR—that those placing packaging on the market should pay towards its collection—but, as Members have said, the weight-based fee structure that the Government have chosen to utilise disproportionately penalises glass, making glass significantly more expensive per unit than lighter, less sustainable alternatives like plastic.”
“As I said, I think the principles of the scheme are laudable. What frustrates me is that it is disincentivising using renewable materials, which in the long term are much cheaper. Instead, it is driving businesses to plastics, which have a very real cost on our environment as well as on our pockets. The Minister needs to do anything she can to mitigate that risk, but I hope this debate will grant her the opportunity to do so in a fair and equitable way. Glass supports a circular economy. It underpins supply chains across food, drink and pharmaceuticals.”
“By choosing to base fees on weight rather than on units, which they could have done, the Government are pushing businesses towards switching to a cheaper, less recyclable and much more environmentally harmful packaging. The industry has been told by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that the modulation of fees will save glass, but let us be honest: this is too little, too late. Why not get the scheme right at the beginning, rather than trying to modify it later?”
“I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s points. The methodology throughout—I will come on to it later—has been flawed, if not straight wrong in some cases. I would much rather that the research he is talking about—on the methodology—was done years in advance, rather than on the hoof as seems to be happening now. The Government seem to be suggesting that they will retrospectively look at what is happening and make adjustments, but unfortunately for a business and its bottom line, it is not possible to retrospectively charge people for something the Government choose to modify. Let me state one inescapable fact. Glass is heavier than plastic—it simply is.”
“Let us be honest: widescale reuse systems in the UK will take significant buy-in from the whole supply chain and will take at least a decade to become a reality, by which point—let me also be honest again—we will not have a glass manufacturing sector in the UK to supply the reusable glass packaging. The signal that the Government are giving to businesses is clear: switch away from glass right now. The result? We are seeing an evident and accelerated shift away from UK-made glass towards both cheaper imports, which now account for—I am really surprised by this—14% of the market, and increasingly towards plastic.”
“My hon. Friend makes a point that I was not aware of. I have been in contact with loads of different industries, but not that particular one. It seems as though it is the same sort of double payment that hospitality is facing. That absolutely needs to be addressed. Businesses have also been told that they need to move towards reuse systems. I am sure that both the points we are raising will be mentioned by the Minister in her response. It is true that glass is the perfect material to reuse, but it is not within the power of the glass manufacturing sector to force producers to move to use reusable bottles.”
“Decisions about whether to rebuild or reinvest are already being delayed or cancelled, meaning hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in the UK is already being lost. When production shifts overseas and capacity is lost, it is almost impossible to rebuild. I am not talking about short-term disruption. I am talking about permanent industrial decline. If left unchecked, the policy will not just reshape the packaging market; it will hollow out an entire industry. With that decline, as my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) said, comes something even more serious: job losses.”
“I absolutely support what my hon. Friend says. GMB and Beatson Clark have been fantastic on this issue, as have other unions. We should never forget the human impact of the debates that we have in this Chamber. When we talk about numbers, percentages and import tariffs, we forget that it is the people making the products who are suffering the most and facing the uncertainty. A survey conducted by British Glass found that nearly half of businesses say that they have already switched away from glass, or plan to do so, due to EPR fees. Once those decisions are made, and once investment is committed to new packaging formats, they are unlikely to be reversed. Glass manufacturing is not easily replaced. Furnaces represent long-term capital investment—often hundreds of millions of pounds.”
“Similar anomalies are observed with other EPR cost categories, including sorting, residual collection and handling and disposal overheads. Costs for managing FBC should be similar to those for paper and board, yet are wildly disproportionate. Industry groups believe that that results from DEFRA seeming to have used data for another, wholly distinct type of FBC—beverage cartons—in its FBC fee calculation. Such elementary errors risk undermining the EPR’s core objectives. The Alliance for Fibre-Based Packaging has already reported evidence that long-standing shifts away from plastic towards more sustainable alternatives are slowing and, in some cases, reversing altogether.”
“It produces a range of fibre-based packaging for household goods, supplying major UK retailers with sustainable and innovative products, which are largely made from renewable or recyclable raw materials. However, like glass, they face unfairly high fees on the basis of being a heavier than their plastic equivalents. That distortion is even greater for fibre-based composite packaging. Industry groups have identified what appear to be substantial errors in the methodology used for DEFRA’s EPR fee calculations for fibre-based packaging. By way of example, in the EPR fee cost breakdown, the cost of FBC collection is more than twice that of paper and board, yet it is collected for recycling with paper and board. How can the costs to local authorities be so radically different?”
