Chamber and committees

That is indefinite, in that any business that wants to sell in Scotland in any particular year needs to be signed up by 1 March of that year. For the first year of the scheme, we are allowing late applications to support businesses to come online with it.

Any businesses that are not registered in time for the scheme launch will not be able to supply in Scotland, so we encourage them to get going. However, in future years, when new start-up businesses in Scotland wish to sell in the Scottish market, they will also need to apply for the scheme. As new businesses come into the Scottish market, they can sign up for the scheme, on an on-going basis, so that they can sell in Scotland.

I believe that the regulations have that March deadline every year. That is to allow time for businesses to be operationally included. However, for this year, I believe that late applications will still be accepted.

The intention is not to be punitive to businesses. Businesses need to sign up for the scheme. They need to give the information about how many products they have and the labelling, so that there is time to programme the reverse-vending machines. When you take your bottle or can back, the machine will scan the barcode and say, “Yes, you bought this in Scotland, it is a scheme article, so here’s your 20p back.” The point of registration is for businesses to say, “Here are my barcodes and here are my products,” so that we can then programme all the vending machines in Scotland to be able to take those back. The reason why there is a deadline is to allow time for that work to be done. That is why businesses need to register as soon as possible—so that their barcodes can be registered with the machines.

That is what we are looking at—understanding the barriers to registration.

Some small producers have asked us to consider a grace period. That would not be a grace period for registration, so they still need to register but, hypothetically, a grace period for implementation. There are some big challenges with that. It might not be fair to medium-sized producers or the small producers that have signed up. Therefore, we need to take a step back again. We know that hundreds of small producers have signed up, so this barrier is clearly not universal. For the businesses that have not signed up, we need to look at what their challenges are and make sure that we are putting in place the right measures to help them get on board.

That is correct. That is normal for such schemes.

Absolutely. It will be able to get into the nitty-gritty of that.

The member is correct that the items will have value. They will have to be stored securely, because shops need to return the items to get back their fees. The items will be only 20p each, so they will represent only a small proportion of the value within a shop, which might sell bottles of alcohol, tobacco and so on. However, the member is quite right that the items will need to be secured until they can be picked up, because they will have value.

Yes, it would, but I do not think that we need that. When I speak to the Small Grocers Federation, for example, they ask us to help to facilitate their members to do that. They want their members to be in and they want the footfall—

Are you asking about what costs business might add?

The deposit itself—the 20p—is paid and then the customer gets it back again, so it will be cost neutral. What businesses charge for their products is not a matter for the Scottish Government.

I am happy to share with the member whatever information we have on format switching.