Chamber and committees

The benefits of a Deposit Return Scheme to businesses are not only a function of container numbers. As well as reimbursement to retailers through the handling fee, the benefit to businesses includes: savings from waste uplift costs for hospitality return points, reduced operational costs for private waste management companies (relating to uplifts from hospitality customers, albeit offset by reduced income from these activities), avoided compliance costs for producers, and income to the reverse vending machine service industry, as well as potential advertising revenue.

The economic model underpinning the figures in the amended final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment takes account of a number of factors, and costs and benefits do not necessarily increase in proportion to the change in input. In this case, the addition of 0.5bn containers increases costs through greater potential for fraudulently redeemed containers, but also increases the benefits both from more income from sale of materials and from unredeemed deposits.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07563 on 22 April 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

There are currently five Confucius Institutes hosted by universities in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is clear that deposit return schemes (DRS) are a form of extended producer responsibility (EPR). Therefore, producers will not have to purchase Packaging Waste Recycling Notes (PRNs) or Packaging Waste Export Recycling Notes (PERNs), or pay producer fees under packaging EPR once that is operational, for containers collected through our DRS. We are working with the other UK administrations to legislate to give effect to this position.

On the member’s questions regarding quantity and quality of glass collected through our DRS, I refer him to the answer to question S6W-07104, answered on 18 March 2022. Increased quantity and quality of glass cullet means more glass available to go to re-melt and we would expect Scotland’s glass industry to benefit from this economic opportunity.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

When calculating this increase, it has been assumed that the additional return points are manual return points, which have a lower cost than those with reverse vending machines.

Zero Waste Scotland carried out an intensive data-gathering process to arrive at the figure of 17,000 which remains our best and final estimate of the number of return points, prior to implementation. Although we modelled the figure of 37,000 to provide a sensitivity analysis for the economic case for our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), we are confident that we have identified all the larger retail sites, and if these additional return points did exist, they would overwhelmingly be manual return points. Circularity Scotland Ltd, the scheme administrator for our DRS who provided the figure of 37,000, agrees with this assessment.

We are aware that the percentage of eligible young people holding cards providing free bus travel under the new Young Persons’ Scheme varies between local authorities. There will be a variety of reasons for this, including different levels of local awareness and interest in the scheme and also variations in how different local authorities handle applications which come to them rather than through the national online portal, getyournec.scot, and Transport Scotland’s Pass Collect app (for people between 16 and 21 who already possess an active NEC or Young Scot NEC card). We estimate that the number of cards produced and dispatched for South Lanarkshire as of 19 April 2022 represented 14% of the eligible population.

We are working with our delivery partners, including the Improvement Service and local authorities, to identify and support improvements to both online and offline processes to maximise the uptake of scheme and get cards issued faster. One such measure, which we are encouraging, is to coordinate applications through schools on behalf of pupils. Some authorities are already doing this, including – we understand – South Lanarkshire for pupils moving up to secondary school.

The Scottish Government has made a commitment to reduce the disability employment gap – the difference between the employment rates of disabled people and non-disabled people - by at least half, by 2038. We set out this ambition as part of our wider disability employment strategy, “ A Fairer Scotland for Disabled People: Employment Action Plan ”. To halve the disability employment gap by 2038 will require around a 1 percentage point reduction in the gap every year.

Table 1 shows the disability employment gap for January 2016 – December 2016 to January 2021 – December 2021, sourced from the Annual Population Survey.

In 2016, our baseline year, the disability employment gap was estimated to be 37.4 percentage points. It is estimated to have reduced by 6.3 percentage points over the five years between 2016 and 2021, to 31.0 percentage points in 2021 – which is, on average, more than a 1 percentage point reduction each year. Based on performance and the labour market context to date, this suggests that we are on track to achieve our ambition to halve the gap by 2038. The reduction in the disability employment gap over this period was due to a larger rise in the employment rate of disabled people relative to the increase in the employment rate of non-disabled people.

Table 1: Disability Employment Gap, 2016 – 2021, Scotland

We introduced temporary Special Leave measures at the beginning of the pandemic to support our NHS colleagues and help the service manage infection levels.

Since March 2020, NHS Staff who have been absent due to COVID have been paid in full as if they had been at work.

Prior to any changes made in the future as we move towards living with Covid, we will engage with both NHS Scotland Employers and Staff Side representatives to ensure an effective and smooth transition back to standard Sickness Absence terms and conditions .

We are working to deliver our Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan (ESJTP) in the context of a fast-moving energy landscape, and will publish a draft ESJTP in autumn 2022. As our first Just Transition Plan, the ESJTP will set out what is needed to deliver a just transition for the sector, in line with the Scottish Government’s approach to just transition. This includes work to support retention and creation of access to green, fair and high-value work, as well as ensuring access to required skills and retraining opportunities. As part of this, we will identify the opportunities and risks of the transition, including those associated with transitioning jobs.

Throughout this, we remain committed to ensuring green jobs are good, green jobs, drawing on fair work principles, complying with high workplace standards and paying fair wages. That is true across the economy, but especially important in sectors vital for reaching net zero, such as the energy sector where much public investment is targeted.