Brown jumps on plastic bag bandwagon

Writing in the the Daily Mail last week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that the government will be taking action against the UK’s plastic bag problem.

Brown’s article backed the Mail’s campaign against plastic bags, and said that ministers will be taking the “necessary steps” to make shoppers cut back on the number of bags that they pick up. He added that the government is looking at schemes in other countries that reduce carrier bag usage, but did not say what steps the UK government will be taking.

“My approach is this,” wrote Brown. “If we want others to change, we must make it easier for people to make the right choices.

“That applies to individual things each of us do, and also what our firms and shops do.

“So the Government is ready to do what it can to encourage a change in the way we use these bags.”

Brown went on to praise the steps being taken by retailers, such as M&S, in reducing carrier bag usage.

On the day that Brown’s article was published the Conservatives chose to release figures showing that the Government has spent over £90,000 purchasing more than 1.2 million plastic bags branded with slogans and logos over the past year.

These figures were met with scorn from the Liberal Democrats, who accused the Conservatives of hypocrisy. The Conservatives criticised the Liberal Democrats at the last general election for their plans to introduce a plastic bag tax.