Chamber and committees

You said earlier that you were not sure whether any other part of Government gave Christmas gifts to staff.

Will you go away and check whether that applies to all the people who work underneath you?

Okay. I want to go back to the Harvard trip, Mr Rathjen. Have I pronounced your name correctly?

Have you got rid of those corporate credit cards? You said that they were “frozen”. Does that mean that you are getting rid of them?

One problem with the system is that people were able to go out and spend money and were not asked to provide receipts. For example, we heard that the former chief executive went for a meal with a water industry person from New Zealand in October 2022 at the Champany Inn near Linlithgow, and that the total cost for that meal for two was £402.41. I have been struggling to work out how you could arrive at such a figure for two people. Before I get into it, do you know what was eaten or consumed that night?

Yes. I have been looking at the menu at that fine establishment, and if you picked the most expensive item for starter, main course and dessert, you would get cold-smoked salmon at £12.95 a head, then move on to the chateaubriand, which is £16 per 100g, so if you got the minimum weight of 800g, that would be £128 for two people, then you would move on to a cheese course at £14.50 each. That all adds up to £202.90 for food, so where has the rest of the expenditure come from? Somebody should have queried the bill.

I got a written response because, at the time, I was not able to ask my question verbally.

I am asking for a review of the policy. I did not want to know what the policy is—I know what it is. People look forward to visiting this Parliament and they can go to a lot of time and expense in order to be here, so I think that we should do better by them.

Some events have had to be cancelled. The worst example is one that was sponsored, I think, by Michael Marra, on colleges, which was cancelled when people were on their way to the Parliament. People are kept waiting in the lobby, and events have to be curtailed.

I plead with the corporate body to have a review of the current policy, which seems to be devoid of any common sense.

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will give further consideration to allowing events to start in the Parliament building while members’ business debates are on-going. (S6O-03258)

I find myself today in a state of déjà vu. I recently spoke in the stage 1 debate on the cladding bill on issues around cladding and fire safety. I said in that debate that I would very reluctantly support the general principles of what I saw as a deficient bill but that that support would expire if improvements were not made. That is also my view of this bill, hence the sense of déjà vu.

This is yet another framework bill that leaves so many questions unanswered and which would give the Government sweeping powers to potentially do some pretty shocking things, all with little parliamentary oversight. The net zero committee makes that point very strongly and it is right to do so. It is hard to argue with the general principles of the bill, but the Government does not need legislation to have a strategy or set targets—it can just get on and do that.

I will start with the report from the finance committee. We have already heard some of it. The report states:

“Based on the evidence we received, the Committee believes that enforcement costs are likely to have been underestimated and, while we note the Minister’s argument that these powers would be used at local authorities’ discretion, they should nevertheless be accurately reflected in the FM. Ensuring that all local authorities are financially able to utilise the enforcement powers will be important if the Bill’s ambitions are to be delivered.”

It goes on to say:

“The Committee notes the cost estimates from Zero Waste Scotland of bringing all local authorities into alignment with the existing code of practice would be £88.4 million. We are therefore unclear how much more funding will be required to support local authorities to meet any ‘further requirements’ in the proposed mandatory code which the Scottish Government considers necessary to meet its waste targets.”

It is a pretty damning report and, not for the first time, the finance committee has slated a bill for not having realistic costs.

I have very real concerns about the sweeping powers that the Government wants to award itself. On charges for single-use items, that could include a container that people might get a takeaway meal in—a fish and chip tax. What about the proposed bin fines if people have the wrong items in their bins? I can see responsible people putting out their bins, only for someone else to come along and put something else in them, and then be hit with a fine. Also, what do we do about people who live in flats with communal bins—if the bins have the wrong items in them, do all those people get fined? I do not know. It does not say in the bill.

There is a suite of responsibilities for councils, but there is no financial recompense. The net zero committee made that point in its stage 1 report when it said:

“We are aware of the pressures local authorities are facing which makes increasing recycling performance challenging. The prospect of penalising councils for failing to meet targets seems counterproductive and only serves to exacerbate existing constraints on local authority budgets.”

I heard the minister earlier, so I take the point that she wants to make on board. The minister is giving me a thumbs up to that—good.

Indeed, Consumer Scotland said:

“Additional support may be needed for local authorities with higher levels of geographic isolation or deprivation.”

The point about geographic isolation has already been made.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the bill is the section about restrictions on the disposal of unsold goods. I do not know of any business that would want to deliberately have unsold goods lying around. It does not make economic sense. The whole section is incredibly vague, but we could have a situation where small and large businesses are being fined simply for having excess stock. That is highly likely to lead to a cross-border trade in stock just to avoid Lorna Slater’s unsold goods tax. However, Ms Slater has not spoken to the UK Government about the potential implications of the bill in relation to the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, or at least she had not when she gave a comment to The Scotsman on 9 March—maybe she has since. You would think that she might have learned her lesson on that from the deposit return debacle—apparently not.

There is a large section on littering from a vehicle; most of us would call that fly-tipping. That needs to be tackled, because it is a blight on our communities. Murdo Fraser, the Scottish Conservatives’ very own Great Uncle Bulgaria, will have more to say about that. [Laughter.] Sorry about that.

The bill needs to be improved, but we also need more in it and less in regulation. The Government has to be put on notice that it needs to spell out its thinking in more detail. A circular economy—[Interruption.] I am struggling to get through this. A circular economy is one in which we reuse more, throw less away and cut down on waste. We would all agree with that.