Chamber and committees

Thank you very much, convener, and thanks to colleagues who have commented.

The only substantive question that I think that I need to respond to was from Mark Ruskell on timing. He is probably as frustrated as I am at the lack of progress on the bill, but that has nothing to do with me. I am afraid that it is simply to do with the time pressures on the non-Government bills unit.

That said, I have now seen an initial draft of the bill, which—from memory—was submitted to me about three or four weeks ago. A draftsman was appointed, a lot of work has been done and we are now tweaking that draft. I am in the hands of the parliamentary authorities and, as Mr Ruskell has rightly acknowledged, there are major resourcing issues when it comes to supporting members who bring forward bills. However, I hope, at the very least, to be in a position to publish a final version of the bill within the next few weeks. Indeed, depending on my conversation with the minister, I might well be able to bring forward some of my proposed bill as amendments at stage 2 of the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill instead of presenting a stand-alone piece of legislation. That might be helpful to the committee.

That is the only substantive point that I had to deal with, convener. Given the undertaking that I have had from the minister, it is not my intention to press the motion.

I do.

Notwithstanding what you say, minister, I can give you examples, and I am sure that NFU Scotland could give you lots of examples, of instances when its members have had notices served on them in circumstances in which they have been entirely innocent. That is a major concern for the NFUS. Are you aware of any other area of public policy where the innocent victim of a crime is held responsible for it?

Thank you for the opportunity to come to the committee in order to raise these important matters. I welcome the fact that penalties are to increase to £500—it is a helpful step in the right direction. However, I think that more needs to be done in this area, and I look forward to meeting the minister separately to discuss some ideas that I might have about how we might bring that into effect.

With that, I will withdraw my motion.

I will move it, before withdrawing it, convener, as I want to make a very brief point.

Motion moved,

That the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee recommends that the Fly-tipping (Fixed Penalty) (Scotland) Order 2023 (2023/335) be annulled.—[Murdo Fraser]

My second question is one that I know the convener will be interested in, because it is about liability, and is a question that has been raised with me for many years, particularly by NFU Scotland. It is very aggrieved, because the current law says that an innocent landowner who has waste dumped on their land is responsible for the cost of clearing that up. That is an offence to the polluter-pays principle that is made clear in the fly-tipping strategy that underpins the Scottish Government’s approach. What we have at the moment is not the polluter-pays principle but the innocent victim of fly-tipping being held responsible for the cost of cleaning that up. I have numerous case studies from the NFUS, Scottish Land & Estates and others of cases in which innocent landowners have been held liable by SEPA for clean-up costs. We must get that sorted, because it is not fair.

Thank you, minister.

I actually welcome the increase—my concern is that it might not go far enough. Perhaps I can give a small anecdote to illustrate that. When I was doing research on fly-tipping, I spoke to a local authority environment officer in Edinburgh who said that he and a colleague had caught in the act an individual with a white van who was dumping mattresses by the roadside. He challenged that person and said that they would get a fixed-penalty notice. When that individual was told that the fixed-penalty notice would be £200, they said, “Well, just give it to me, because that’s less than it would cost to dispose of these legally.”

Clearly, there is a need to increase the charges, because they are not at a level where they are acting as a deterrent. We also know that, increasingly, people involved in illegal fly-tipping come from an organised crime background. Therefore, penalties need to be at a level where they are a deterrent. I think that £500 is helpful, but I urge the Scottish Government to consider whether it should go further and increase the level.

Another point that I want to raise came out of the session that the committee had two or three weeks ago with COSLA and local government representatives. It is about whether fixed penalties could help create an additional revenue stream for local councils and whether the money could be ring fenced in council budgets to support better enforcement. We have heard that local government has real issues with being able to devote resources to the issue. We can have as many fixed penalties as we want but, if we do not have people on the ground who can enforce them and issue notices, that will have little impact.

We also know that, due to budget pressures, councils across the country are having to reduce access to recycling centres. Based on the feedback that I got from my members’ bill consultation, that is the issue that most people raised as a contributory factor to fly-tipping. That a person cannot dispose of the goods legally is never an excuse for fly-tipping, but clearly, the more barriers that are put in the way of legal disposal, the more likely we are to drive up the number of cases. Do you have any view on the extent to which revenues from fixed-penalty notices might be helpful in supporting enforcement action by local councils?

Thank you for that response. I have a couple of points on what you have raised. One issue that came out strongly in the consultation on my member’s bill was frustration from local authorities that they would report people for prosecution but those people were not then prosecuted. I do not have the figures with me, but we did some research into the number of prosecutions that were taken forward, as opposed to the number of people who were reported to the procurator fiscal. The number of prosecutions was tiny—it was in the low teens, if I remember correctly.

We know that, as with all other areas of public policy, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service is under huge pressure. If you are a procurator fiscal looking at your casework, you have all sorts of crimes against individuals to deal with, and tackling fly-tipping crimes is not a priority. A very small proportion of the incidents that were reported to COPFS, therefore, were actually taken forward. That is a great frustration for local authority environmental staff, because they pass the papers through and nothing happens, and people get off scot free.

That is why the fixed-penalty notices are important—they are a practical step that can be taken at local level. I hear what you have to say about the levels. Could we create a new legislative framework—as my bill is looking at doing—whereby there would, in effect, be a sliding scale of fixed-penalty notices that could be issued by local authorities? For very low-level offences, such as dumping a sofa, the penalty might be £500, but where an offence was more serious, the penalty could be increased to a higher level. That would be at the discretion of the local authority.

I am happy to explore that with you separately, minister.

I will try to be as brief as possible, convener.

Minister, you will be aware that I have carried out a consultation on fly-tipping, as part of work on a member’s bill, which is progressing very well. There are four elements to that. I am pleased to see that section 10 of the bill picks up the issue of the householder’s responsibility. We will discuss the level of fines later, so I will not ask about that, which helpfully leaves me with two issues and two questions.

My first question is very straightforward and is about data collection. The picture is quite confused at the moment because a number of bodies are involved in data collection, including local authorities, Zero Waste Scotland and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Your fly-tipping strategy recognises the need to improve the consistency and quality of data collection. Would it be helpful to amend the bill at stage 2 to put a specific duty on ministers to collect and publish data, so that we have a central point, rather than having that responsibility spread across different organisations?

Thank you, convener.

I have lodged a motion to annul, but that was largely a device to ensure that the convener would allow me time to ask questions, which I hope has had an appropriate impact.