Chamber and committees

Will the minister take an intervention?

I am struggling to understand the minister’s position because, if we park amendment 17, my amendments represent the minister’s own targets. The Scottish Government has set those targets and done due diligence on them. All that my amendments would do is give the Government 12 years extra to meet its own targets. It would help if the committee could hear whether the Scottish Government did not know what it was doing when it set the targets or whether it has no confidence in meeting targets a decade or more after they were set.

The single amendment in this group is intended to ensure that each public body must take reasonable steps to prevent human rights harm and to ensure environmental due diligence with regard to the body’s operations, products and services, and, in particular, public procurement. I am aware that many public bodies will already be looking at their supply chains and procurement practices, but I feel that it is important to recognise that area and to ensure, via legislation, that every public body adheres to those standards. I hope that the committee believes that we have a responsibility to consider how we consume and procure and that it will therefore be in a position to support the amendment.

I move amendment 215.

I found that statement from the minister utterly bizarre. I am not sure what the Scottish Government’s policy is on the targets that it has set for itself. For the avoidance of doubt, having local authority targets does not preclude national targets being set. In fact, if we had what the Scottish Government previously said it would have, which is national targets, we might well want some local authority targets to be set, because they would help in meeting the national targets. The Scottish Government’s own targets, which presumably resulted from extensive detailed analysis, appear to have now been suddenly thrown in a big landfill bin, which is quite shocking.

The worry around all of this is that, if a local authority is looking at investment and making contracts, it will now find that its direction of travel—which has been very obvious as the recycling rate that local authorities are expected to make—is going to be the result of a negotiation process. Lots of local authorities that have invested significant amounts, such as Renfrewshire and Scottish Borders, could be left hung out to dry as a result of this new process. The uncertainty around it is quite shocking for local authorities across Scotland, because who knows what that negotiated outcome will be? Will there be a first-mover advantage for local authorities that have invested heavily, such as Aberdeenshire Council, or will councils that have taken their eye off the ball in terms of kerbside roll-outs get a big win because they will get extra funding now? I do not know. I do not think that anyone knows.

One thing that we do know is that it is incredibly unclear, and the Scottish Government seems to be disowning the targets that it has set. That is what we have established today.

Incineration capacity is going up and will continue to go up. Rather than being less reliant on burning waste, we are going to become more reliant on it. Although I welcome the ban on new incinerators entering the planning system, the reality is—it seems that Governments like to do this these days—that it was a ban on something that the market was never likely to deliver. We banned something that was unlikely to exist, because there are so many incinerators in the planning system already and there is overcapacity. I am not convinced that that will help the situation.

I go back to my earlier point. If local authorities have contracted incinerators—quite rightly, because they are entitled to do so—they could be hooked into those contracts for as long as 25 years in some cases. Therefore, it is really only the Government that could advise the committee on which local authority has signed which contract and what that means in terms of its recycling rates. I would support the Government doing that.

I am concerned about the likely increase in incineration and the effect that that could have on recycling rates. That said, it does not stop us meeting the 50 per cent target. We should not be concerned about the target in that context. It is a very easy target to meet, as the Scottish Government recognised when it said that it could meet it by 2013.

I think that that is enough from me, convener.

The amendments in this group are progressive and positive, and I hope that the committee will look kindly on them.

Amendment 4 seeks to ensure that targets are set for 2030, and amendment 142 would ensure that waste is

“managed in line with the waste hierarchy”.

Amendment 143 would ensure that

“waste materials are managed as locally as possible, preferably in Scotland”.

Obviously, if the committee supports that amendment, that will signal that it wants waste to be managed as locally as possible rather than exported to other nations, so it is another example of a progressive policy.

Amendments 9 and 10 are on circular economy targets. Convener, you might agree that we might want to have circular economy targets in a circular economy bill. I will put the issue in context. The first target is that the Scottish economy will be 5 per cent circular by 2027. The Scottish economy is currently 1.3 per cent circular, which is below the United Kingdom level of 7.5 per cent and the global average of 7.2 per cent, so reaching 5 per cent would still mean that Scotland was below the global average on circularity.

The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are determined to be ambitious with such targets, which is why amendment 10 would set the 2030 target at 10 per cent. That might or might not be above the global average by the time we get to 2030, but it would at least take Scotland above the current global average. Those are relatively easy targets to meet, but I am happy to listen to any comments.

I move amendment 4.

Yes, certainly. I will not get involved in the wider commissioner debate, because that is a whole different conundrum. Therefore, yes, I accept that that is the case, but you can look only at what you have before you. If the committee believes that public bodies should take reasonable steps to prevent human rights harm, they will vote accordingly and support the amendment. If they do not believe that taking reasonable steps to prevent human rights harm is something that they associate with, they will vote against it.

In essence, the amendments in this group, including my own, aim to push on with the commencement of the regulation-making powers under the bill. The Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill was announced in the 2016-17 programme for government. Even if it were a truly transformational circular economy bill—which it is not—it has taken eight years and dozens of civil servants and agency staff to pore over details around the circular economy in order to push on with it. It is, indeed, an onerous task, but it has taken place over a gigantic period.

What is so far on offer in the bill, however, is an update of the 2010 “Scotland’s zero waste plan” and the “Making Things Last: a circular economy strategy for Scotland” document. It took eight years—we are talking about perhaps a decade’s worth of work to date—to produce an update to a plan. You can tell my exasperation about how it could possibly take so long. I appreciate that the committee voted against co-design last week, which could add time once the initial thoughts of the Government are published. Nonetheless, my five amendments in this group—amendments 175 to 179—offer a suite of options with regard to the issue.

I do not intend to move all or perhaps any of them, but I intend to discuss what is possible and to see whether the Government and the committee want to promote and get moving on circular economy policies of sorts, because we have had a long time.

Will the member give way?

I was going to save some of these comments until we get to the later group—