The British beverage industry has responded with concern to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s suggestion that post-Brexit deregulation could include allowing the sale of sparkling wine in plastic bottles.
The Minister for Brexit Opportunities has set a rule requiring soda to be sold in glass bottles as one of Brussels’ regulations, which could be repealed by UK law following the withdrawal of the EU.
But the Wine and Spirits Association warned that any change should not rule out health and safety requirements, as the high pressure created by the bubbles during fermentation makes plastics an incredible and expensive container choice.
“WSTA – and the world’s leading wine industry in the UK – is keen to make the most of all the opportunities after Brexit to help the industry recover and grow. That includes cutting off unnecessary and costly bureaucracy, “CEO Miles Biel told The Independent. “But not at the expense of basic health and safety.
“Sparkling wine contains approximately the same pressure as the tire of a large van. English sparkling wine PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) requires fermentation in a bottle, as does champagne, which requires a container that can safely withstand this type of pressure for long periods of time in a cellar or on shelves.
Other formats are possible for some sparkling wines, but plastic bottles would not be the first choice.
Mr Biel said adapting bottling and refurbishment lines to fit different types of packaging, such as plastic, would impose “significant” costs. And there will be “significant environmental concerns” about the shift from recyclable and recycled glass to plastic.
“Overall, this proposal is unlikely to be economically viable in the relatively small volumes we are talking about – or sustainable,” he said.
Mr Rees-Mogg’s comment came as Labor condemned his new Brexit dashboard as a “trick” that will be updated every three months to show how many of the 2,400 EU pieces of legislation that are still in place in force in the United Kingdom have been abolished.
The Cabinet Minister said the dashboard would ensure that the public could “join us on this journey to change, repeal or replace” the current EU legislation in an effort to reduce at least £ 1bn in business costs from ” EU bureaucracies “.
Giving examples of the kind of bureaucracy he wants to get rid of, he said: “Did you know you can’t sell sparkling wine in a plastic bottle? You may think that drinking sparkling wine from a plastic bottle is awful, but if you want to, why should there be a law to stop you?
WTSA is currently campaigning against planned changes in alcohol tariffs, hailed by Boris Johnson as a benefit of Brexit but considered by the industry to be disastrous.
Labor’s Stephen Douty described Mr Rees-Mogg’s board as a “vanity project”.
“It is exceptional that on the day when inflation exceeded 9 percent, [while] the price of energy is rising, families [are] facing enormous pressure, wondering how they will put food on the table, [and] prices [are] “Growing at the fastest pace of growth in 40 years, the government’s proposal to the British people today is a digital archive of existing legislation, which the gentleman describes, in his own words, as marginal,” said the shadow foreign minister.
Mr Rees-Mogg later acknowledged that many of the 2,400 rules are of limited importance in themselves.
But he told reporters: “It will be very, very small things. But these little things are becoming something that is fundamental and revolutionary.
“Each of them is something that is easy for people to poo-poo and say, ‘What’s the point of this effort?’ The mountain rose and gave birth to an unfortunate mouse. But that gives birth to elephants cumulatively. “
Mr Rees-Mogg recently called on readers of a tabloid newspaper to suggest which EU provisions should be reduced.
In addition to trampling in plastic bottles, he today proposed changes to remove restrictions on the power of vacuum cleaners, remove mandatory training courses for truck drivers or remove rules requiring B&B hotels to register as package tour operators. if you provide vouchers for dinner at local restaurants.
He rejected speculation that the fire of rules would turn the UK into an unregulated zone of the “Wild West” and insisted that his goal was “not to lower standards”.
Despite a series of reports – including from the government’s Office of Budget Accountability – suggesting that Brexit has cut the UK’s GDP, Mr Rees-Mogh declined to give any assessment of how much benefit or harm it is doing to the economy, saying that it was impossible to know how Britain would have done if she had stayed.
He told lawmakers: “With high inflation, we need to look everywhere and under every stone and cushion on the couch for supply-side reforms that make products and services cheaper, make things easier for business and ultimately develop the economy.” and reduce the cost of living. ”
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