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We have to move forward in good faith. We want to work with Ineos, which owns the site. As the constituency member, you are absolutely within your rights to ask such questions. Scottish Enterprise is progressing all the work that it is doing for the task force, and we are triaging all the approaches that come in. Scottish Enterprise is discussing with potential investors how they would want to operate, and discussing any issues that they might bring up around leasing parts of the site is part of that process.

To date, Ineos has certainly worked with us in good faith. It would not be in its interest to set punitive terms. If what it wants out of the process is to be the landlord, it wants to attract people into developing projects, via project willow or anything else, as that will secure it long-term tenancies. Putting punitive terms in place would not be in Ineos’s interest, because that could put off investment.

The previous minister is not making that up; she lived and breathed that legislation, and I took over the bill half way through.

The route map has been developed in collaboration with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, individual councils and other stakeholders. We did not want to take a top-down approach and say that all 32 local authorities have to manage their waste in a certain way. What we want is for local authorities to look at good practice that can be shared. The Verity house agreement is in place, and local authorities are in charge of managing their own business.

There will be geographical variations in the types of waste but SEPA and Zero Waste Scotland are doing an analysis of the current gaps in relation to the types of plastics, where they are being sent for reprocessing, whether there is opportunity for reprocessing in Scotland and what the associated volumes are. That will enable them to tell companies such as Celtic Renewables where the opportunities are and work with them to ascertain what they need, with an eye on the opportunity to expand their operations.

We have a really good waste sector in Scotland. We have companies such as Keenan Recycling and Celtic Renewables, which are expanding into different areas. This is an opportunity for them to do that with regard to plastics recycling. I will not reel off a lot of different types of plastics because I would be making it up if I did that, Mr Johnson. However, SEPA and Zero Waste Scotland are doing that analysis on behalf of the Government.

The Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 is robust. It allows flexibility. I do not think that regulatory change will be required but co-ordination of the waste streams will be needed. I refer not only to the waste streams from Scotland. If plastic waste recycling of the types that I mentioned happens in Grangemouth, that will also be an offer to the rest of the UK. There are gaps in the types of plastic recycling that can happen in the UK, not just in Scotland. That is why it is critical that the Scottish Government and the UK Government work together. The intelligence that the UK Government has on the waste streams in the rest of the UK will help the business case for any such projects.

It made commercial decisions. I and Ed Miliband tried very hard to get it to make different decisions—

Project willow, the task force and the work that has been done in the Grangemouth future industry board—which we have not mentioned, but which has involved stakeholders from communities, Scottish Enterprise, Forth Valley College and so on—have been really important. Not only have lessons been learned from that work; it has provided us with a potential blueprint for how we could work in the future.

We must also look at the just transition plan for Mossmorran and other places that you have mentioned, convener. We are always looking at how we could improve and be not only agile but proactive—we have a just transition plan associated with the oil and gas sector in the north-east, for example.

I add that the just transition plan for Grangemouth should be published next week, subject to Cabinet approval.

That is a question directly for them. What I would say is that the workers at the refinery will get other opportunities because of the high level of transferable skills that they have.

A good proportion of the workers at the refinery have always worked there, so they have never had to apply for other jobs or think about what other areas they might want to go into. They have gone from school into college and then into apprenticeships, and have been in the refinery for their whole working lives. That is a very unusual situation, but it is what the refinery has meant for Grangemouth.

The issue is not that the workers do not have transferable skills but that they have never had to think about applying for other jobs. They have never analysed the skills that they have and effectively marketed themselves to new employers. Work is being done at Forth Valley College to assist them to do that, and jobs fairs that are being run in association with that work are bringing in companies that recognise those people’s transferable skills and can offer them work.

However, Mr Coffey, you make a very good point. As marketable and highly skilled as those workers are, at the moment, a lot of the opportunities that they will be offered will require them to move. I come from a family that had to move because of a lack of a just transition—people will have heard me saying that my father was in shipbuilding and had to move in order to get work. The history of Scottish industry is full of stories of families having to relocate. It is not an easy thing to do and it is disruptive for families, so we want to ensure that people will have an opportunity to stay in the Grangemouth and Falkirk area—it is important to remember that it is not only Grangemouth that is affected; the surrounding area is affected, too. We want to prioritise medium-term opportunities for new businesses to come in, but we are also working with Petroineos, Forth Valley College and large Scottish companies who need workers with the skills that those workers have, so that as many of those people as possible can stay in the area.

