Official Report 520KB pdf
Single Use Carrier Bags Charge (Fixed Penalty Notices and Amendment) (Scotland) Regulations 2015 [Draft]
Agenda item 2 is subordinate legislation. The instrument has been laid under affirmative procedure, which means that Parliament must approve the regulations before their provisions may come into force. Following this evidence session, the committee will under agenda item 3 be invited to consider the motion to approve the instrument.
I welcome the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Food and Environment, Richard Lochhead, and Peter Stapleton, who is the policy manager for waste prevention in the Scottish Government. Good morning. Do you wish to speak to the instrument, cabinet secretary?
Thank you, convener. I wish a good morning to the committee.
It is now about five months since we introduced carrier-bag charging with the aims of tackling Scotland’s addiction to single-use carrier bags, hundreds of millions of which have been used in recent times, and of cutting litter in our society. The committee supported the regulations originally and it seems that the policy is working well. Some of our larger retailers are already, after a matter of a few months, reporting reductions of up to 90 per cent in use of the bags in their stores. I hope that the committee agrees that that is a good sign. We welcome the fact that shoppers around Scotland have embraced and welcomed the new policy—which has been my experience of speaking to consumers in shops in Elgin, in my constituency.
The regulations that are before the committee today address two issues to support the aims of the charge. First, they set the level and time limit of fixed penalties for breaches of the regulations. The fixed penalties are intended to complement the existing criminal sanctions by offering proportionate enforcement options for minor infractions. Although the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 established the principle of fixed penalties, the regulations will set the fine level at £200, as we advised the committee last year. The regulations also provide the other outstanding details that are needed: the discounted amount for early payment and the time limit for the issuing of penalty notices. I expect that very few retailers will deliberately breach the rules and that enforcement officers will, in the first instance, provide advice to retailers that do not comply.
The regulations will also amend the Single Use Carrier Bags Charge (Scotland) Regulations 2014 to exempt bags that are used for delivery of goods in prisons, when the bag is necessary for safety or security. The prisoners who use the service have no option but to accept the bag that is given to them, and the closed environment of a prison means that there is no litter issue. Applying the charge in prisons would, therefore, not support the purposes of reducing litter and encouraging behaviour change.
I therefore ask the committee to support the regulations.
Thank you, cabinet secretary. Do members wish to ask any questions?
Good morning, cabinet secretary. It has been brought to my attention that some retailers are selling bags at 6p, although 5p is the set charge, with the money going to charity. Do you have evidence that retailers are selling bags at 6p, or even 10p? If so, is all that extra money going to the retailer? We know that when the charge is 5p the money goes to charity.
We advise all retailers that funds that are raised as a result of the legislation should be devoted to good causes. Many retailers are signed up to the carrier bag commitment, whereby they report openly where the money is going. As you may have seen in the news over the past few months, many retailers have publicised the charities and other good causes that will benefit.
Our retailers apply different charges because different types of bag are being sold by the various retailers. For instance, Sainsbury’s sells only bags for life, so people get multi-use rather than single-use bags. I guess that the decision about what bags to sell is ultimately for the retailers, and consumers will no doubt have their say at the shops in question.
To clarify that further, where there is no option to take a 5p bag, for example, and there is only the option to take a 6p bag, does all of that 6p go to the retailer or does 5p of it, as the legislation sets out, go to the designated charity or good cause?
It is up to the retailer to calculate what it wants to give to the good causes, within the regulations. As you may recall, under the regulations VAT can be paid and the costs of administrating the scheme can be deducted. If retailers that are charging more than 5p are major retailers, which I suspect they are, the likelihood is that they have signed up to the carrier bag commitment, which means that they will make all that information transparent at the end of the first reporting period, which is within six months of the charge coming into force. That information will be in the public domain on the website. I hope that retailers will report transparently on the breakdown of where the 6p, 10p or whatever goes.
That is useful.
I would like clarification of two small points. Local authorities will enforce the regulations. Are they being paid to carry out that duty? To whom do fines go?
