Lord Blencathra (Con)

My Lords, I begin by commiserating with the Minister on the enormous amount of work she has to handle in this House. The Commons have four Ministers carving up the legislation between them, but the noble Baroness has to do the whole shooting match on her own—to use an unwoke term, probably. Last Monday we were into the details of free-range egg definitions in this Room, while on Thursday it was just a simple little thing like saving the world from destruction. Today it is one of the most difficult and complex instruments we have seen for some time, with 108 regulations and seven schedules—97 pages of controversial detail. In the last debate I heard my noble friend Lord Lilley complain that the heat pumps regulations ran to 32 pages—he should be so lucky. If I were to comment on or ask questions on every section and subsection that concerns me, it would be an hour-long speech—I will not do that to the Minister or the Committee. Even so, I still have a lot to ask, but I have notified the Minister about my questions since clarity is more important today than trying to put one over on the Minister. I am a recycling enthusiast but not a fanatic, and I hope I am realistic. When I heard my noble friend Lord Hayward talk about the Scottish experience, I interjected to say “A thruppenny bit”, because I recall that if, as a 10 year-old boy in the Highlands in the early 1960s, you collected the glass lemonade bottles with their bakelite screw-on tops, you could get a thruppenny bit back every time. I had a nice little business going collecting those bottles, although admittedly some of them were probably not capable of being refilled. In the terms of the current legislation, they were a bit soiled. But it was a good little business—and I am probably the only person in this Room who did recycling at that age and at that time.