Chamber and committees

My final question is on food waste. It is relatively new for households to get into the habit of separating their food waste, but there has been reasonable success in that. However, stakeholders have raised concerns with us about the rise in the amount of bioplastics in food waste, and we have heard evidence about how food waste can be contaminated with plastic liners that are non-biodegradable. Do we need to get a consistent position to ensure that households put their food waste in biodegradable liners and that, ideally, those would be provided to households to help them in that effort, to avoid the contamination of food waste by bioplastics and by normal plastic bags?

That will suffice, convener.

Can I come back to David McCulloch to hear Glasgow’s considerations on contamination? Brydon Gray stated that Shetland does not have a problem with contamination of recyclates, so perhaps there are lessons to learn from there. Feel free to just answer yes to this question, but it seems that changing the contamination issue is about changing householder behaviour and education and information. Yes, there is a need for more sustainable product design and producer responsibility, but, actually, it is all about ensuring that people put the right waste in the right place.

I do not know whether Rhona Gunn wants to come back in, given that she has been speaking about that, but I am interested in the views of Stephen Freeland and Drew Murdoch, too.

That is when they flourish. I have seen that many times.

Exactly. Do you want to respond, Peter?

Thank you for sharing that inspirational story, Mr Hutton. To follow on from what you said, it is important to emphasise that, although Pauline Walker and you have stated that interventions, alternatives and innovative programmes are expensive, we must keep in mind what they create in respect of young people contributing to society and what they save in respect of the Christie principles and potentially in respect of other services.

The review mentions other recently published reviews of education and skills, and you have spoken about your engagement with Professor Hayward. How can the Scottish Government best oversee this period of reform? How quickly can we move forward? In your opening answer, you talked about being glad that some time is being taken to consider implementation but said that there should a balance.

You talked about momentum earlier. Should there be momentum for pressing on and making progress on change and implementation in relation to the common themes that are shared between the reviews?

Tolerance. That is the word that you used, wisely.

A common theme that we have heard from a number of people who have given evidence to us recently is that the political arena needs to create the space and have the maturity and tolerance to enable the change that needs to happen. Do you want to say anything more about that? It is a responsibility that we and our colleagues need to share and about which we need to be serious.