Mr. Leslie Carberry:

I will address the easier part of that question first. I fully agree that many of the practices around the circular economy are not new. They are not innovative. They were probably more frequent in times past. All around the country there are community-based swap groups, people exchanging old clothes, children's toys and so on. These are bottom-up initiatives that do not need any regulatory framework but are doing great work. One thing I would like to do in the next year or so is find a way to help people capture those initiatives and reflect the work that community groups are doing at a national level.

All I will say on Government commitment is that we are very explicitly tasked in the waste action plan to produce a whole-of-government strategy for the circular economy which will look at all the policy levers available and bring policy coherence across not only the Government and the Departments but the wider public sector. That probably addresses that.