Chamber and committees

Local authorities will need to co-ordinate and establish best practice. In an urban constituency such as my constituency of Edinburgh Northern and Leith, there are large street bins for general recycling. All it takes is for one person walking past to dump some contamination in there, sometimes unwittingly, and the whole recyclate is contaminated and, in some cases, cast aside. Do you envisage significant engagement between, and strategic decision making from, local authorities to make this work and ensure that the public are aware of their expectations before considerations of enforcement are applied and that enforcement is carried out in a just manner?

I absolutely appreciate the points about reuse.

Exactly, and there are several other examples that I can think of.

On recycling, can you be any more definitive about what additional recycling infrastructure Scotland needs as a nation to meet the requirements of what is ahead and to reach a position where less of our recyclate is going offshore and elsewhere to be utilised?

That follow-up would be appreciated.

Mr Gulland makes some important points. Most of the fly-tipping in my constituency is of sofas and mattresses, some of which is criminal in that people are dumping those materials in certain areas, but some of it is simply people putting them out in the street because they are not aware of the law or cannot afford, or do not have the motivation, to take it to an appropriate facility.

I come back to the challenge of organised crime in the waste management sector, and I wonder whether Mr Harley has anything to add about that wider challenge. As I said earlier, I appreciate the sensitivity of the issue, so I understand if you would prefer to follow up in writing with regard to that important wider consideration.

You talked about the wide-ranging potential positive impact of free school meals. On how we consider the policy in future, does the Government plan to evaluate the educational and wellbeing effects or, indeed, the impact on child poverty? Is there an intention to evaluate the impact of the universality of the free school meal provision?

Indeed, those additional facilities could enable community groups to do other things in the wider community that would help to impact poverty, learning and the wider common good.

For the sake of clarity, are you saying that the evaluation will consider the educational impact, the impact on child poverty and the impact on physical health in the round?

Good morning. The Government is putting in a lot of additional resource to support our young people through these challenging times, whether that is the PEF allocation, which we spoke about earlier, the Scottish child payment or free school meals.

In last week’s evidence session, it was stated that, despite the significant amount of additional resource that has gone into providing free school meals, the funding going to local authorities for that policy has not kept pace with inflation. What are the Government’s thoughts on that?

I take your point but, in many other instances, secondary legislation has worked effectively and has been scrutinised well. We should learn the lessons as you have articulated them but, to put everything in the bill would be impractical, so it would be good to hear of any specific changes you would like to the bill.