Chamber and committees

Okay—thank you.

Finally, minister, you said in response to Michelle Thomson that you would be happy to provide an updated financial memorandum. I wrote that down word for word. Do you now believe that, following this evidence session, you should go away and update the financial memorandum as it has been presented to us?

Thank you for the clarification, and I thank you and your colleagues for the evidence that you have given today. It has been very helpful for the committee’s deliberations. We will look at the matter further and deliberate in private session in order to produce a report.

In the meantime, we will take a short break to allow a changeover of witnesses.

Mr Devine, in answer to the second question, you say,

“some of our responses to the initial consultation are now irrelevant or require further review and updating”,

and you touch on

“forthcoming legislative changes such as Deposit and Return Scheme”—

which was considered to be forthcoming at the time—

“and the Extended Producer Regulations”.

Can you see where those changes have been made and what the implications are of that for Dundee?

In your view, would that be essential to deliver the bill?

Charlie Devine from Dundee spoke about something that may also affect you in West Lothian or Ms McGuire in South Lanarkshire, which is the issue of trying to increase recycling from flats rather than from garden-gated properties. Will the bill help in delivering that, or is there an overestimate of how much waste will be collected in appropriate receptacles?

That is interesting, given that the legislation is going through.

Short of putting matches under your fingernails, I will not get a cash figure from you, Mr Devine.

Ms McGuire, what is happening with flatted properties in South Lanarkshire?

The extended producer responsibility expects to bring in approximately £1.2 billion a year across the United Kingdom, which might mean £100 million for Scotland and £2 million or £3 million for somewhere like Dundee. You are, however, right that it is hard to pin that down at this stage.

Ms McGuire, one of the issues that has come up is littering and how people who litter from cars could be fined. The financial memorandum talks about the potential cost of policing and dealing with that as being between £34 and £102 per notice. You have all expressed concerns about how collectible that would be. What are your concerns and those of South Lanarkshire Council?

I will ask a final question about that in a minute, but I will ask about co-design first.

The bill discusses co-design. It is not the first one that the committee has dealt with that does that. The talk of “co-design going forward” is always somewhat woolly to me. That also means that much of the bill will be delivered through secondary legislation. I ask the witnesses to give me their individual views on that, starting with Mr Jack.