Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will pass that question to Alex or Janet.

That is absolutely not the case. The legislation is only one piece of what we are doing. Our waste route map contains all the provisions that we are looking at, including matters around education, design, investment and research and development. Legislation is only one part. As I outlined in my opening statement, the bill sits in a very specific place between powers that we already have devolved in Scotland to do things—for example, as far as I am aware, we do not need any new powers to deal with a potential ban on single-use vapes; we already have those powers—and powers that are absolutely not devolved. We would not be able to bring in something such as extended producer responsibility for packaging in Scotland, because that is not a devolved matter. The bill is specifically narrow; it contains enabling powers to start work on legislation and provisions that fit within our devolution settlement for the very specific purposes of helping us on our journey to net zero, reducing waste and unlocking business opportunities for local authorities and the business community. The powers in the bill are to unlock those.

Once we know what those provisions are, we can target them very specifically on some very urgent matters. You will see from the financial memorandum how much handling disposable cup waste costs councils. We can all be outraged that perfectly good food and clothing is being sent to landfill and incineration instead of to those who desperately need it. The bill unlocks powers to take those things forward. It is right and effective that we unlock those enabling powers and target those specific areas of need efficiently, nimbly and proportionately.

It is correct, according to the best estimates and the best information that we have. The assumptions in the financial memorandum are spelt out and we are providing the committee with the best information that we have available.

We have not started the co-design process. Councils may decide that that is an outcome that they would like to go for. Through the co-design process, councils would need to decide that that is where they want to get to. We would then have to come up with a plan for how councils get to that point. I cannot anticipate what might come out of the co-design process.

They are not, because, as my colleague Alex Quayle pointed out, the first step is to design the co-design process.

The financial memorandum outlines the cost and potential benefits for each provision. On the overall economic benefits, I can, of course, enumerate to the member the urgency of reaching net zero and the overall intention of reducing waste in our society. Those inefficiencies where resources—

The bill’s provisions enable us to start the journey of looking at all the pieces that we need to put into place. Taking all those pieces through primary legislation would not be proportionate to what is being brought in, even in respect of parliamentary time.

We already have very good models for a lot of what is happening here. We have a voluntary code of practice, so bringing into legislation a more mandatory code of practice is a sort of logical next step. We are all familiar with the plastic bag charge and we could be bringing in a cup charge. The level of scrutiny needs to be appropriate to the changes that are being brought in, which is why we are proposing to bring in the detailed measures through secondary legislation. Scrutiny of secondary legislation can, to some degree, be as in-depth as committees and members wish it to be. We have had good recent examples of negative statutory instruments that underwent detailed scrutiny in committee and so on.

Those are economic benefits. When a business is wasting materials, that is, of course, a cost to that business. It is also a cost to society when we, as a society, are using the planet’s resources to produce goods that do not benefit anybody. There is a larger case to be made: a circular economy, which is the point of this, is one that does not have waste and which is efficient, so that all our resources are put to best use. Those provisions fit in a larger scope of work, with the route map work that the UK Government is doing. They are all designed to improve the economic case and reduce inefficiency in the system.

No. It is completely independent of the Scottish Government.

We certainly intend to allocate the remainder of the fund as efficiently and effectively as possible, but we would need to discuss what funding might follow on from that.