Extracts from Scottish Parliament proceedings - Dec 5

Extract from Scottish Parliament debate on Disability Equality and Human Rights

Clare Haughey (Rutherglen) (SNP):...Members might be aware of a report that was published in August this year by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and the Glasgow Disability Alliance. The report lays bare how soaring costs for basic commodities have disproportionately affected people with disabilities. Focus group participants highlighted the cost of buying essential assistive equipment such as powered wheelchairs or talking microwaves and the need to use more electricity for charging or using such equipment, and wheelchair users noted that the increase in taxi costs meant that accessing supermarkets has become much more expensive...

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Extract from Scottish Parliament (Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee): Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Mark Ruskell (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Green):...In the previous session of Parliament, the super-affirmative procedure was used in relation to the original deposit return scheme regulations that went through Parliament. The use of an enhanced procedure such as that gives stakeholders an additional opportunity to come in and give evidence to committees. With regard to decision making around the regulatory procedure in the bill, was the use of the super-affirmative procedure considered as an option?

Janet McVea (Scottish Government):...The example does not relate to durable goods, but to some specific evidence from the “Food Waste Reduction Roadmap Report 2022”, which is published by WRAP. It reports on the voluntary Courtauld agreement. More than 350 significant organisations across the UK participate voluntarily in that agreement to help drive efforts to reduce food waste. The majority of the large retailers, including supermarkets, are involved. I will quote one piece of evidence in the 2022 report, which is that those retailers that provided tonnage data—those that reported on their food waste tonnage for 2018 and 2021—reported a reduction in food waste of over 19,000 tonnes, or about 8 per cent. That is equivalent to almost £62 million-worth of food that did not end up in waste. Some of the actions taken to achieve that include redistribution, for example. However, production of that tonnage of food would have been associated with the equivalent of 60,000 tonnes equivalent of GHG emissions...

Lorna Slater (Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity):...The requirement is for businesses to publicly report on the waste and surplus of food; again, that is looking at large businesses. Several large businesses already do reporting of that kind voluntarily, including Tesco, Hovis, IKEA and Unilever, so there are already good models of what that looks like in the voluntary space. About 300 UK businesses already do voluntary reporting and about 60 of those operate in Scotland. It is about taking that good practice and spreading it across industry so that all large food-related industry businesses have to do such reporting...

...As we have already discussed, the intention is to use the provision on reporting of waste and surpluses in the first instance for food waste in particular, targeting those waste streams that have the biggest environmental impact. We are considering larger businesses—I have given the examples of businesses such as Tesco, Unilever and Hovis, which already carry out such public reporting. It should be really clear what kind of businesses and sectors we are looking at. We might look at the construction sector as a follow-on....

Lorna Slater:...A recent example comes from the regulations for the deposit return scheme, which allowed retail businesses of certain sizes to apply for exemptions and which exempted producers that produced fewer than 5,000 items of a particular product line. It is absolutely possible to draft regulations so that they target the businesses that have the most environmental impact, and that is the intention.

Bob Doris: It is really helpful to hear that that is already in the Government’s thinking. It sounds as if the convener and the minister might be in agreement for once.

The Convener: I am completely confused about how that will help me out. I do not understand how the Government will regulate a large company moving things around its supply chains as that suits it, unless a company is totally based in Scotland and cannot sell anything anywhere else.

It is brave to mention the deposit return scheme, because that related just to Scottish producers and not so much to producers around the world.

Lorna Slater: ...The deposit return scheme also covered importing goods, so the legislation had to have provisions on that. That scheme is a good example because the regulations for it stipulated the size of businesses that would be affected and gave a variety of exemptions for smaller businesses at the retail end and the producer end...

...That is something that I have been thinking about a lot. There are three basic approaches to problematic items, particularly single-use items. One approach is to ban them. That is the approach that we have taken to certain single-use plastic items, such as styrofoam cups. We are looking at that approach to single-use vapes at the UK level. Another approach is to introduce charges, which is what we did for single-use plastic bags and are thinking about doing for cups. Another approach is to use producer responsibility schemes, such as the deposit return scheme and the packaging scheme. Europe is considering such a scheme for textiles...

...The single-use cup charges are substantially different from the deposit return scheme. The deposit return scheme covered items that cross borders—imported goods and things that are carried across the border between Scotland and England. The single-use cup charge is for someone who is physically in Scotland selling an item to someone who is physically in Scotland. No border crossings are involved. We therefore believe that we can draft the legislation for single-use cup charges in a way that does not affect or come into contact with the internal market act and would therefore not require an exemption...

...There is certainly on-going dialogue. I myself have had dialogue with the UK Government about the deposit return scheme, wet wipes, single-use vapes and other matters. I come to officials for the dialogue that has been happening at official level...

...There are some examples of the process working. For example, we were granted an exemption in relation to single-use plastics, but we were not granted one in relation to the deposit return scheme, and the UK Government went ahead with the consultation on wet wipes outwith the common frameworks process. I have clearly been struggling with that process...

For context, OPEN HERE