“Since I first raised these issues nearly two years ago, I have been contacted by a range of businesses and industry groups, including: UK Hospitality, the British Beer and Pub Association, the UK Spirits Alliance, the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates, O-I Glass, the Scotch Whisky Association, the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, GMB, Unite, AB InBev, the all-party parliamentary beer group, the APPG on packaging in the circular economy, the Packaging Federation, Teva Pharmaceuticals, British Glass, and the Campaign for Real Ale. Their concerns are strikingly similar. The EPR is not just affecting glass. Across the packaging sector, businesses are struggling in the face of this poorly designed, poorly implemented policy. Graphic Packaging International employs 57 people in my constituency, and upwards of 1,700 across the UK.”
“That is absolutely my concern. People do not talk about the impact on the supply chain. We already know that at least 350 jobs—more than 5% of the direct workforce—have been lost so far, but we do not know about the impact on the supply chains and associated businesses. These are not abstract numbers; these are well-paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs, concentrated in industrial communities like mine, where, to be honest, such opportunities are at a real premium.”
“Fee modulation remains unclear, and the system allows for retrospective fee calculation, potentially creating exposure to unplanned costs late in the financial cycle.”
“The Minister will no doubt be familiar with Belu, which supplies water for parliamentary catering—indeed, Belu water bottles are in front of us on the Table right now. Belu donates 100% of its net profits to WaterAid, which supports clean water, sanitation and hygiene programmes around the world. However, while charities are rightly exempt from EPR fees, no such exemption exists for social enterprises, which are treated exactly the same as for-profit companies. The result for Belu is £1.1 million of EPR costs over the next two years—money that would otherwise be donated to WaterAid. The EPR system adds complexity and uncertainty for businesses. Baseline fees were not finalised until very shortly before liability for EPR was due to begin.”
“DEFRA has long been aware of this anomaly—I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for his debate on it—but nothing has been done to address it. Packaging EPR fees will disproportionately affect generic medicines, where high-volume, low-margin products risk becoming commercially unviable, increasing the likelihood of supply disruption, medicine withdrawal from the UK and higher costs to the NHS. Medicines manufacturers have minimal flexibility to redesign packaging, because primary packaging is tightly regulated by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The Government’s one-size-fits-all approach is revealed again when we consider social enterprises.”
“I think it is infinitely more than disappointing, but I will follow the hon. Member’s parliamentary language: it is hugely frustrating. Colleagues here are raising the real, human costs of that. Something needs to change, and I do not want that change to be us losing our hospitality and renewable packaging industries. Hospitality businesses have faced similarly unfathomable logic from DEFRA. EPR fees are meant to offset the cost to local authorities of handling and recycling waste. Hospitality businesses’ waste is not collected through public collections, but through commercial waste removal contracts. Yet perversely, the annual burden to British pubs for EPR fees has been estimated by the British Beer and Pub Association to be £50 million. Hospitality businesses are, in effect, being told to pay for the same thing twice.”
“Businesses want to play their part in a circular economy, but the current system is not working; it is driving the wrong behaviours, undermining UK businesses, and putting jobs, investment and regional growth at risk. If we continue to get this wrong, the consequences will not be measured in tonnes or targets; they will be measured in job losses, lost industries and lost opportunities for the communities, like mine, that need them most. I urge the Minister today at the Dispatch Box to put this scheme back on track.”
“The Minister has the opportunity today to stabilise demand, prevent further switching away from glass, protect jobs and investment, and buy time to assess properly the real-world impacts of her policy. Crucially, it would allow the Government to realign the policy with their own original environmental and economic objectives. More broadly, the Government must make sure that the EPR protects UK jobs and investment, that incentives towards less sustainable products are removed, that fees reflect real-world costs, and that businesses have the clarity they need to plan and invest for the future. Across the many sectors that have raised concerns about the EPR, support for its core principle has been universal.”
“On the contrary, this failed policy will cost the UK economy and that cost will be substantial. I have raised these issues time and again, as have other Members. I have had meetings with Secretaries of State, Ministers and civil servants, and I have written, led debates and asked questions, all to no avail. This situation demands urgent action now, not a review in a year’s time. It requires not minor adjustments but immediate intervention to sort out this deeply flawed policy. The glass industry has been clear in its ask: a targeted, time-limited reduction in the glass EPR fees of at least 75%. This is not about abandoning the policy or doing a U-turn; it is about fixing it.”
