Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)

My Lords, in moving Amendment 4, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for putting her name to it as well. This is a very important issue that we debated at length in Committee. The reason I am bringing something back on Report, albeit in a more focused form just dealing with plastic pellets, is that plastic generally is one of the huge problems that the ocean needs to have addressed, but the plastic pellet issue is something that the Government could choose to do a lot more about monitoring, evaluating and regulating. It is notable that the European Union has made regulations about pellets. The loss at sea during shipping of these pellets, which form the basis of plastic wherever it is manufactured, is estimated to be 10 trillion pellets annually, with 10 million tonnes apparently lost within European Union waters, so it is a massive problem the sheer scale of which is hard to imagine. Some of the losses get into the sea and wash out from our own sewage plants—that, again, is something that I am sure the Government will look at. I would like the Minister’s assurance today that through some vehicle in the future, whether it is the forthcoming water White Paper or whatever, they will address this issue of plastic pellets, firming up on how people shipping them are trained, the regulation of it and how they are contained on ships—everything to do with the shipping of them—because the scale of the loss is unsupportable and every country needs to take action on it. I beg to move.