Chamber and committees

It is therefore fully comprehensive. That was what I wanted to confirm. No wonder you could not remember it off the top of your head, Mr Sharma.

Thank you all for your evidence today. The committee has an open mind, certainly on the bill, so we will see where the evidence that we take in future sessions takes us. The next evidence session is next Tuesday. Thank you for your time.

That ends the committee’s deliberations today, so I close the meeting. Thank you all.

I understand that the proportion of inert waste is about 35 to 40 per cent. Is that a significant increase on a decade ago?

In terms of supplementary estimates—Scott Mackay touched on them earlier—additional funding is classed as being expected from the UK Government, but it is not clear why the estimates are included if they are merely expected as opposed to confirmed. I know that there is a lot of exasperation in the Scottish Government when the UK Government hints that money is coming in but it might or might not come. When do you decide to include or not include figures in the estimates?

Gillian Mackay was going to ask some questions, but we have just been informed in the past couple of minutes that she is due at another committee, which we did not know before we started this item, or we might have been a bit tighter on our time. I thank her for her attendance.

Incidentally, I was also going to ask about small vessels, given my constituency interest, but we have a statement this afternoon on Ferguson Marine, so the issue may come up there.

With that, we will end our questions on the instrument. I invite the minister to speak to and move motion S6M-12053.

Motion moved,

That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Budget (Scotland) Act 2023 Amendment Regulations 2024 [draft] be approved.—[Tom Arthur]

Motion agreed to.

I thank the minister and his officials for their evidence. We will publish a short response to the Parliament setting out our decision on the regulations in due course.

I suspend the meeting for a couple of minutes to allow for a changeover of officials before we move on to the next agenda item.

I thank the minister and his officials for their evidence today. I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow for a changeover of witnesses before we move on to the next agenda item.

I will bring in Mr Neill in a minute. Last week, we visited a recycling facility and they basically said that there can be, on occasion, limitations with feedstock provision, which, again, you mentioned in your submission. They also said that something like 4 million tonnes of waste that could be recycled is being dumped into landfill and that 35 to 40 per cent of landfill is waste that could be recycled. Is that a figure that you would recognise?

Mr Neill, you said in your submission that the production of recycled virgin aggregate

“currently benefits from the UK Aggregates Levy. It is therefore essential that the Levy in Scotland (the Scottish Aggregates Tax) is maintained and also increased to ensure that recycled and secondary aggregates are competitive with primary aggregates in line with Scotland’s resource efficiency aims.”

That is laudable. I am just wondering about the issue that Mr Doak raised about the availability of those materials. If there is optimum utilisation—or near enough—at the moment, would increasing the levy have the impact that you would desire of creating an incentive to do more recycling? Is the resource available to do that?

If, as Mr Neill said, the Netherlands can build runways with recycled materials, is there no reason why roads in Scotland could not be resurfaced using recycled materials, assuming the regulations could be adapted to allow that to happen?

Justice and home affairs has had funding reductions of £65.5 million. Of that, £41 million relates to capital funding for the HMP Highland and HMP Glasgow projects that should be reprofiled into future years. When you say “reprofiled”, do you just mean delayed? Why do you not just put delayed?