“The figures are not based on official calculations and, critically, the jobs referenced are not comparable to those being lost. They are more likely to be lower-skilled, lower-paid roles in waste management, often at entirely different locations. These mythical jobs will not deliver the same economic value, will not support exports, and will not provide the same level of regional resilience. I must be very clear: we cannot replace high-skilled manufacturing jobs with lower-value roles and then claim an economic net gain. That is not growth; that is managed decline. The EPR is also adding significant inflationary pressures that will be reflected in consumer prices. Producers expect to pass on the vast majority of EPR costs, often over 95%, to the end user. The upshot is that the EPR will not represent a boon to the public purse.”
“I completely agree with the hon. Member’s points, because I agree with the polluter pays principle—I believe that is at the heart of this issue—but the people who are paying are our workers, our hospitality businesses and the poorest people in the world who would have been getting £1 million. They are the people paying, not the polluters, because this policy is perversely driving businesses to using plastic, which surely is the exact opposite of what it should be trying to do. With all of that in mind, it is hard to escape the conclusion that this is a poorly designed and implemented policy which is having a severe negative impact on British businesses. Despite these concerns, DEFRA has argued that the EPR will in fact create jobs, but that claim simply does not stand up to scrutiny.”
“Can the Minister tell us whether that will be the 75% discount that the glass industry is asking for? Does she know what the falling rates will be, please?”
“It is reassuring that we are going to have the consultation. Would it not have been much better to have had it before the scheme was implemented? The Minister mentioned a meeting with my constituency business, Beatson Clark. That meeting only happened because I urged the previous Secretary of State and the Minister to make it happen, and I assume that the other examples of meetings that have taken place, or not, have been at the insistence of MPs. Why was that work not done before the scheme was rolled out?”
“Perhaps the hon. Member was distracted when I mentioned the issue of me holding a roundtable with all these industries on this very issue, but I am happy to meet colleagues from across the House on these issues. I explained in the point that he perhaps missed that it is tricky because it has to be regulatable—we have to ensure that the regulator can verify what would happen. Of course, it is a complex micro-econometric model. As soon as fees are reduced in one area, they go up in another area. That is the bottom line on all this.”
“I hope that this will set a precedent as the situation with Speciality Steel develops and that they will take similarly decisive action there, should it prove necessary. With the right support, British steel can—and should—play an ever greater role in our economy, in infrastructure projects and, crucially, in our national security. I know that steelworkers in Rotherham will be relieved to have a Government who are so clearly on their side—on the side of good jobs and a dynamic economy—and, most importantly, a Government who back British steel.”
“I have raised with the Government a number of instances in which trade measures have been introduced on products not currently produced in the UK, or where UK production and capacity is far below demand. I urge Ministers to act to ensure that those businesses are not impacted unfairly and that trade measures conform to the realities of the UK market; to do otherwise risks inadvertently harming the very industries and communities that the Government seek to defend. While the Bill will not have a direct impact on steel production in Rotherham, it does send an important signal. I am proud that the Government are taking resolute action to ensure that they have the necessary tools at their disposal to safeguard the future of British Steel in Scunthorpe.”
“Time and again, I and other steel MPs in particular have warned that a failure to tackle cheap, often state-subsidised and heavily polluting imports would destroy any attempt to increase domestic production. Without a level playing field, British steel cannot hope to compete. It is therefore welcome that the Government have acted to protect UK steel producers from unfair competition through a range of new trade measures, quotas and tariffs. While that is good news for steel producers, we do need to get the details right. I thank hon. Members on both sides of the Committee for raising specific examples of that. Alongside steel producers, Rotherham hosts a large number of steel stockholders and downstream businesses.”
“The Minister’s ambition for steel’s renaissance could also be a rebirth for local businesses and local communities, but that requires investment, foresight and commitment. The Government’s steel strategy sets out a strategic vision for the industry and, crucially, delivers real and profound change for the sector as a whole. With £2.5 billion of investment in the sector and an ambitious but achievable target of 50% of the steel used in Britain to be produced here, the strategy is a blueprint for a revitalised domestic steel industry; it is one that has been roundly welcomed by the sector. Perhaps most importantly, the strategy sets out a new approach to steel imports.”
