Active Consultations

For the National Living Wage, the Low Pay Commission is seeking evidence in order to advise on the viability of the stated target - 60 per cent of median earnings by 2020. The consultation seeks:

The Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs are seeking views on plans to make local authorities collect the same kind of materials for household recycling and on improving how businesses recycle in England.

The Committee is asking for written evidence from lots of different organisations and groups, including central and local government, the emergency services, medical professionals, health and safety and accident prevention specialists, people who work with or sell fireworks, and cultural and religious groups for whom fireworks often have a special significance.

The inquiry will lead to a report with recommendations to the Government. The report will be debated in the House of Commons and the Government will have to respond to the Committee's recommendations.

DEFRA want to know what you think about proposals to introduce a deposit return scheme (DRS) for drinks containers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This would include drinks containers such as:

• glass bottles
• plastic bottles
• cans

The cost of the deposit would be added to the price of the drinks included in the scheme when they are purchased. This deposit would be redeemed when consumers return their empty drinks containers to a designated return point.

This consultation seeks views on measures to reduce the amount of unnecessary and difficult to recycle packaging and increase the amount of packaging that can and is recycled, through reforms to the packaging producer responsibility regulations. It also proposes that the full net costs of managing packaging waste are placed on those businesses who use packaging and who are best placed to influence its design. This is consistent with the polluter pays principle and the concept of extended producer responsibility.

The consultation outlines the government’s proposal for how the tax will work and contains a number of questions relating to this. For example, which packaging should be in scope of the tax, how to assess recycled content, and which businesses will be liable for the tax. The government is open to views on the best design options.

The Welsh Government is  consulting on a draft policy that has 4 main themes:

This consultation asks what you think about:

• restricting volume-based price promotions of HFSS food and drink that encourage people to buy more than they need, for example, ‘buy one, get one free’ and free refills of sugary soft drinks
• restricting the placement of HFSS food and drink at main selling locations in stores, such as checkouts, aisle ends and store entrances

This consultation also seeks your views on:

The Tobacco Products Directive 2014 and its implementing legislation introduces track and trace, and security features for cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco from 20 May 2019.

This is a technical consultation on the secondary legislation required to implement these changes in the UK.

The consultation seeks views on draft regulations which: