A Parliamentary committee has branded plans to introduce a 5p charge on plastic carrier bags as a “complete mess”.

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) said that the “bag tax” must be kept simple if it is to work when it comes into force in 2015.

Much of the disagreement stems from the use of biodegradable bags, with one side of the debate arguing that they should be exempt from the tax and the other side saying that the impossibility of recycling biodegradable bags alongside regular plastic bags would reduce recycling overall.
Chair of the committee, Joan Walley the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, said: “Ministers have managed to make a complete mess of their planned carrier bags charge by making it unnecessarily complicated. Carrier bags litter our streets and harm wildlife, and the government is right to want reduce their use. But Defra seems to have made decisions about the design of this scheme that were based on more wishful thinking than hard evidence.

“Biodegradable bags are not as green as they first sound. We heard that they can do as much harm to wildlife as normal plastic bags and could cause big problems for the UK recycling industry, which would have trouble separating and processing the different material.”