Chamber and committees

As I highlighted, the circular economy strategy, as set out in the bill, talks about reduction in consumption of materials. The most effective reduction in consumption is to move materials up the waste hierarchy towards minimising their use in the first place, and towards reuse over discarding and recycling. That is built right into the strategy.

We have had a bit of discussion about what details might be included in the bill, but strategies would be produced every five years. As Gareth Heavisides has highlighted, they relate to particular sectors and systems—for example, putting in place repair cafes and the systems that we would need in order to implement that approach. The strategy sets out space for those to be created.

No amendments have been proposed to me, but I am all ears if there are specific ones that the member or others have in mind. I have certainly had many discussions with environmental non-governmental organisations on the matter of targets, but they have not presented me with what they think the targets should be; they have simply said that they think that we should have some, and we agree. That is why the provision to create targets is in the bill.

That is something that I have been thinking about a lot. There are three basic approaches to problematic items, particularly single-use items. One approach is to ban them. That is the approach that we have taken to certain single-use plastic items, such as styrofoam cups. We are looking at that approach to single-use vapes at the UK level. Another approach is to introduce charges, which is what we did for single-use plastic bags and are thinking about doing for cups. Another approach is to use producer responsibility schemes, such as the deposit return scheme and the packaging scheme. Europe is considering such a scheme for textiles.

We have those three broad tools that we can use for particular items. It is a question of ensuring that we are using the right tool for the right job. I think that banning is the right tool for the job in certain cases. That is why we are considering that approach at the four-nations level for single-use vapes. However, we do not require any provisions in the bill for that because we already have the powers that we need.

As we have already discussed, the intention is to use the provision on reporting of waste and surpluses in the first instance for food waste in particular, targeting those waste streams that have the biggest environmental impact. We are considering larger businesses—I have given the examples of businesses such as Tesco, Unilever and Hovis, which already carry out such public reporting. It should be really clear what kind of businesses and sectors we are looking at. We might look at the construction sector as a follow-on.

I recently met Ewan MacDonald-Russell of the Scottish Retail Consortium, who had some of the concerns that you mention. I have agreed to meet him early in the new year and to meet some of his members who already do such reporting. The concern that he raised with me—perhaps he brought it to your evidence session as well—was exactly how onerous the reporting will be and what it will look like. However, given that some of his members already report such data voluntarily, I considered it a good opportunity to meet them to understand what they do and whether it would meet our requirements so that we have a working model to go from.

Ewan MacDonald-Russell said that his members would find it comforting to know what those reporting requirements would be. I have endeavoured, as we have with the single-use cup charges and with COSLA, to start working on that even before the bill is passed, so that businesses can have some comfort as to what they will be looking at.

We already have extensive powers to require businesses to report. I will hand over to Ailsa Heine for more details on that.

Thank you. I can share the more frustrating examples.

I am very happy to write to the committee with the breakdown of the funding and where the earlier funding went.

In terms of replacing the recycling improvement fund, I spoke with my officials about that this week, to understand what investment will be required. There are lots of moving parts in this space with the extended producer responsibility for packaging, which will provide funding to operate an efficient and effective recycling scheme for those materials. However, there will not necessarily be upfront capital, so money would need to be found for that. I am undertaking the work to set that out so that we can have clarity on that as we develop things.

I will go through all those matters in turn. First, I make it very clear that fixed-penalty notices are only part of the enforcement regime. As I have said, SEPA has a range of civil penalties available to it, including variable monetary penalties of up to £40,000. A fixed-penalty notice is just that—a fixed-penalty notice—and increasing the fine above £500 is getting into territory where it becomes disproportionate. As Ben Macpherson has highlighted, we sometimes get a little bit of fly-tipping next to the bins in Leith, and slapping someone with a £1,000 fine for that would be disproportionate. A fixed-penalty notice does not allow for variability—its intention is to deal with low-level offences.

You are absolutely right that organised waste crime is a serious concern, but that is why the higher penalties and offences exist. Ailsa Heine has more detail on that, so I will hand over to her in a moment to tell you how the hierarchy of enforcement works.

I am not supportive of ring fencing, because that would not be in line with the Verity house agreement. However, as discussed in the context of the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill, councils can make decisions on their enforcement choices based on what revenue they might get or what cost savings they might make through enforcement that could, for example, prevent them from having to take on clean-up costs.

I am aware that access to recycling centres has been restricted, partly due to Covid and other concerns. We are concerned about that and will be looking at it.

I welcome the committee’s report, which had some useful information in it.

The information in the financial memorandum is the best information that we have. We can go through in detail how each of the estimates in there was produced. They were produced in consultation with local authorities and businesses, where we have the relevant information, and by examining the costs of parallel or roughly equivalent projects that we have undertaken in the Scottish Government, for example, using data from Zero Waste Scotland.

In relation to assumptions around things such as fixed-penalty notices, the assumption in the financial memorandum of a payment rate of 100 per cent relates only to the provisions that introduce a new civil penalty regime on littering from vehicles. A range of costs associated with enforcement were included. Robust data on payment rates is not held centrally. I recognise that we could probably benefit from a comparative figure, but it is fairly marginal in the overall costings of the financial memorandum.

When it comes to anticipating the costs, the convener is right to say that there is a range. That is because there is a substantial range in relation to the variability of the current readiness of our councils and their existing recycling rates, which vary from about 20 per cent all the way up to around the 50 or 55 per cent mark. We are aiming for 60 per cent as a country, so some of our councils are very nearly there and some are a very long way away.

The convener can imagine that the cost of bringing councils over that line will vary enormously. It depends entirely on what we agree to be the code of practice and the target. The comparative number that we have set out is £88.4 million, which is Zero Waste Scotland’s estimate for bringing all councils up to the current code of practice, which is a voluntary code of practice to which most councils do not adhere.

Those are the best numbers that we have available to us.

Of course I am concerned about the equality impact of these matters. It is absolutely true that improved enforcement can benefit deprived communities because, in many cases, they are the ones that are suffering most from the impacts of litter. Wherever we take action on litter prevention and give local authorities and SEPA more powers on litter prevention, we intend to benefit deprived communities.