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The member is absolutely right to be concerned about this point, and you can imagine that it was a great concern to me as well at the time. There was not only the investment but people’s jobs, including those of the employees of Circularity Scotland and all the people who had contributed to the work that they were doing to build IT systems and so on. All those people were affected by that decision so it was something that I took very seriously.

However, we were unable to proceed with the scheme because, when you are working on a deposit return scheme—as you will have heard in the chamber from other members—businesses need certainty. Deposit return schemes are enormous and complex, and our scheme will affect every single person in Scotland and tens of thousands of businesses. Anyone who sells, handles, purchases or in any way procures either drinks or their containers will be affected.

What businesses need is certainty. They asked for that at every single meeting with them and they asked us to tell them exactly how the scheme was going to work. With the partial and temporary exclusion, the UK Government threw a huge amount of uncertainty into the works. If I cannot even say what the deposit level will be in a deposit return scheme, I cannot go ahead.

When the First Minister and I sat down at a business round table after 26 May, when we got the letter from the UK Government laying out the temporary and partial exclusion, businesses said that they just could not deliver the scheme at all given the level of uncertainty. They said that, even with all the investment that businesses had made, they would now prefer to align with the UK.

There was no way with the conditions that were imposed on us.

The scheme would have gone ahead in August 2023 if the UK Government had granted a full exclusion on the timeline that we had previously agreed.

That is a fair question. It is almost certain that we will need to revise the regulations again anyway, because, for example, if the DMO is able to set deposit levels, we will need to remove our 20p deposit from the Scottish scheme. There may be other conditions. For example, we have written into the regs the exclusion of producers who produce 5,000 or fewer of a particular line. Our exemption rules are in our regulations. If the UK Government has completely different ideas about all that, we would have to repeal it all. Rather than coming back to the Parliament repeatedly, we will wait to see what the UK Government puts into its regulations and, provided that it is in line with what we have agreed through the common framework and our negotiations, we will bring forward those regulations, so that you will have to see them only once and will not have to look at them over and over.

No, thank you, convener.

The member might know that in England, Wales and Ireland, for example, male deer can be culled during the rut, and that has been the case for many years without there being any significant concern about welfare. It is common practice in the rest of the United Kingdom. There are no welfare concerns about hunting male deer at any particular time of the year over and above whether the deer is tired when you shoot it, which does matter to that particular deer. It is up to the stalkers—

Absolutely. The figures that I have come from the deer working group, which looked into the evidence to present the 99 recommendations. The change that we have seen since the 1950s is that roe deer and red deer are now established across Scotland. They have increased their ranges. In 1959, the estimated red deer population was around 155,000 individuals. By 1990, that estimate had doubled. In 1990, the total deer population was estimated to be 500,000 individuals. In 2020, the deer working group estimated that we were approaching 1 million individuals, so the figure had doubled again. That estimate was made in 2020, which is three years ago, so the figure is likely to be higher now.

I am not aware that any have been rejected.

I think that that is true—the land managers understand the need to manage deer. That is why so many deer management groups are largely voluntary organisations in which land managers have got together with their neighbours to figure out how to manage deer. The specific awareness of those exact 99 recommendations will vary, of course. Not all of them are legislative changes—some are changes to other policy areas or to the work of NatureScot and so on, so there is quite a broad range of actions.

The issue of how to reduce deer numbers in Scotland is not a simple one like legislating for people to wear seat belts; it is about a whole bunch of things, including legislation, to help to turn the ship in a slightly different direction. The existing legislation has not been sufficient to prevent the damage to tree growth, crops and human health and safety in the way that was hoped in 1959, when it was passed. The measures that we are considering today are part of that work.

When meeting stakeholders and deer management groups, I find that they are keen to emphasise that they understand the need for deer management and have concerns for animal welfare, as has been discussed. However, most of their issues are about funding and how to pay for things, or, if someone wants to manage deer differently from how their neighbour does it, they want to know how to resolve those interests. Mostly, very practical issues come up.

That comes back to the point that I made about the reason for there being a male deer close season. It does not exist because of welfare issues. OneKind says that it has no objection to removing the close season for male deer as long as all the requirements for high standards are adhered to. The SSPCA recognises the need for deer management in Scotland and is not against lifting the close season for male red deer, sika, fallow or roe deer as long as control is carried out humanely by individuals trained in the use of firearms.

The close season for male deer does not exist for welfare concerns; it exists because of sporting interest concerns, particularly down in England, so that deer can grow larger antlers for the use of the sporting industry. The close season for male deer, when it was implemented in 1959, was specifically negotiated by sporting interests for that purpose. It is not there for welfare reasons and therefore removing it does not have welfare implications. NatureScot has no reason to turn down authorisations, if you see what I mean—the measures were not achieving anything.

As I have said, the recommendations have come from an external body—the independent deer working group. The measure was identified as one of many measures that would help to get us towards where we need to be in Scotland on deer management. We need to increase our cull and reduce deer numbers, and this is one of the tools to do that.