Chamber and committees

Will the member take an intervention?

If Scottish ministers issued such guidance, would that cut across any collective bargaining that the unions might put in place with COSLA on issues related to terms and conditions? That is a genuine question.

Will the member take an intervention?

It has been an interesting debate. In summing up, can you say whether you believe that there is a role for single-use item charges at all? What I have heard from you has been pretty negative.

I am not quite sure about the analogy of chip paper—as a consumer, I certainly would not want to reuse chip paper. What do you see as the role of single-use charges? They have been effective for carrier bags, and there has been a long-standing policy development around the use of charges in relation to coffee cups and other hot-drink cups.

I am interested to know the thrust of what it is that you are trying to achieve with your amendments. If you are trying to achieve clarity by putting more requirements in the text of the bill in relation to schemes that are brought forward, or trying to design in exemptions around the nature of biodegradability and everything else, I can understand where you are coming from, but that seems to be quite a negative place. It seems that you do not, fundamentally, see a use for such charges, which may be seen as punitive, but which—it could be argued—nonetheless have a pretty critical role in reducing waste and delivering behavioural change.

We have lots of time, so let us use the time.

Did COSLA approve these amendments, which would require its approval on various matters?

Will the member give way?

I live in a rural area. There is a difficulty in carving out a particular type of property from the enforcement provision. It needs to be applied proportionately and in a way that recognises that communities are different and that waste collection is different.

We heard throughout the stage 1 evidence that, when local authorities are doing their educational piece and looking at how they support householders, that is important work, and applying a sanction is an absolute last resort. I appreciate that there are complexities with tenements, but there are complexities and risks of contamination with any form of bin collection at a road end or bin collection with shared use. It is good practice to work these things through. Local authorities are generally good at that, and it would be difficult to carve out a particular exemption.

I accept a lot of the arguments that members have made on standardisation, but is there also an element of responding to innovation? Recycling technology will, presumably, improve over time. In the future, there might be an economic argument for introducing kerbside collection of certain materials that does not exist now. There might be a need to segregate materials in the future.

I am not sure what that would look like, but baking standardisation into law feels a little bit excessive. A code of practice that could be developed further with local authorities might be the most appropriate way to drive things forward. I am a little bit nervous about saying that we must use a specific colour and size of bin. In my local authority, collection systems have changed over time due to the price of recyclate, not because of any lack of willingness to standardise. Perhaps it is a hostage to fortune to bake in a fixed model, because that is what we think will drive things forward.

Thanks to Monica Lennon for championing a range of different, really important approaches, which are being driven by communities and social enterprises. Some of the work that has been happening around Scotland on nappies over the past 20 years is really valuable. There is certainly more that can be done to promote best practice and to ensure that it is rolled out across different councils.

Maurice Golden makes an important point. We have had 20 years, particularly on nappies, and evidence has been brought as to what the most effective way forward is to reduce waste and to treat the inevitable waste that we will continue to get from disposable nappies. We have also had evidence on what is driving behavioural change and what the barriers are to that. It is important that the Government reflects on all of that. The most appropriate way to pursue the work on reusables is through the route map, which is where the discussion with Monica Lennon and Lorna Slater got to.

Social enterprises are doing incredible work. We have some good examples of amendments being lodged involving nappies and mattresses. We could lodge a whole range of other amendments here: I would highlight bikes as being massively important, with social enterprises taking bikes out of landfill, doing them up, selling them on and generating skills and training. Those bikes can then be used in schools for bikeability training. There are lots of examples, and another one is furniture.

The question is what it is appropriate to do in the bill. Although I am reassured by some of the comments that the previous minister made about the route map, I am wondering, ahead of stage 3, whether there is an appropriate anchor in the bill that ensures that local authorities and the Government are doing the planning around reusable items. I do not have clarity in my own head about what that might look like.

I do not think that it is the amendments that are before us from Monica Lennon, but there is something in there around having certainty that local authorities are carrying out appropriate planning on reusable items. For me, part of the discussion that is needed in the time that we have between stage 2 and stage 3 is about what might be appropriate in the bill.