Parliament
In the latest article covering questions and answers from the House of Commons, we ask our dear readers to throw a dart at cards with the words “disposables”, “Trading Standards”, and “For goodness sake, will nobody think of the children”
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by Dave Cross
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Stewart McDonald is the Scottish National Party for Glasgow South. He asked the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the forthcoming extended producer responsibility for packaging scheme on the amount of disposable vape packaging used, recycled and going to landfill in each of the next five years.
Rebecca Pow, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, replied: “We do not plan to make a specific assessment of the potential impact of the forthcoming Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging scheme on disposable vape packaging. However, we expect EPR to both reduce household packaging waste and improve its recyclability, thereby reducing the amount of packaging that is sent to landfill.”
North East Hampshire’s Conservative MP Ranil Jayawardena managed to come up with another topical disposable-related question, asking the Secretary of State for Education if she can conduct an assessment of the potential effectiveness of new vape detectors in helping schools prevent vaping on school grounds.
Education minister Nick Gibb clearly sensed the possibility of him making a promise to increase some funding to school. It’s not his job to fund detectors, “schools are required by law to have a behaviour policy that sets out what is expected of all pupils, including which items are banned from school premises.
“The Department trusts headteachers to develop tailored behaviour policies which reflect their school’s individual contexts and needs, and decide themselves the best methods to enforce these policies.”
Phew, well done Nick, you managed to avoid making anything approaching an answer to that question. Top politicking.
In the other place, Lord Moylan must have been asleep when an almost identical question was posed the previous week. He asked the Government what assessment has been made of the extent to which non-compliant vaping products are being sold to British consumers. Admittedly, he did extend it by wondering what conversations have been held with Trading Standards and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency about removing non-compliant products from sale.
Unsurprisingly, Lord Markham told him no assessment has been made. Things like that cost money after all, it’s far better to ignore the problem and hope it goes away – that’s what I do with the recycling bin and it works, the next time I look at it, it’s empty. Magic.
“However,” he said, “last year, we did provide funding to the Chartered Institute of Trading Standards to undertake a programme of test purchasing using young people aged under 18 years old. They found a non-compliance rate of 33% for under 18 year old sales and 25% of the products purchased were non-compliant and should not have been on sale in this country.”
This is the same Chartered Institute of Trading Standards that was touring media outlets last week to complain about over a decade of Government underfunding that has left them playing “Wack-a-mole” and unable to enforce current regulations.
Lord Markham went on to add: “The Government expects industry and vaping manufacturers to comply with the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 (TRPR) requiring notification to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) before a vape is sold in the United Kingdom. We hold regular conversations with the MHRA regarding the vaping notification system and to disseminate information about notified vapes to support local enforcement. Where there is evidence of non-compliance to TRPR we work with the relevant enforcement authorities to ensure that this is remedied.”
So, effectively continuing with an honour system where companies are expected to be good. Can’t see anything going wrong with that one. No siree.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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