Whitehall whispers shouldn’t always be taken at face value. But if the experience of the past 18 months of haphazard government policy has told us anything, it’s that policy ideas are often stress-tested through leaks and gossip. The recent rumours about a tax on disposable nappies might have been shot down by Downing Street on 31 August, but warring Westminster sources all agree that the move to push parents in an eco direction is very real.
Back in 2018 Michael Gove’s comments at the Conservative Party Conference sparked a similar will-they, won’t-they pantomime over disposable nappies. When asked whether the Tory plans to attack single-use plastics such as straws and bags would include a nappy ban, Gove replied that he “mustn’t make too much news” but confirmed the government planned to “identify, not quite item-by-item but sector-by-sector, those areas where we do need to take a different approach”.
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