(Edinburgh North and Leith)
(SNP): It was announced in the Scottish Parliament yesterday that
Scotland’s deposit return scheme has had to be delayed until
October 2025. That is the latest estimate of how long it will
take England to finally catch up with the devolved Governments
and introduce its own scheme. Some would call this dithering and
delaying, and I know that that is what a great many environmental
organisations think.
Keep Britain Tidy estimates that every day of delay leaves an
extra 140,000 cans and bottles littering Scotland. This delay,
forced on Scotland by the UK Government’s refusal to grant an
exemption under the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020,
means that tens of millions of those items will be littering
Scotland’s lands and seas for many months to come. After several
years of discussion with Scottish businesses and, indeed, nearly
two years of discussion with the UK Government and officials
under the common framework set-up, and with no justification
offered for the refusal to agree to the exemption, the Secretary
of State for Scotland swooped in at the last minute, like some
sort of toff Tarzan, to squash the scheme—many examples of which
can be seen across the world—and demanded that glass be removed
from it, thus forcing Scotland to wait for England’s scheme to
become operational. Given that no regulations outlining how
England’s scheme will work have yet been laid, the estimated
delivery date of 1 October 2025 in England looks optimistic, to
put it kindly.
Once upon a time, we supposedly had the most powerful devolved
Parliament in the world. Now we are not permitted to run a
packaging recycling scheme. Will the Leader of the House perhaps
permit a debate on devolution and its future, given that her
Government apparently intend to continue to intervene and claw
back to the centre powers that the people of Scotland wanted to
be devolved to their Parliament? Can devolution now work only if
the devolved and Westminster Governments are in complete
agreement? Is that really what the people of Scotland voted for
in 1997 in their devolution referendum? If the UK Government are
prepared to intervene on a packaging recycling scheme, what
confidence can we have that any of our Parliament’s policies will
not be struck down in a similar way?
I have further questions. Why were so many MSPs and MPs in the
right hon. Lady’s party enthusiastic about including glass in
deposit return schemes previously —commitments to that were even
included in the manifesto on which she stood—and what exactly has
changed their minds? Acting on the advice of which bodies or
individuals did the Secretary of State intervene, and with which
environmental organisations did he discuss this before he
intervened? Why has the inclusion of glass apparently been
permitted for the scheme in Wales? I would be very grateful for
some answers.
The Leader of the House of Commons (): I shall be brief. The
Secretary of State for Scotland is having these discussions with
the Scottish Government first because he is standing up for the
interests of Scottish business, which the SNP is not, and
secondly because the scheme devised in Scotland will actually
reduce recycling rates. As the hon. Lady will know, the delay in
the scheme has been caused by the Scottish Government’s not
engaging with the UK-wide scheme that would need to be devised
because of the UK internal market. She need only go and listen to
businesses in her constituency to understand their concerns about
the Scottish scheme, and to hear their calls for compensation
from the Scottish Government because this issue has been handled
so poorly, and because of the investments they have had to make
only to have the rug pulled from under their feet.
I also noted this week that the Auditor General for Scotland has
revealed that the auditors are unable to account for billions of
pounds’ worth of covid-19 business support grants that were
handed to the Scottish Government, because of gaps in data. The
SNP has made it impossible for the auditors to understand fully
how £4.4 billion in grants and business reliefs were distributed
between March 2020 and October 2021. I say thank heavens for the
Secretary of State for Scotland, because he is standing up for
the interests of the businesses and residents of Scotland.