The agreement that we have with local government, with which we have worked closely on the regulations, is that it is responsible for compliance and is not specifically paid for that—it is one of the duties of local government. In most cases, trading standards officers will carry out the function and will enforce as they see fit. As far as I am aware, local authorities have embraced the legislation to a large extent. As I said in my opening remarks, for the early months of the new charge a light-touch approach is being taken, with advice being given to retailers—especially smaller retailers, because they are more likely to have not been charging. If they come across such retailers, local authorities will give advice and a reminder of the regulations that say that they are supposed to be charging. We are clearly taking a light-touch approach as people get used to the regulations.
My understanding is that the fixed fines will stay within the local authority.
That is right.
With the criminal sanctions, the fines will stay within the courts and the wider justice system, as with all such fines.
I have a wee follow-up question on that general point about the fixed penalties and the discount scheme. As a past director of trading standards, I certainly agree that the light-touch approach is always best. Officers advise, help and cajole, and only if somebody digs in their heels and will not do what is asked of them do they take that person to court or fine them. That is the right way, because small retailers in particular have huge burdens and we need to help them as much as we can.
On fixed penalties, there is a big difference between a small corner shop and a big supermarket with all the legal and other resources that it will have. Although a fixed penalty is useful, because it is standard and everybody is hit the same if they refuse to comply, the effect of £100 on a major supermarket is obviously less than the effect of a gnat bite on an elephant whereas, to a small corner-shop trader, £100 is proportionally much more. Has any thought been given to variable fixed penalties? If a large retailer is found to be deliberately flouting the regulations and cannot be persuaded to comply, a larger fixed penalty could be applied, perhaps based on something like the turnover of the business or its floor area. Has that been considered, given that, to a major retailer, £100 is not really a disincentive?
09:45
Dave Thompson has made a fair point, and I respect his experience. As a former head of trading standards, he will know a lot more about these things than the rest of us around the table.
I will answer the questions, but the first point to make clear is that all the indications are that most retailers of all sizes, but particularly the bigger retailers, are on board and see ensuring that they are abiding by the regulations and implementing the policy as being responsible. That is all the evidence that we have so far. The prospect of a major retailer with a reputation to protect in the high street flouting the regulations is rather remote, but Dave Thompson asked a genuine question, so I will address a couple of his points.
The figure of £200 was agreed, in particular with local government, as a proportionate level of fine. As you said, the fine can be £100 if it is paid early. The fine is also in line with the fixed penalties related to tobacco and fly tipping, which is why that figure was pushed as the best option by local government in particular.
If a large retailer—which may have a turnover of millions of pounds—were to flout the regulations and break the law, local authorities have other options. We expect that they would explore those other options rather than serve a £200 fine on a large retail chain. Those options include criminal sanctions—they can include a fine of up to £20,000 or unlimited fines through the indictment process. That caters for all eventualities.
Nevertheless, as I said, the indications are that major retailers in particular—which are the ones that Dave Thompson highlighted—are abiding by the regulations.
Cabinet secretary, you were absolutely right to point out at the start of your comments the extraordinary success of the policy. I know that you have long believed in the policy, and you are entitled to feel vindicated by its success. Nevertheless, it is a policy of behaviour change, and although I fully appreciate the need for enforcement from time to time, I agree with Dave Thompson’s comment that it is the light touch that has made the difference.
A clear behaviour change is taking place, and most people are now embarrassed when they have to ask for a plastic bag. That was not the case before. I am in that position myself when I am foolish enough to go into a shop without a bag. I therefore seek an assurance that the Government’s view is still that the best policy is a light touch, that you are seeking behaviour change and that local authorities will be encouraged to be restrained in their use of the legislation. Sometimes, the further you get from Government, the more confusing the message becomes. I do not want local authorities to feel that they are obliged to implement the penalties in an enthusiastic way. If they do so in a restrained way, the behaviour change is more likely to be long lasting.
I welcome Michael Russell’s comments about behaviour change, which is the main thrust of the regulations. More of us are now embarrassed when we forget to take our bags to the supermarkets and shops. You spoke of your own experience—believe me, what you described applies even more to the minister who was responsible for bringing the legislation to Parliament. I sometimes feel like wearing a disguise when I realise that I have forgotten to take my bags to the shops, but I am thankful that it is rare that I forget them these days. The legislation is about behaviour change and making a difference.
