Chamber and committees

My understanding of the process for becoming scheme administrator—I will ask officials to jump in to add detail—is that the regulations that were passed in 2020 set out the conditions for a scheme administrator, and the process is that when an industry body—

The scheme administrator is a company that has been created by the industry to deliver on the regulations that were passed by this Parliament. The regulations do not contain powers for the Scottish Government to interfere in how that is done. We are absolutely following the regulations. However, we have worked with industry on how the scheme is going to work. CSL is responsible for implementation on behalf of the industry, the industry is responsible for complying with our regulations and SEPA will enforce the regulations. Those are the mechanisms for implementing the deposit return scheme.

In addition—as I outlined earlier—we have added a governance structure to support delivery. That is the system-wide assurance group, which helps all the pieces of the puzzle to fit together smoothly. That governance structure was implemented recently to ensure smooth delivery. However, operational details, such as exactly where sorting centres are located and exactly how goods are transferred, are matters for Circularity Scotland. The regulations do not give the Government powers to interfere in that.

I feel that you have misrepresented the delays to the scheme, but I am happy to explain those delays in detail. Maurice Golden is suggesting that delays have been decided on a whim or have happened because the scheme was not deliverable in some way—

That is a matter for CSL to decide, as a private business.

We have not discussed in detail what their scheme might look like because they have not yet passed their regulations or, indeed, given us an insight into what those regulations might be.

I think that Euan Page had a comment to make, if I can bring him in—

In the past six months, we have seen a substantive shift in the UK Government’s position on the matter. In January, it clearly said in its documentation that it was for devolved nations to take decisions on those matters; in May, it said that it would not grant exclusions for those nations and that it wants interoperability. It looks like the mechanism for that interoperability is potentially one of imposing those things instead of working co-operatively. Of course, I very much hope that we could work co-operatively and genuinely to everybody’s benefit.

Scotland is years ahead of the other UK nations. We have done so much work and gathered so much expertise in the industry and in getting ready—much of which is encapsulated in Circularity Scotland and in our other bodies such as the Scottish Environment Protection Agency—that the other nations of the UK would be able to pick up from where we are and run with it, if you like, which would make the most sense for smooth implementation. However, it is not at all clear to me that that is the UK Government’s intention, although it might be its intention to develop a separate scheme, which it would then impose on us. I will ask Minister Pow those exact questions tomorrow.

It is my view that the Scottish Parliament should be able to legislate on fully devolved matters and that the deposit in Scotland is 20p. That number has not been plucked out of thin air; it is the result of many years of work to develop the right amount for the deposit. When the UK Government sets its deposit, it would make sense for it to look at the work that we have done and to work together with us. We need to have co-operation and discussion on those things, but that is not what we have had. Instead, we have had an 11th-hour intervention saying, “We might change this”—

It depends on what the convener considers to be a majority decision. We know that the Welsh are considering a scheme along the lines of ours—for example, they have included glass. Are you measuring a majority decision by the largest nation? Are you suggesting that the largest nation should impose that decision, or that we are a group of four nations that should agree on a level that is based on how many nations wish to go ahead with a different scheme?

I think that that would have reduced scrutiny time, but I will pass over to Ailsa Heine for the detail.

We, of course, take industry confidentiality seriously.