Chamber and committees

I do not have information about the contractual arrangements around that investment.

Many councils do not collect glass at all. There is the ability, when we introduce the circular economy bill, to encourage councils to standardise collection so that everywhere collects glass. In aggregate, there will be more glass in the system, because there will be more, as you say, jam jars, make-up bottles and all those sorts of things that will be included in the scheme. As we improve kerbside recycling, those glass materials can be used to meet the need for glass aggregate and all the other materials that are made of recycled glass that is not as efficient at being recycled back into glass bottles. That glass is needed and is still very valuable.

We have spoken with retailers and producers in great detail. Producers—in particular, Tennent’s—were very concerned about removal of glass from the scheme because their business is can-based, so removing glass from the scheme will render Tennent’s uncompetitive and put in place a significant barrier for its business, which is what we sought to avoid by making sure that glass was included for all businesses.

There are some challenges for everybody who handles glass in the retail space. Glass is heavy and it can be a health and safety hazard if it is broken. Handling glass is therefore a challenge for the people who need to handle it, but its inclusion has significant environmental benefits and creates a fair playing field for producers, so it is important that schemes include glass.

I am proceeding to answer the member’s question. The criteria for being a scheme administrator are laid out in the regulations. Provided that a business has met those criteria, the Scottish Government does not have the power to deny it the ability to be a scheme administrator, because a scheme could have many administrators. That is not how the power for creation of scheme administrators works. It does not come with that sort of additional conditionality with regard to how an administrator operates, but I am happy to ask officials to provide more detail.

As I said in response to an earlier question, on the basis of the actions that will we have been required to take, we do not believe that there is any requirement to pay compensation.

We have significant investment in the scheme. The delays to which you refer need to be properly explained. According to the regulations that were passed in 2020, the scheme was due to go live last year, in 2022. We had the Covid pandemic and Brexit, however, which substantially changed the circumstances in which businesses were operating.

To support businesses, we provided the first year’s delay until August this year. That was the launch date towards which we were working until, from February this year, the Secretary of State for Scotland put some doubt in the public space about whether the internal market act would be used to veto and block our scheme. He managed to make good on that threat in May and vetoed and blocked our scheme from being implemented as the Scottish Parliament had passed it.

The latter delays were specifically around interference with the scheme using the internal market act. None of them had to do with any suggestion that the scheme was not progressing operationally.

It would be wonderful to have the same level of deposit across the UK. We have passed regulations that state that the level here would be 20p. However, we do not know what it might be in the rest of the UK, so I cannot comment on that.

—but we do not know what that might look like.

I am happy to get back with that detail.

The requirement would have been to remove the regulations that were laid on 17 May. The changes to the scheme to move it to October were announced last week. We would have had to withdraw those regulations, change them and bring them back. That would have been done through an expedited process, which would allow less scrutiny and, would, potentially, run up against that recess break. I agree that doing it this way is frustrating to all of us, but it means that the committee has had the normal amount of time to scrutinise those amendments and we avoid the cliff-edge problem of what happens over the summer. It is absolutely my intention to lay—as the convener suggests—amending regulations for October 2025 before recess, but those cannot be laid until this SSI has passed.