You are quite right to say, as others have, that the light-touch approach is the best way forward, especially in the early stages of the policy. If local authorities receive complaints from members of the public who feel strongly about visiting a shop that is not charging for bags, the local authorities will act on those complaints, investigate the evidence and give advice: that is the approach. If, as Dave Thompson said, advice is ignored over and over again, a local authority may have no option but to take action. Nevertheless, as Michael Russell suggested, the best long-term solution is to continue in that vein. This is not a money-making exercise, although it is about raising cash for good causes when bags are sold by retailers. The money does not come to the Government. Likewise, local authorities will want to adopt a light touch.
I hope that you will make that clear to each local authority in a gentle but forceful way.
Yes. We will continue to work with our local authorities on taking a sensible and proportionate approach. However, we expect that if people continually flout the regulations and ignore advice, local authorities will act on that.
The cabinet secretary will recall that I opposed the measure when it first came in, but in mitigation expressed the hope that I would be proved wrong at the end of the day.
It does not surprise me that there has been a huge drop in demand, because that has been the case in other countries where the measure has been introduced. In some countries—I am thinking of Ireland in particular—demand levels rose considerably again over two or three years.
I have no problem with what the instrument seeks to do, and I absolutely agree with the continuation of the light-touch approach as the right way forward. However, if demand started to rise again—I think that we all hope that it does not—how would we use the light-touch approach to try to stop that increase?
The previous conversation about the light-touch approach was to do with compliance, whereas your question is more to do with what happens if the behaviour change over time is not as positive as it is in the early stages of policy implementation. One hopes that that will not be the case. I said to the committee previously that we will keep the matter under review as the years go by. There are options for revisiting the legislation with regard to implementing a minimum charge in the first place—whether it should be raised above 5p in the future—and what kind of materials the bags are made of.
There are other ways in which the policy objectives can be pursued if, over time, it turns out that we are not achieving, under the existing regulations, what we want to achieve. Thankfully, there is no sign of that happening just now.
You mentioned the experience in Ireland. Many countries have put such a measure in place, and I am aware of only positive stories, but we will keep the matter under review.
It is good to know that all of us, from humble back benchers to cabinet secretaries, keep in touch with the realities of life by doing the shopping—or the messages, depending on which part of Scotland we come from.
Do you have any thoughts about the designated charities that supermarkets have chosen. The committee has raised the question whether the charities should be linked to environmental work. It seems that some of them are not.
Many of the charities that are chosen have environmental roles to play in our society and communities. The committee may recall that we debated the issue of some retailers having existing relationships that we did not want to disturb. We felt that if a retailer wants to give to its existing recipients a donation resulting from the charge, the regulations should not exclude that possibility.
We indicated clearly in the regulations that good causes could include environmental causes. As I said, many retailers support environmental causes—for instance, Tesco supports Keep Scotland Beautiful. We hope that millions of pounds that were not previously being provided will go towards good environmental causes.
Thank you for that. As there are no further comments, we move seamlessly to item 3, which is to consider motion S4M-12647.
There is an opportunity for formal debate. As you all know, only the politicians on the committee and the cabinet secretary can speak—officials cannot. I invite the cabinet secretary to speak to and move the motion.
I thank the committee for the questions, which were all very relevant. I think that it is fair to say that we warmly welcome the progress that has been made so far.
I move,
That the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee recommends that the Single Use Carrier Bags Charge (Fixed Penalty Notices and Amendment) (Scotland) Regulations 2015 [draft] be approved.
If no members wish to comment, I ask the cabinet secretary to wind up.
I thank the committee for its co-operation.
Motion agreed to.
The committee’s report will confirm the outcome of the debate. I thank Richard Lochhead and his official.
Common Agricultural Policy (Direct Payments etc) (Scotland) Regulations 2015 (SSI 2015/58)
Item 4 is consideration of a Scottish statutory instrument. The committee previously considered the instrument on 4 March and elected to write to the Scottish Government. We have now received the response. I refer members to the paper and invite comments from the committee.
Again, I thank the cabinet secretary and the Government—[Interruption.]
I am too late—they have gone.
I commend the cabinet secretary for the steps that he has taken, in particular to reassure us that in introducing a further statutory instrument to correct the error, if I can put it that way, no farmers who have taken action so far will be disadvantaged or penalised in any way. We were all hoping for that assurance, so I am very happy with the action that has been proposed.
No other members want to comment. Does the committee agree to make no further recommendations on the instrument?
Members indicated agreement.
09:56 Meeting suspended.