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No, I do not worry that that will lead to less control over costs. It will lead to more specific and detailed certainty around the costs. If I were to set out now what we thought the costs would be for something that was, for example, five years down the road, you would be right to say, “Do you know what? I don’t think you can stand up those numbers.” The bill will put us across the starting line, and we can then dial into each project—the one for single-use cups, for example—and work out exactly what the costs will be. We will co-develop those projects, so the costs will emerge as options emerge.

For example, we all have experience of the plastic bag charge. It is for businesses alone to implement that charge; local authorities are not involved in implementing it. Businesses can recoup the full costs that they feel are needed from the charge, and then they give the rest away, according to the rules. That is an example of a version of implementation that has almost no cost to local authorities, because the costs are managed in a specific way, but the charge could have been implemented in a totally different way so that there were costs.

As we develop the policies, there will be substantially different options on the table, hence the range. When we go through the co-design process, local authorities might say, “We want to be involved in this one, and we will incur costs,” or they might say, “No, let’s leave that one with business, and that’s where the costs will be.” If I were to specify, that is where the inaccuracy would come in. I need to be accurate in setting out the strategic costs of putting in place this strategic bill, and we will get into the specific costs of each policy at the correct time, as the policies are developed.

I have not had a meeting with her on that subject, but all the paperwork, including the financial memorandum, is shared with ministerial colleagues so that they can see what is coming down the line. This is a process of development, so the specific cost for each policy will be scrutinised at the appropriate time, following the appropriate process.

I keep coming back to charging for single-use cups, because we have the excellent example of the plastic bag charge. That is the kind of provision that we are looking at. That charge does not incur costs for local authorities, except in relation to some enforcement. Implementation sits with businesses, which are allowed to recoup the costs. There is everything from capital investment and the recycling improvement fund—which are, of course, the subject of budget negotiations—all the way down to measures that can be implemented substantially without Government expenditure. Given that the bill covers that range, each piece will need to be scrutinised, and that, of course, is exactly the process that will be followed.

The provision around littering from vehicles is a good example of tackling the type of culture that you are talking about. Research by, I think, Churchill Insurance shows that one in seven people admit to having littered from a vehicle. That is clearly a very high proportion of people. One of our challenges at the moment is that it is difficult to enforce provisions on littering from a vehicle, because the current legislation requires that you go after the vehicle owner. The bill proposes that we change that legislation to allow enforcement to be much more broad and effective. The intention is that that would act as a deterrent, because we know that, if people can be caught and get fined even a relatively small amount, it has a deterrent effect. All those things together, including better design and more effective enforcement, will help to move that dial along.

Yes, I will start, then hand over to colleagues for the details. With all enforcement provisions, there is always a discretionary element whereby the local authority can decide how much enforcement is appropriate for it. For example, in the household requirement space, we were looking at the contamination of recyclate. The bill provides local authorities with new tools, which they asked for, and new fixed-penalty notices to enable them to help people to comply with that so that recycling does not become contaminated. That is not only a source of revenue but a choice that they can make a business case for. If they are losing money because they have to sort contaminated recyclate or pay for it to go to incineration, they might choose to raise their enforcement costs. A lot of this gives the local authority discretion to choose how it wishes to do it. I will hand over to colleagues for the detail.

The costs are also subject to additional provisions being added over many years. For example, we discussed single-use vapes and how quickly that new product has grown in only the past couple of years. If those sorts of products were developed in the future, we would need to react to them. The bill would put in place the enabling powers to allow us to react to those kinds of products coming up in the future, but, of course, we cannot anticipate what they might be.

Correct.

As this is an enabling bill, it puts us in the position of being able to start that process.

That is a really good question, because a lot of the overall principle of moving to a circular economy is about the polluter-pays model. As previously discussed, a lot of the materials produced by companies have to be cleaned up at the expense of local authorities; that has to be handled, whether they send the materials to incineration or landfill or pick them off the street as litter. As we move to a polluter-pays model—for example, with extended producer responsibility, which is a UK-wide thing—businesses will need to pay into the extended producer responsibility model, so that we have the funding for local authorities to deal with it.

Applications to the recycling improvement fund are made by local authorities. A local authority develops an initiative—a proposal—that comes to the recycling improvement fund board, which established the fund. The board works with the local authority to establish whether the proposal will achieve the outcomes that we need—nationally, we need to hit our net zero targets—how feasible it is, the timescale and so on. Then, the board advises me on whether it feels that the application should be awarded.

The challenge with Glasgow is that, because it is our largest city, the impact of recycling in Scotland is largely affected by what we do there. Basically, if we get recycling in Glasgow right, we impact on our national targets, so it is really important that we get it right in Glasgow. We had discussions around the proportion of the recycling improvement fund going to Glasgow, because I wanted to understand exactly why it was worth doing; it is because it has that impact at national level. To meet our net zero targets, we have to make sure that money is being spent most effectively to reduce our emissions and increase our recycling, and that was the right place for the money to go to achieve that result.

I do not have a particular vision for that. It is for the SNIB to decide what it invests in.