Chamber and committees

I think that I would give a 10 for the FM, because it is a strategic one. The bill, as a framework bill, is a strategic—

That detail cannot be there as part of a framework bill. That is not really the nature of the enabling bill. However, it will be presented in secondary legislation and it will then undergo parliamentary scrutiny.

Absolutely. We already have a voluntary code of practice for local authorities in Scotland to which every local authority in Scotland has signed up. That is what local authorities are working towards; indeed, the Scottish Government has invested £1 billion in local authorities in addition to the recycling improvement fund, which is around £70 million. Local authorities are working towards the voluntary code of practice, but, at this time, only about a third of them comply with it.

As a direction of travel, all local authorities are moving towards that code of practice, and it is a well-understood code. We know that the investment has been helping local authorities in that direction.

Although the code of practice is good, it will not enable Scotland to reach our waste target. It will need to be upgraded to the existing code of practice plus, and that “plus” is what the co-design process needs to create. The upgraded code will also unlock enormous opportunities for us. For example, most local authorities do not look at textile recycling, but textiles are very valuable materials. I have been hearing from charities that work in this space that people steal textiles because they are so valuable. If they become part of the upgraded code of practice that local authorities agree on, there will be some financial and revenue-raising opportunities for councils around producing good-quality textile recycling.

There are other opportunities that are not covered in the existing code, such as the collection of pots, tubs and trays and films. Those materials are also hugely valuable. If they can be collected in quantity and kept clean and sorted, there is money to be made. So, with that “plus” will need to come a discussion about how any additional provisions over and above the existing code of practice will reduce litter and waste and help us to reach net zero and ensure that we unlock those opportunities. If the council can say that it can produce X amount of a certain kind of recycling, and that it will be clean and sorted to a certain standard, investors will come in and say, “If you can produce that reliably, I will invest in your site, which will create jobs in recycling plants”. That is the kind of business opportunity that we hope to unlock with the upgraded code of practice.

—or that you cannot introduce any legislation until you have done the co-design on all those. That is not a sensible process. The sensible process is to set out what our intentions are: we have these targets to meet; we are going to enable these kinds of powers; and then we will work on the detail of each of them. We will get reporting on food waste. We have had those conversations, but members have suggested that we do textiles or construction next, so that we can then go down that path knowing how those processes work.

There are examples in other countries of how the regulations might look and might be implemented, so we can give an idea today, and I have given several examples of the kind of things that we will bring forward with the bill. The point is that you need to have the framework in place to hang those details off. If you did the details first, you would end up with very cumbersome, specific primary legislation, which you would then have to do all over again for every new product that you wanted to add to that.

The bill will allow councils more enforcement powers and will bring us into line with what is available in England and Wales. Our councils are currently fairly limited in what they can do in relation to littering from vehicles, and the bill will increase that provision.

You are absolutely right that it can be difficult to identify littering from vehicles. We have a pilot programme going on. LitterCam camera technology is being used on the trunk road network to understand how we can identify people who are committing those sorts of offences. We can move that forward. We have some examples. Bradford Council installed closed-circuit television cameras at a cost of £16,000, and, over about three months, the council issued that same amount in penalties. Therefore, once councils have the powers, there can be advantages to them using cameras and so on to collect fines from offenders.

We know that there will be value for money because of the opportunities that will be unlocked. I will give some examples. We know that the contamination of our waste stream costs local authorities money, that litter on the streets costs them in collection charges and that businesses are producing perfectly good goods that go straight to landfill or for incineration—during a cost of living crisis, perfectly good food is being sent for incineration or to landfill instead of going into people’s mouths.

There are some really good statistics. For example, for every £1 that we invest in reducing food waste, we get £250-worth of benefit for our local communities, because we not only prevent that waste for the businesses involved but ensure that the product—perfectly good food that might have had a bad label put on it or something—gets into hungry mouths. There are benefits to reaching net zero and to making sure that goods and materials from our society actually get used, especially by people who need them. That is an immeasurable good, and I am so glad that we are able to bring forward such legislation.

We do not know what the code of practice plus will look like; it will be part of the co-design process. As I said earlier in the session—I am just trying to find it in my notes—it is roughly proportionate. Zero Waste Scotland estimates that to bring all local authorities in line with the existing code of practice would cost about £88.4 million. The recycling improvement fund is £70 million. They are proportionate estimates and then some money that is allocated from local authorities’ budgets. The capital investment is broadly in line with the existing code of practice but the upgraded code will need more. That is where we need to look at the benefits from what might come after the recycling improvement fund can be discussed, and at things like the extended producer responsibility for packaging, which represents another source of funding—all the pieces of what the code of practice plus looks like. We are really at the starting point with that, with what the opportunities are and with what the funding might look like.

We can absolutely look at that. When the provisions are being developed, we will look at which and how many products are being disposed of and what is being dealt with in what businesses. Absolutely, understanding what cost recovery might look like can be part of that conversation.

We will probably add to the provisions over time. We still need to develop the process and then get it started. Yes, I can see us probably initially estimating a low enforcement level as companies come into compliance, but as more items and businesses are added to the scheme in future years, one can imagine that enforcement might increase.

There is some interesting data on the reuse of items. In France, for example, restrictions have been imposed on clothing, cosmetics, hygiene products and electrical items. Amazon has a charity that deals with those sorts of items, and it has delivered more than 500,000 items, worth £10 million, to families in need. Although the idea is to work with businesses so that they comply, part of the aim of the provisions is to create an overall benefit to society from making sure that not only are we not wasting resources and the valuable materials that go into such products but, where the products are safe and in good working order, we can get them to people who really need them during a cost of living crisis and also create a wider benefit to society rather than let things go to waste. There is, therefore, a need to look at the big picture to understand that the provisions will ramp up over time.

The member is talking about costs for communications and development of the process. The costs in the financial memorandum are specifically for enforcement, but I am sure the member is correct that, in order to implement such a scheme successfully, money for communications will be needed up front, which will be determined by the scale of the scheme and the businesses involved.