Chamber and committees

Absolutely. That was the result of work by Zero Waste Scotland. Alex Quayle can give us more detail on that.

I think that the correct process for bringing forth legislation of this complexity is to first enable, as the bill does, the start of that conversation. If one does not do that, one will end up in a situation in which councils and businesses are asked to invest a substantial amount of time to undertake the development of legislation that may never get through the Parliament; it may not happen. That would be the wrong way around. You would be asking stakeholders to design a process that we did not even have the powers to implement, and you would be sitting in a committee much like this asking councils to develop something that you would not even know whether you had the powers to implement.

We must understand that we have these enabling powers so that we can then say to councils, “We have the powers to implement this. You can have that certainty. Let us work on the detail together.” If you had it the other way around, you could do a whole lot of work without those powers in place, and how would you prioritise that work?

The bill brings forward 11 provisions—I have just counted. Several of those have provisions underneath them for bringing policy forward. There will be separate co-design processes for different elements. For example, under the single-use charges, the initial policy that we are looking to bring forward is a charge for single-use cups. The process for developing that with businesses, householders and local authorities is separate from the process for developing a common code of practice for local authorities and waste, for example. That would be separate from developing targets or, indeed, from developing the reporting for waste and so on.

The bill has many provisions. There will not be a single co-design process. As we bring forward each of the policies under the bill, each will have its own timescale. I believe that those will be enumerated in more detail in the route map. Maybe one of my colleagues can elaborate on that.

All of that would require development. The costs that are outlined with regard to the bill include those relating to the development of those policies and the engagement that is required for them, as well as enforcement costs down the line. The framework bill sets things in place so that we can develop processes for the next time a product like a single-use vape is produced.

There is no day on which this will be finished; we will always be on the journey towards a circular economy. The bill takes us to the next step by creating the enabling powers. The financial memorandum shows the funding for the next step in relation to the horizon that we can see. For every step after that, as each regulation is brought to the Parliament, there will be impact assessments and the details will be scrutinised.

Absolutely. Extended producer responsibility for packaging, which, I am afraid, does not roll beautifully off the tongue, is a groundbreaking provision that is being brought in, as you correctly said, at UK level. It is a polluter-pays scheme. The idea, at the simplest level, is that all producers of packaging will pay fees to a UK-wide scheme administrator, which will take those fees and allocate them to local authorities all over the UK so that they can run efficient and effective household packaging and collection services.

Those matters are still very much under discussion, and I understand that the discussions are going well. I have been pushing for the process of allocation to be transparent and to take into account the geographic nature of regions—I am thinking, for example, of the additional challenges that lower-density population regions such as islands and rural areas face—so that each council gets a fair allocation. My understanding of the process so far is that that has been accepted by the four nations and that the allocation of the funding will go directly from the scheme administrator to local authorities. That is my understanding of the state of those discussions. I am very keen that that is additional money, and I have discussed that in the conversations that I have had with my ministerial counterparts in the UK and the other nations. If we are asking councils to do more, they need that additionality so that they can implement the scheme.

I understand that. Councils have been on a journey towards the existing code of practice. Looking ahead, we absolutely need to go through the co-design process. One of the challenges of co-design is that one has to wait for the outcome of that process. In the financial memorandum, we have given some illustrative examples of where we would like to start, such as the single-use coffee cup charge, and food waste and food reporting. Where we know that that is the provision that we intend to work with initially, we have provided funding around those initiatives.

The open question is, after those initial initiatives, how would all of us, collectively, like to move forward? After reporting on food waste has been achieved, what other sectors would be interested? Members have talked to me about textile waste, construction waste and so on. We could take forward reporting on those things after we have brought in reporting on food waste. In the financial memorandum, we have presented all the information that we have about how we are going to start the journey strategically, and about specific provisions, where we already know what those will be.

From the bill?

I think that a lot of people are looking at the detail of the policy, for example on what exactly we are looking at in the code of practice for local authorities. What exactly are we expecting from local authorities in terms of targets? Which single-use items are we talking about, and how will those charges look? We do not have that information; getting it is part of the co-development process. When people say that they are uncertain about this, I interpret that as meaning that they want to know exactly what the code of practice will look like. I want to know that too, but that will be the outcome of that co-design process.

No, I do not worry that that will lead to less control over costs. It will lead to more specific and detailed certainty around the costs. If I were to set out now what we thought the costs would be for something that was, for example, five years down the road, you would be right to say, “Do you know what? I don’t think you can stand up those numbers.” The bill will put us across the starting line, and we can then dial into each project—the one for single-use cups, for example—and work out exactly what the costs will be. We will co-develop those projects, so the costs will emerge as options emerge.

For example, we all have experience of the plastic bag charge. It is for businesses alone to implement that charge; local authorities are not involved in implementing it. Businesses can recoup the full costs that they feel are needed from the charge, and then they give the rest away, according to the rules. That is an example of a version of implementation that has almost no cost to local authorities, because the costs are managed in a specific way, but the charge could have been implemented in a totally different way so that there were costs.

As we develop the policies, there will be substantially different options on the table, hence the range. When we go through the co-design process, local authorities might say, “We want to be involved in this one, and we will incur costs,” or they might say, “No, let’s leave that one with business, and that’s where the costs will be.” If I were to specify, that is where the inaccuracy would come in. I need to be accurate in setting out the strategic costs of putting in place this strategic bill, and we will get into the specific costs of each policy at the correct time, as the policies are developed.

I have not had a meeting with her on that subject, but all the paperwork, including the financial memorandum, is shared with ministerial colleagues so that they can see what is coming down the line. This is a process of development, so the specific cost for each policy will be scrutinised at the appropriate time, following the appropriate process.

I keep coming back to charging for single-use cups, because we have the excellent example of the plastic bag charge. That is the kind of provision that we are looking at. That charge does not incur costs for local authorities, except in relation to some enforcement. Implementation sits with businesses, which are allowed to recoup the costs. There is everything from capital investment and the recycling improvement fund—which are, of course, the subject of budget negotiations—all the way down to measures that can be implemented substantially without Government expenditure. Given that the bill covers that range, each piece will need to be scrutinised, and that, of course, is exactly the process that will be followed.