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It is my view that the Scottish Parliament should be able to legislate on fully devolved matters and that the deposit in Scotland is 20p. That number has not been plucked out of thin air; it is the result of many years of work to develop the right amount for the deposit. When the UK Government sets its deposit, it would make sense for it to look at the work that we have done and to work together with us. We need to have co-operation and discussion on those things, but that is not what we have had. Instead, we have had an 11th-hour intervention saying, “We might change this”—

It depends on what the convener considers to be a majority decision. We know that the Welsh are considering a scheme along the lines of ours—for example, they have included glass. Are you measuring a majority decision by the largest nation? Are you suggesting that the largest nation should impose that decision, or that we are a group of four nations that should agree on a level that is based on how many nations wish to go ahead with a different scheme?

I think that that would have reduced scrutiny time, but I will pass over to Ailsa Heine for the detail.

We, of course, take industry confidentiality seriously.

It will have to go through the same process as every other SSI.

It absolutely has not been discussed on a four-nations basis, which is why the internal market act exclusion is so impossible for us, because the UK Government is saying, “You must comply with our deposit level,” but it has not even begun the work to establish what that deposit level will be.

Certainly. Gateway reviews are done periodically on a big delivery process such as the DRS. The purpose of a gateway review is to give a snapshot of progress on delivery, to help us to understand how our on-going engagement is working—both in delivering that project and in working with industry—and to give us guidance on how to move forward.

That gateway review was a snapshot of project delivery in March. Of course, since March, we have had substantial changes to the scheme, including the delay that was announced to 1 March 2024. Since then, we have also had the intervention through the internal market act, which has created a necessary change to our schedule.

In parallel with the gateway review—as part of the on-going assessment that we always do—we announced in April a set of changes to the scheme to address some stakeholder concerns. Work to deliver the programme necessitated those changes, and we revised the governance arrangement and put in place a system-wide assurance group, with the ministerial strategic assurance group and sector-specific groups. Those groups had already started to meet. We were working together towards that practical delivery.

We had developed the regulations that are being discussed today, which change the scope of the scheme, and bolster our resource. We have a much larger DRS team now to help to deliver that.

All the work that was done was focused on a 1 March delivery date. However, now, of course, we are looking at delivery in October 2025, with an entirely different set of legislation, which has yet to be defined. All the work that was done was to deliver the legislation as passed by this Parliament. Now, we have an entirely different scope, which is to deliver as yet unknown legislation—in October 2025, I hope, but, because the regulations have not yet been laid, we do not know that.

That is the situation. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since March, and we are in a different place now.

I will respond to that point, convener. It is not standard practice to publish gateway reviews, although that has been done on occasion during this project. I committed to the committee that I would respond with the findings of the review, and I have shared some of them with you today. That includes that the review identified significant blockers, such as the lack of a decision on IMA exclusion and the lack of a ruling on trading standards on shelf-edge labelling. I have also outlined our on-going work in that area. As the convener will recognise, there has been substantial change in the past three weeks and I would like the report on the findings to the committee to be up to date with the current context. Therefore, we will publish the findings and the response and will share those with the committee before recess.

That is an area of significant concern. As far as I understand it—Euan Page can keep me right—common frameworks existed before Brexit but have become even more important as we deal with the complexities of the internal market act. If we no longer have that mechanism, and the UK Government can impose restrictions that are based on the 2020 act more or less on a whim and without proportionality, evidence or impact assessments, I do not know where that leaves us in relation to our being able to work together as nations.

Perhaps Euan Page can add some detail.

I will need to turn to Euan Page for the answer to that question.