Chamber and committees

This will not drift. There is a climate emergency, and the bill puts in place a raft of work that will be done in consultation with stakeholders. I am making the point that the deadlines that I have been asked to put in the bill are outwith the control of the Scottish ministers, because a lot is dependent on parliamentary process and the timetable that Parliament decides for dealing with the regulations.

No, I will continue. In relation to amendments—

I will have to go back and ask the new Minister for Parliamentary Business when that bill will be brought in, because I do not have that information. Obviously, we have also had a change in ministerial appointments, and I will need time to reach out to the new people in post and get that answer for Ms Lennon, but I will ask my officials to look into that for you.

I also want to point out that the UK Parliament is looking at the Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill. If and when that becomes law, the Scottish Government will have to ensure that our policies and guidance comply with that. If anything, the bill seems likely to give us less freedom to set out our own approach rather than more.

I support the intention behind the amendment and I am happy to consider what more we can do within the existing frameworks that I mentioned, including through guidance in relation to the sustainable procurement duty. Through the forthcoming Scottish human rights bill, I will also do what I can across portfolios to influence what happens in relation to the sentiments that Maurice Golden has expressed. However, I cannot support the amendment as it is written for the reasons that I have said.

This has been a really interesting discussion. Although I cannot support amendment 128, which Ben Macpherson is not pressing anyway, I recognise the resource limitations that local authorities and other bodies face. The Scottish Government faces its own limitations, as we know.

I will just outline some of the work that we are doing to support local authorities in their efforts with regard to the circular economy. We have supported 25 councils to reduce waste and increase recycling rates through the £70 million recycling improvement fund, and we expect those projects to deliver significant results locally over the coming years. Moreover, co-designing the new household recycling code of practice with local authorities offers a platform to discuss the issues raised in the discussion that we have had about finding new ways of working, as well as the associated costs, feasibility and affordability.

Adjustments to waste management, recycling and reuse services, alongside the transition to a mandatory code of practice, will be closely tied to the implementation of the extended producer responsibility with regard to packaging. That initiative will assist in financing those services by ensuring that producers, not the taxpayer, are responsible for the costs of packaging. It is expected to be a significant funding source for local authorities—indeed, the estimate is £1.2 billion across the UK—and it will help improve quality, consistency and, therefore, the value of the material that local authorities are collecting.

Convener, I see that you are winding me up, so I will do so.

The point of the co-design in each local authority area is for us to be able to set targets and a strategy to achieve them through working with the people who will be achieving them. We want to set those targets for local authorities. In certain local authority areas, we could go further than we said that we would go under the targets that Mr Golden mentioned. Certain local authorities could say that they can make a substantial leap to go well beyond the targets that they were aiming for previously.

It is important that discussion, consultation and a co-design process should take place. Before me, Ms Slater was working on developing the strategies, and I will continue that work with COSLA and local authorities. We could aim to go further.

I have a point of clarification, convener. In response to amendment 12, I said that I had already moved amendments in which we proposed to remove penalties to local authorities. I was away ahead of myself. I have not done that yet; that point will be dealt with in group 11.

I agree whole-heartedly that preventing human rights harm and ensuring environmental due diligence are values that should be upheld. Our national performance framework has a very clear commitment to a Scotland in which rights are respected, protected and fulfilled and a significant body of rights, derived from the European convention on human rights, is already hard-wired into the devolution settlement. In fact, it is already unlawful for Scottish public authorities to act in way that is incompatible with those rights. Strengthening our rights framework will be the subject of the Government’s forthcoming Scottish human rights bill.

Our national procurement legislation, the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, established a national legislative framework for public procurement to support sustainable economic growth by delivering economic, social and environmental benefits. The sustainable procurement duty in the act requires contracting authorities to consider and act on opportunities to improve economic, social and environmental wellbeing. Contracting authorities with a procurement spend of £5 million or more in any financial year must set out, in an organisational procurement strategy, how they intend to comply with the sustainable procurement duty and their policy on the procurement of fair and ethically traded goods and services. They must also report on compliance with this strategy in their annual procurement reports. In the interests of transparency, both procurement strategies and annual procurement reports must be published.

In addition to national procurement legislation, legislation that is derived from European directives already includes a range of mandatory and discretionary grounds on which economic operators can be excluded from procurement. In transposing the directives, Scotland took a distinct approach from other parts of the UK, requiring contracting authorities to include conditions that relate to performance of the contract, to ensure that the economic operator complies with environmental, social and employment law, specifically the International Labour Organization standards and other international conventions, such as the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

The Scottish Government slavery and human trafficking statement, which was published in December 2023, outlines the strategies and actions that we have taken to identify, prevent and mitigate slavery and human trafficking in our own operations and supply chains. We support compliance with procurement law through on-going guidance and training that alert a contracting authority to supply chain risks and provide a route map to addressing such risks and ways to improve working practices and environmental impacts in their procurement activity.

