One million tonnes of food and packaging waste prevented. That’s the result - just announced - of a commitment made by the UK grocery retail sector in 2005.

It’s a great achievement against ambitious targets and comes alongside a string of other voluntary agreements in recent years - on things such as salt, carrier bags and alcohol labelling.

For retailers, customers and politicians, they’ve all translated into progress to be proud of. The question now is, what’s the best way for the future? The new Government is calling them ‘responsibility deals’ and planning to use them very differently. The BRC is assessing past experience and working to shape what comes next.

If these ‘deals’ are to play a part in delivering social policy objectives, they need to be supported by the facts, capable of engaging customers and not burdensome for businesses. So far, I like some of what I have heard from the coalition.

It’s good for a government to admit it hasn’t got all the answers. And that working with retailers and customers is the route to real change in a whole range of areas - diet, health and the environment.

I welcome the promise of a new emphasis on personal responsibility rather than laying every ill at the door of retailers.

The Government also tells us it will move away from all those numerical targets - halving carrier bag use, 1.4g of salt in 100g of sausage and so on. The new approach will be: Government identifies a problem, decides who can help but leaves the specifics to them.

That could be good but the challenge may now be less in delivery - we’ve shown we can do that - than in demonstrating we are delivering, without government taking a big role in endorsing and evaluating.

How do you create a credible assessment system that doesn’t make excessive demands? Is there a place for third parties? Are they qualified for the task? Are they capable of providing consistency or objectivity?

Using the corporate responsibility reporting that businesses are already doing has to be at the centre of the answer.

‘Responsibility deals’ with retail must not become a default means to fulfilling Government policy.

They can be an opportunity to showcase our good work but the risk is they are unfair.

It will always be the same list of good guys who sign up while others are free to take no notice. Some say, if there has to be intervention at least regulation applies equally to everyone.

We won’t rush to judgement but fresh thinking that doesn’t make passing a new law the first resort is welcome and we’ll make sure we stay at the heart of the development of these ‘deals’.

They may seem a bit warmer and softer but they must follow the same better- regulation principles that we expect for legislation - proportionate, evidence-based and properly targeted.

Stephen Robertson Director-General, British Retail Consortium