Chamber and committees

Yes, I will. You wanted a short answer—yes, I will consider that. We will look at that.

The convener wants me to be short and sharp, so my main takeaway is that we must be honest about what gets us the largest reduction in carbon emissions with the budget that we have and for which there is agreement and appetite as part of a just transition. I am having a conversation with my colleagues in the Cabinet—with regard to land use and transport, for example—about which areas we can accelerate and go further on, within our limited budget, that will make the biggest difference. Maybe we have tried to do too much and the process has been too piecemeal. We are looking at which areas we can we bring our limited resources into in order to have substantial change.

Land use, transport and construction. A lot of work has been done in the housing area, around energy performance certificates, for example. A lot of work has been done on construction. There is also peatland restoration and work on the skills for that. We have been doing reasonably well on peatland restoration, and that is the big-ticket item with regard to carbon sequestration. We are in the position that we are in not because there has not been enough money associated with that work—£250 million over 10 years is a lot of money—but because we have not had the capacity, in the form of a trained workforce, to do that work. We need to look seriously at that area, which comes back to the point about embedding work across portfolios.

Yes.

Initially, there were obviously a lot of questions around what it might mean for them and a discussion about what influence they would have in the design of the EPR. The administrator put together a steering group, because it was important that businesses had an influence on how the EPR would be designed—obviously, this is a UK instrument that is coming to us to agree on. It allowed members of that steering group to perform an advisory role.

Indicative producer base fees were released in August and gave businesses indicative accounts of what they can expect to pay per tonne under the EPR. Those have been dealt with at the four-nations level, because the business community has been involved in the design of the EPR from the get-go.

It might be important to say that I am genuinely looking forward to seeing how businesses and producers of goods and packaging adapt to that. I think that what we will see as a result is an improvement in our packaging, as they will not want to pay a lot of money for the soft packet plastics and so on. I am excited to see how that will develop. I think that we will see a revolution and innovation in the way that packaging for our goods is manufactured and designed, because businesses and producers will want to take the waste plastics away as much as possible. I hope that the fact that this is getting moved across all four nations means that they will see a market for better packaging—not only are there market opportunities for those producers, but they are also looking at how to bring down waste at source.

I will make it as short as possible, convener.

The committee will recall that, during the passage of the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill, amendments were lodged by the Government to ensure that various pieces of legislation that would apply to Scotland’s other public bodies would also apply to Zero Waste Scotland. The transition follows a decision that was made by the Office for National Statistics for Zero Waste Scotland to be classified as a public sector organisation, as it is primarily directed and funded by Scottish ministers. Work is well under way to ensure an orderly transition, and—subject to how the committee votes today—we fully expect the change of status to take effect from 1 October. Zero Waste Scotland will be subject to the same provisions on public finance and accountability as other public bodies in Scotland, and it is important that the organisation has a designated accountable officer as part of routine good governance.

Zero Waste Scotland will not be part of the Scottish Administration under the Scotland Act 1998. That means that, for the purposes of the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000, the permanent secretary, as principal accounting officer, cannot appoint an accountable officer for Zero Waste Scotland. However, article 2 of the draft order requires that Zero Waste Scotland be audited by the Auditor General for Scotland, which consequently engages the relevant provision of part 2 of the 2000 act.

Where a body’s accounts are subject to audit by the Auditor General, the permanent secretary will then be given power to designate an accountable officer for Zero Waste Scotland under section 15(3) of the 2000 act.

I hope that that gives a summary of what we are doing; I will close there.

I welcome the support for the regulations’ intentions and for the approach that I am taking on any flexibility that we might need, should other nations not be ready. I do not know about that for sure, but the point is taken, and it is certainly my view, too.

Concerns about flavouring and packaging, which Douglas Lumsden raised, will be addressed in UK legislation—the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. He is absolutely right about the people who have marketed them. Let us face it—there has been a marketing attempt to attract younger people, and they might try the same thing with the more reusable vapes, although I would suggest that they are harder to hide from parents. Those points are being taken on board at UK level as well, and we support that.

Of course. That comes back to the earlier point about what happens if something else enters the market that looks different or whatever. Obviously, we will be alive to anything that happens, in a four-nations approach, where that might be the case and might cause any dubiety. For the moment, I think that the single-use or disposable vape has a fairly obviously different appearance from the rechargeable type.

We want to take single-use vapes—or disposable vapes, as they are better known—out of the economy altogether. For a number of reasons, there is no ability to recycle them, even if they make it to recycling plants. The process is quite a manual one. Disposable vapes are not designed to be taken apart or to be recycled.

I have spoken about the volume involved. If local authorities had to recycle disposable vapes, it would cost them £200 million. There are a number of advantages to taking them out of the equation completely. First, they will not be littering our streets. As everyone here will have noticed over the past few years, once we spot one of them in the street, we spot 10 of them. When they go into a bin, they are going in with the general rubbish. As I mentioned, there is lithium in there, which is a very precious resource. We often mention that there is not enough lithium available for the larger batteries that we need for EVs. Cumulatively, vapes have a large amount of lithium in them, which is ending up in general waste.

The ban will have a health impact, too. We know that many of the uptakers of the single-use vapes are likely to be under age. They are getting hold of them somehow—that is what teenagers do. The vapes are very attractive. They often have flavours associated with them that are attractive to younger people. If we take them out of circulation, younger, underage people will be less likely to access vapes, because they will not be likely to buy a rechargeable and reusable one, for so many reasons. There are a number of advantages to the measure.

Fires have been associated with vapes. If they are not disposed of properly, they are likely to go into general waste and cause a fire in a bin lorry. There have been so many instances of that happening already. As I say, there are a huge amount of advantages to the ban. The draft instrument is a set of environmental regulations, but they reach more widely than that, including into health.

As things stand, we are all going forward as one, and we want to go forward as one. Obviously, a new Government is in place, and I need to make sure that everything is still in train, so I am writing this week just to get confirmation of where the other nations are and to let them know that we have laid our regulations and started the process.

Should I get an answer that says, “Actually, no, we are not ready to go on 1 April,” a couple of options are open to us. If the period is quite short, we could decide to change our regulations to come in at a date along with everyone else’s. If it is only a couple more months, I do not think that there is any harm in that. However, if it is a couple more years, that is a different question altogether, and we would need to think about how we might go forward, because that would be a couple of years of those items still being on the streets, still in our bins and still causing the problems that they have caused.

As things stand, I have not had confirmation that the implementation date has changed. I think that I signed off on a letter to the UK Government yesterday, to say that we are ready for 1 April and to ask whether others were ready and whether that was still the plan.