Therefore, given the range of legislation that is already in place, which I have outlined, and the Scottish Government’s proposed human rights bill, our view is that this new duty on public bodies would be unnecessary as well as potentially confusing and burdensome for public bodies.

I will first deal with the Scottish Government’s amendments in the group—amendments 165 and 166, which relate to recommendations from the committee and COSLA. I hope that the amendments will reassure members that we have listened carefully to those views and have shown willingness to address an issue that became clear at stage 1.

Section 13 of the bill inserts a new section 47B into the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to give ministers the power to make regulations to set household recycling targets for local authorities. Amendment 165 will remove the power for the Scottish ministers to include in such regulations a provision to impose financial penalties on a local authority that misses the household recycling targets.

Amendment 166 makes a consequential change to new section 47B by removing wording that would have allowed ministers to make provision for local authority appeals against the imposition of targets, as such provision is no longer required. That follows constructive engagement between the Scottish Government and COSLA on the development of an improvement programme in relation to household recycling.

I am satisfied that the principles that have been agreed for that programme will help to meet the bill’s aims of improving recycling and increasing accountability. In a letter of 16 April, Councillor Gail Macgregor, who is COSLA’s spokesperson for environment and economy, confirmed the political commitment of COSLA members to that approach—when I was given responsibility for the bill, my first meeting about it was with Councillor Macgregor, and she reiterated that commitment when I met her on 30 April.

I turn to Mr Golden’s amendments 15 to 18. I understand his intentions with those amendments, but I will set out why I cannot support them. They would pre-empt the detailed consideration and consultation that will be required before any future statutory national targets are set.

Amendment 164 proposes that the Scottish ministers should be required to impose household waste recycling targets for local authorities by way of regulations that are made under new section 47B of the 1990 act, which section 13 of the bill inserts. The bill does not impose on ministers a duty to use that power. That reflects our intention—again—to jointly consider and co-design such targets with COSLA and the local authorities, which directly reflects the principles of the Verity house agreement.

That seems to me to be the right approach to take, and it is the approach that COSLA and local authorities want. It is incumbent on us in the Scottish Government to work with our local authority partners in order to realise their ambition and to support them in it. I therefore cannot support amendment 164.

Amendment 60 proposes that the Scottish ministers should be required to report annually

“on local authorities’ progress towards achieving”

any household recycling targets that regulations under powers that are introduced by section 13 of the bill set out. I agree that it is important for information on progress towards targets to be transparent and accessible. SEPA already publishes comprehensive annual waste statistics, including data on local authority household recycling rates, so amendment 60 is unnecessary. I hope that Maurice Golden will be reassured that annual statistics are in place and that he will not move his amendment.

Amendment 90, from Douglas Lumsden, proposes that the Scottish ministers should make regulations to impose waste management targets on local authorities. The regulations would also have to specify what additional funds or resources were to be provided to local authorities.

I have noted that the Scottish Government is committed to working with COSLA, in the spirit of the Verity house agreement, to co-design an appropriate and effective approach that would require collaboration on how targets were set and on how they are funded and achieved. I mentioned that in relation to Mr Macpherson’s amendment 128, which he sought to withdraw. We have agreed the principles of a planned improvement programme, including that it would provide a practical route for local authorities to plan to meet targets and to explore what will be required to deliver those targets, which includes potential funding implications. I therefore encourage members to vote against amendment 90.

I am nearly finished, convener; actually, I am not—I have two more pages of notes.

I will not be supporting amendment 167. Targets under new section 47B of the 1990 act will be imposed on local authorities, and targets that are set under section 6 of the bill will be imposed on ministers, so the amendment would have limited legal effect.

Amendment 168 would modify new section 47B of the 1990 act by requiring the Scottish ministers to solicit the views of the public in relation to draft regulations to set targets for local authorities. However, section 47B already requires ministers to consult the public.

I cannot support Sarah Boyack’s amendment 206. It does not appear to be in the spirit of the Verity house agreement, as it could potentially prevent the setting of different local authority recycling targets in consideration of individual local authority circumstances.

As for amendment 91, local authorities are responsible for their own procurement and contract management. As I have said, it is for them to be cognisant of any potential long-term changes that relevant policy will make. It is not clear to me why local authorities would require to cancel contracts in relation to the new provisions that section 11 of the bill inserts. I cannot support that amendment.