Scottish Liberal Democrat leader criticises government's DRS policy

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today criticised the Scottish and UK governments for leaving businesses "caught in the middle" amid the DRS row, following Lorna Slater’s statement to Parliament on the Deposit Return Scheme.  

Speaking in Parliament, Mr Cole-Hamilton said:

“Both the Scottish and UK governments are at it. Businesses are caught in the middle and being messed about.

“The fact is that the Scottish Government made a pig’s ear of a good idea, long before it tried to use a constitutional row to muddy the waters around its own inadequacy.

“Retailers and producers could work with a scheme that is competent and which doesn’t throw up barriers, but that’s not what they had in front of them.

“Isn’t part of the problem that we have here two governments that are incapable of owning up to mistakes, for whom cooperation is a dirty word even if that is what hard-pressed businesses are crying out for?”