“Speciality Steel, which is based in Rotherham—and Stocksbridge—should be a crown jewel in our economy, but it has been allowed to lurch from crisis to crisis, choked of investment and left at the mercy of unscrupulous ownership, unfair competition and a lack of vision. The plants currently stand still, shuttered amid the fallout of Liberty’s collapse. The workers are furloughed and uncertain about what their futures hold. I would be grateful if the Minister could update the Committee on the current state of the sale, which is now in its final stages. My concern is not limited to Speciality Steel. Steel in Rotherham is at the centre of our local economy, and the crisis has had a substantial impact up and down the supply chain.”
“As you know, Madam Chair, I have been urging successive Governments for over a decade to back the British steel industry, so it is genuinely a pleasure to be here today as the Government do just that. I support this historic Bill. Steel is essential for the UK’s economy. It supports thousands of well-paid, skilled jobs and plays a crucial role in ensuring Britain’s security, particularly in an ever more volatile and uncertain world. Yet for years the industry has been allowed to wither. Production has fallen and plants have been lost—and with them jobs, capability and capacity. We simply cannot afford to allow this precipitous decline to go on any longer. Rotherham is a steel town. It has seen the consequences of past Governments’ neglect up close.”
“Does the Minister share my concern and confusion about the comments made by the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart)? I was not sure if he was supporting the nationalisation of British Steel but thought that there was not enough money or that there was too much money. However, he seemed to support the fact that in Europe, the Government subsidise electricity, and I felt that he wanted that to happen here. For all the reasons that Members have said, I just want a really strong and secure steel industry in this country.”
“The Minister is being very generous with his time. I want to take him back to the issue of Speciality Steel, because this is not just about the business itself—it is also about the supply chain. For example, the steel that is made in my constituency goes into Formula 1 cars and almost every plane in the sky. I think many hon. Members need to understand the consequential impact of saving not only British Steel, but all of our steel industry, on our whole economy and on global industries.”
“I thank the hon. Member for the reasoned caveats that he lays out, but in the case of Rotherham, the gangs that were grooming and abusing young children in my constituency were predominantly of Pakistani heritage. That mattered because, had we recognised it early on, we might have been able to disrupt and prevent some of the abuse. In specific cases, we need this data and we need to be transparent. Sometimes all the caveats in the world just dilute what should be a laser focus on protecting children.”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for referring to the Jay report on Rotherham. She will be aware that the frontline staff were gathering that data; management and the upper echelons were blocking it. She is absolutely right to ask why that happened, and what the consequences were—I put it to her that there were not many.”
“Does the hon. Member share my frustration that the petition did not include victims and survivors? I know from my experience that the vast majority are white British girls, but a particular sect of Sikh girls is also being very aggressively targeted. It would be good to include them so that the police can do more protection work.”
“Specifically on the single patient record, the explanatory notes say that it will “allow patient information to be shared with patients and their relevant health and social care providers (such as GPs, hospital doctors, social care workers and others involved in their direct care)”. By my maths, that is probably a couple of million people, so could the Secretary of State please talk about how safeguards will be implemented, particularly for children’s care data?”
“Lebanon’s humanitarian flash fund secured less than a third of the money that was required. Some 20% of the Lebanese population is currently displaced, and 40,000 housing units have been destroyed. Lebanon is on the brink of economic collapse and social tensions are rising. I thank the Foreign Secretary for the humanitarian support sent to date, including cash transfers, but I ask her to do more. We need to press for a real ceasefire, provide practical support to Lebanon’s armed forces, help the state to tackle negative influences that are trying to undermine its sovereignty and, finally, vigorously oppose the illegal expansion of Israel’s buffer zone in south Lebanon.”
“There are 61 conflicts raging around the world, and I have never known international diplomatic relationships to be more fractured. The FCDO is pushing through 40% cuts of aid and 25% cuts of staff, all under the watch of the permanent secretary, so can I ask the Prime Minister what risk assessment was carried out before he was removed?”
“I welcome this Bill and this Government’s laser focus on supporting victims and survivors, which has been lacking in our courts system for a very long time. I hear what the Minister says about court transcripts. It is incredibly important for the victims and survivors I know to have a physical copy of sentencing remarks so that they can process them in their own time, so I am confused about why she is not accepting Lords amendments 1 and 3 at this point.”
“I do not really have a question because I have not been given the information, but I say to the Foreign Secretary that these cuts do not aid our defence—they make the whole world more vulnerable. Can I please ask that as we go forward, she listens to the ICAI report about transparency, where we are prioritising money and its impact, rather than just chasing the bottom line?”