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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.

The bill is a framework bill, and it allows us to start the journey down the route of imposing charges on single-use plastics, for example. I cannot predict all the items that the Parliament and the Government may wish to impose charges on to get industry to report on the waste and surpluses that it produces. We are looking to start with food waste but, down the line, the Parliament may choose to look at other sectors and industries. The bill is the start of a journey, and each provision provides for taking specific policy actions in line with councils.

I can give you an example of a provision where that would be the case, which is on the reporting of waste and surplus goods. The provision involves putting a burden or obligation on businesses to report on their waste and surpluses. The arrangements for that would need to be developed with businesses. Such reporting is already undertaken voluntarily by many businesses, including Tesco, Hovis, Unilever and IKEA, so there are already industry examples of good practice whereby large businesses report on their waste and surpluses. Tesco has called for all businesses in its industry to do the same.

By engaging with businesses that already undertake that work and with other businesses in that space, we can develop what we think is industry best practice to support them. That is part of the process of introducing that particular provision on reporting on waste. However, I would, of course, be happy to dive into any of the other provisions that you are interested in.