Chamber and committees

They are not, because, as my colleague Alex Quayle pointed out, the first step is to design the co-design process.

The financial memorandum outlines the cost and potential benefits for each provision. On the overall economic benefits, I can, of course, enumerate to the member the urgency of reaching net zero and the overall intention of reducing waste in our society. Those inefficiencies where resources—

The bill’s provisions enable us to start the journey of looking at all the pieces that we need to put into place. Taking all those pieces through primary legislation would not be proportionate to what is being brought in, even in respect of parliamentary time.

We already have very good models for a lot of what is happening here. We have a voluntary code of practice, so bringing into legislation a more mandatory code of practice is a sort of logical next step. We are all familiar with the plastic bag charge and we could be bringing in a cup charge. The level of scrutiny needs to be appropriate to the changes that are being brought in, which is why we are proposing to bring in the detailed measures through secondary legislation. Scrutiny of secondary legislation can, to some degree, be as in-depth as committees and members wish it to be. We have had good recent examples of negative statutory instruments that underwent detailed scrutiny in committee and so on.

Those are economic benefits. When a business is wasting materials, that is, of course, a cost to that business. It is also a cost to society when we, as a society, are using the planet’s resources to produce goods that do not benefit anybody. There is a larger case to be made: a circular economy, which is the point of this, is one that does not have waste and which is efficient, so that all our resources are put to best use. Those provisions fit in a larger scope of work, with the route map work that the UK Government is doing. They are all designed to improve the economic case and reduce inefficiency in the system.

No. It is completely independent of the Scottish Government.

We certainly intend to allocate the remainder of the fund as efficiently and effectively as possible, but we would need to discuss what funding might follow on from that.

No, I am content with the financial memorandum that has been presented. I believe that the context of the question from Michelle Thomson was that, if there were more detail down the line as we develop the policy, I would be happy to come back to the committee. Our information is the best that we have at this time. I am at the committee’s disposal, should it wish me to come back if the situation changes and an update is required, but this is the best information that is available and appropriate to the bill.

The difference is that this is a strategic bill, where we are setting out our strategic intentions to reduce waste, to improve opportunities in recycling, and to be able to create jobs in that circular economy. That is absolutely our strategic intention, and the bill is strategic. The specific pieces of policy implementation will be part of the secondary legislation and, indeed, work on our route map and so forth as we go forward. The details of specific provisions—for example, the reporting of waste from a specific industry, such as the cosmetics industry—will be developed with that industry. That is exactly the point. At this point, this is the strategic level and, therefore, we are putting in strategic level implications.

Over the summer, we have been working with officials to come up with sensible conditions for interoperability, such as how we will agree on how we will set the deposit and on how exclusions will work. That has been discussed among officials, and it is now for DEFRA and the UK Government to sign that off, to agree on what the conditions will be and to set that out in its regulations.

We are waiting on DEFRA’s timescale; I do not have a timescale for that. I do not know whether my officials have more of an update.

That is a question for DEFRA. It is for DEFRA to say how it wants to implement the scheme and how it intends that scheme to operate in the UK.