Chamber and committees

As I mentioned in my opening statement, the cost of electricity will be one of the biggest unlockers for Scotland and the wider UK reaching our ambitions for net zero. There are not many silver bullets in life, but the cost of electricity is one in that it would make it affordable for people to go electric.

There are no delays. When I saw those comments, I arched an eyebrow. We want to get this right. We are doing the work, and we will be commencing the first statutory targets that we will bring forward in 2027.

I will give you an idea of the processes that have to be gone through in order to get this right. I am very much of the view that you can get it done quickly or you can get it done properly. It has to be done properly. It is very important that we do the analysis associated with those targets thoroughly, so that the targets are the right ones.

I will go through the process. We assess the scientific recommendations from the biodiversity programme advisory group, or PAG for short. It gives us policy advice and legal advice, and the monitoring and reporting implications associated with all the recommendations. There are scientific recommendations based on the current data that we have on the various species. We need to do all the impact assessments to understand the effects across the range of sectors and interests that might be impacted if we put those targets in place, and we need to have evidence-based targets.

Targets cannot be arbitrary. During the passage of the bill, we were under significant pressure to put those targets into primary legislation, but we wanted to put them into secondary legislation, because they need a lot more work associated with them to have the right evidence behind them.

One thing that I want to be absolutely clear on is that the targets are not action. The action is taking place already. The biodiversity strategy is being delivered. The funds and the workstreams associated with delivering on stemming biodiversity loss, including the nature restoration fund and all the various other programmes of work and funding, do not stop while we are waiting for targets to be decided on.

Targets are important, but they are not a blocker to the work. The work is happening now.

They will not all be delivered in 2027. A great deal of work needs to happen. Elizabeth Burgess may want to give some more detail on that, but they will commence in 2027.

Yes—let me have a wee look at my notes on that.

The provisional timetable for the targets is autumn this year to spring next year. We have engaged with stakeholders since the passing of the 2024 act. The draft regulations will be laid in late summer 2027 and, in the last quarter of 2027, we will have parliamentary scrutiny, the final regulations and the completion of that parliamentary process. Things will therefore start to happen within the next year or so as a result of the provisions in the 2024 act.

We had very in-depth discussions over the progress of the bill on that very issue. We had to balance the costs in relation to everything being the same across the whole of Scotland. It would mean a huge amount of change, including the replacement of bins, for example. We had to balance those costs and take views from local authorities as well, because that was something that came up in relation to consistency in what can be recycled where.

What we landed on, by involving local authorities in the strategy and the framework associated with it, is that there would be a ramping up of ambition. Local authorities that are doing really well in some areas will be able to give advice to and encourage other local authorities to do what they have done and to ramp up that ambition.

There are always a number of moving parts around waste. The implementation of the deposit return scheme will make a big difference in terms of our waste streams. I mentioned the extended producer responsibility funding, and what local authorities are doing with that is also going to make a big difference.

The biggest thing will be the code of practice on household waste recycling for Scotland, which I am hoping will address a lot of the issues. That is about the ramping up of ambition for local authorities while taking into account some of the geographical difficulties that there might be. Different local authorities may be able to do more of one thing than another because of geographical distances, difficulties or connectivity. We do not want to penalise councils that have different types of pressures, if I can put it that way.

I am not going to prescribe that. I think that it is really important that I do not, because the conversations and discussions around what the environmental body looks like and how the three organisations that we are proposing to bring together under one environmental body work together is something that really has to be led by them. The shadow board, the CEOs, the leadership teams and the staff of all three organisations need to make the decisions, because they know their business best and understand the services that they deliver. It would be foolish of me to dictate what that should look like, because I do not work for any of them.

We have given it an indication or broad outline. We do not want this process to take the whole parliamentary session, so, in our discussions with the organisations, we have given them a ballpark date—although I do not like that phrase—of 2029, which seems reasonable, and we have given an indication that there will be a few years of development. The timescale that I mentioned in response to the convener was mainly for the creation of the shadow board. Obviously, we want that to happen as quickly as possible, but I do not have an actual timescale for it.