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The bill does not say that reviews must be carried out every 10 years; it says that they must be carried out “not less than” every 10 years, so there is flexibility.

Environmental Standards Scotland is already the body that can advise us on bringing forward any review of targets. We set ESS up to be an independent advisor to us on whether we are meeting certain Government objectives and whether our legislation and policy direction in the area are working. I would have thought that ESS has the ability to advise that we review our targets anyway, but I can take the question away and bottom out with my officials whether it actually has that capacity or power, if you like.

It comes back to the whole responsiveness thing—if it looks as if targets are perhaps not as robust as they could be or they need looking at again, should it be our independent body, ESS, that is allowed to say to the Government, “We want to see a review of that target”? However, nothing in the bill says that there has to be a review every 10 years. That is a minimum. The targets have to be reviewed “not less than”—that is legal-speak—every 10 years. I will take the question away and look at whether Environmental Standards Scotland has the ability to hold us to account in that way, but it seems reasonable to me.

Yes. You are also welcome to come and speak to me if you want to raise anything before stage 2 to bottom out that particular issue.

Yes, I am.

It is important to say that we do not have that clarity from DEFRA. I want to bottom that out with DEFRA, because, as it stands, our assessment is that the provisions in regulation 9D do not permit individual sites in the site network to be adapted in the ways that might be required to mitigate the effects of climate change. They do not allow us to modify the boundaries of sites or to remove features from site citations. Nothing that has come from DEFRA has given us any confidence that we would have the ability to do that on the basis of regulation 9D. If we had that confidence, we would have taken a different view, but we have bottomed that out and we have no idea what DEFRA is doing in relation to that. In saying that, we are in communication with DEFRA and are asking it those questions directly.

This particular power would allow us to mitigate the effects of climate change in a responsive and dynamic way, modify the boundaries of sites, remove features from site citations and do everything else that I have set out as part of our ability to protect nature, habitats and species in an agile way.

The targets will be set out in secondary legislation should the bill pass. We are at the end of a parliamentary term, and the chances are that there will not be time to enact secondary legislation before the next session. It will be quite sobering for the new Parliament in 2026 that a bill has been passed which sets out in law a requirement to have statutory targets. The Parliament will have to discuss what those targets should look like, and it will be able to look in a granular way at each specific target and assess how far we can go on it. Some agility will be associated with the ability to scrutinise targets as well as to set them out.

Additional targets might end up being associated with the bill as it passes through the process. I do not know how the bill will evolve—that is the beauty of parliamentary work. I keep going back to the fact that the bill will allow us to respond in an agile manner. It will allow targets to change or be ramped up should there be particular pressures or changes in technology, or if new data sets or evidence were to become available. We might need to say that we will do more on a particular target in response to a “State of Nature” report, for example.

A great deal of work is being done by our academic institutions and by the Government with the likes of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, other public bodies and NatureScot to gather more data that will allow the Parliament and the Government to make decisions quickly and in an agile manner.

Yes. As I said, the legislation has been drafted in a way that allows us to modify the topics and add other topics. It is important to recognise—I am not telling the committee anything that it does not realise—that threats can come to species and changes can happen very quickly. Climate change can have an effect on a particular species very quickly, and the displacement or removal of a species’ feedstock into other waters can have an effect. There may be an explosion in the population of a particular predator, and that could have an impact on a species very quickly. That part of the bill allows for agility—I will keep on saying that word—to be able to respond to things and to look at the evidence and the trends, and the pressures that particular species are facing.

Of course.

I heard that mentioned.

I am happy to answer that, convener. I will take you through the substantive changes to the current regulations for Scotland. The first thing, crucially, is that the timeline is revised to launch the DRS in October 2027. Glass is removed from the scheme. The minimum container size has increased from 100ml to 150ml. Producers will be required to register with the scheme administrator rather than SEPA. Supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores and newsagents will be required to host return points unless their premises are less than 100m₂ in size and in an urban area. Take-back services may be provided voluntarily and organisations must register to operate take-back services.

I mentioned the designation of the new scheme administrator, UK DMO. It will have additional functions. The scheme administrator must issue a logo and a machine-readable code, and it may issue a logo identifying multipacks containing scheme articles. It will determine the deposit level, which may be a flat or variable rate. Those who want a review of the rate can request one from the scheme administrator. Any scheme administrator will also determine applications for an exemption from operating a return point.

Those are the substantive areas in which there will be a change.

The most substantive change is the removal of glass. We want recycling rates for glass to accelerate and improve. The Scottish Government, as has been well documented, wanted to introduce a scheme in 2024. It would have been up and running, I think, in March 2024. We have effectively lost a year of deposit return items being recycled, so that has had a material impact on our recycling targets in the past year.

The biggest difference is the exclusion of glass. That is why Wales has decided not to go forward with the regulations as we are. Its recycling rates are very good—they are the best in the UK. Wales wanted to include glass in order for the scheme to make a material difference to its recycling rates.

As you will remember, convener, the previous UK Government denied an exemption from the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 to allow glass to be included in the Scottish scheme. Our view is that a deposit return scheme that deals with aluminium cans and plastic bottles but without glass is better than no scheme at all. It is expected that the implementation of a deposit return scheme will take 0.8 megatonnes of CO₂ out of Scotland, and it will increase the recycling rate of those materials to about 76 per cent. There were different estimates for the previous regulations, which included glass. We are also working on implementing the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 and are working with local authorities on how we can have general improvement in recycling rates. A number of strategies are being taken forward.

There is no doubt that a UK-wide deposit return scheme, which we have signed up to in concert with the previous UK Government, the current UK Government and the Northern Ireland Government, will make a substantial difference to recycling rates. However, the impact will not just be on the recycling rates but on the amount of litter, as I mentioned in my statement. As you know, a lot of litter, particularly on our roadsides and in our coastal areas, is single-use drinks containers of the type that will be in the scope of the regulations. I am looking forward to a situation in which we no longer see cans and bottles littering our streets and our roadsides, because they have a material value associated with their return.