Mr. David Flynn:

To echo the Department in terms of the food waste charter specifically, it is early days. As I said, about 30 people are signed up to it at the moment and we would like to see a lot more do that. We are certainly out there trying to get people to sign up to this with a view to improving our understanding of the sector but also allowing people the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to this. In many ways, when companies speak about sustainability, the immediate jump is to energy reduction or climate change when, as I pointed out in my statement, there is a huge opportunity for companies to improve their overall sustainable performance by focusing on food waste as one of the issues. To echo some of the comments earlier, it is a win-win situation all round in terms of cost, climate and so on.

With regard to making the food waste charter mandatory, I would say it is too early at this stage. However, very shortly, particularly if the EU targets come in, there will have to be a move to looking very closely at the policy that is needed to meet those targets, as well as the UN's SDG target, which is hugely ambitious.