Helen Morgan

It is a privilege to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for securing this debate, and I congratulate her on opening it with such a comprehensive description of the issues that the industry is facing. I will start by declaring an interest, because my husband is the finance director of a wine merchant. I assure hon. Members that the impact of EPR on the wine industry has been described to me on many occasions—it is causing such great concern. North Shropshire has a number of excellent breweries, in addition to wine merchants, including Joule’s, Stonehouse and Salopian. In fact, Salopian had one of its excellent products, Shropshire Gold, in Strangers Bar two weeks ago—I hope that everybody had an opportunity to sample it. The pubs that the breweries supply are at the heart of our rural communities, and are fundamental to both village and market town life. The hospitality and drinks industry are facing a number of headwinds, and the EPR scheme threatens to have a devastating effect on them. We recognise that the principle of applying a levy to those products to encourage producers to reduce the amount of packaging, and unnecessary packaging, is absolutely sound. There are significant concerns with the EPR scheme, however, and it causes a significant issue for the industry.