First, it is not unusual for companies in development to have a landlord. If Ineos does not want to sell the refinery site and if it wants to be the site’s landlord, it will have responsibilities in relation to how the site is developed and it will have an awful lot of infrastructure that it must put right.

On issues that developers might be bringing up about the relationship with Ineos, I will come to Jan Robertson. A lot of the people who are speaking to us in the task force have already spoken to Petroineos. It is working in good faith with the people who approach it, some of whom have been redirected to the task force via Petroineos and vice versa. Conversations about what it would be required to do as a landlord are happening.

Petroineos wants development to happen on the site; it wants to work with us across both Governments, and it wants Scottish Enterprise to secure projects for it. That is in its interests as a landlord—it has not indicated that it would want to take forward any of the projects in project willow.

Quite a lot of work was done with Petroineos previously. When Michael Matheson was the relevant cabinet secretary, the Scottish Government funded studies on turning the site into a biorefinery. However, Petroineos’s board decided not to turn any of those proposals into reality—the shareholders on the board decided that they did not want to go there—and we are where we are, regrettably.

It is a source of regret that the refinery has stopped producing, because we have a situation where workers in the wider Grangemouth area are worried about what the future might hold—I do not have to tell you that, Ms Thomson. However, there have been constructive relationships between us and Petroineos, as well as between Petroineos and those who have come forward with proposals. I am not concerned, because companies build developments and have a landlord in lots of situations, and Ineos Olefins & Polymers will still have a footprint in the cluster.

I am not telling you anything that you do not know, but the Scottish Government’s £25 million just transition fund for Grangemouth is in place to support the progression of those projects, as well as ancillary work around the just transition and skills interventions in the area. As part of the Falkirk and Grangemouth growth deal, £50 million has been given for work in the wider area. Jan Robertson will be able to give the specifics of the detail on private finance.

We have an offer, because we have a fund that is in place to support some of the development that is needed to make such proposals commercial. That bridging funding is needed for the projects to get to the commerciality point.

Certain elements of what Mercedes Villalba talks about, such as the release of non-native game birds, are not covered in the bill. We wanted to keep the targets and the habitats regulations as the main part of the bill, and we do not have any plans to do anything on the release of non-native game birds. However, the target topics allow us the capacity to deal with invasive non-native species more generally, both at the moment and in the future, as the targets are set.

The bill is not prescriptive to that level of detail on actions. It provides the ability to set targets, which can be quite broad in nature and under which actions can sit. Invasive non-native species will have an impact on the health of a habitat or an ecosystem. That is why the PAG advised us to have those broad target topics. What you ask about is not ruled out; it is just not specified in the legislation.

First, biodiversity loss and climate change are inextricably linked and we must have protections and mitigations for them both. In every situation, decisions have to be made that take into account various pieces of evidence on environmental impact. The consent application processes are robust for offshore and onshore wind, but I think that we will be making them even more robust, particularly when there are consultations about things such as community engagement and the benefits that are associated with developments. Those consultations will become stronger as time goes on, because we need to be able to see that developments of any sort will not damage the environment and also that they put things back into the environment. For example, developers have taken action to restore peatland, and offshore wind developers are helping us with data collection on seabirds and fish species. Much of that is voluntary at the moment, but much more will become mandatory in that space—that is the trajectory.

One of the interesting things in relation to my portfolio is the restriction on how money that is associated with developments can be used for nature restoration. As a hypothetical example, let us say that funding has come from a wind farm as a result of its impact on the seabed. I cannot necessarily use that money for other mitigations in nature that would have a material impact on sea health, so it is very restrictive. However, things are adapting and changing, and I think that they are getting stronger.

You mentioned energy, so I will talk about what is happening in that space. The Scottish ministers have the power to amend the Habitats (Scotland) Regulations 1994 within the parameters that are set out in the UK Energy Act 2003 in respect of offshore wind activities only. However, that power does not allow for amendments to the regulations in respect of emerging technologies. A number of colleagues who represent the islands are at the committee today, including those who represent the Orkney Islands. The UK legislation does not allow for any flexibility with respect to the roll-out of our nascent wind and tidal energy technologies. That is because those technologies are not yet on the horizon for the UK Government—they are being developed in Orkney and in the waters off the Highlands of Scotland. We are aiming to plug a gap and give parity to other nascent technologies so that we can have flexibility. Rather than having flexibility in respect of one power generation sector, it is agnostic in respect of the means of power generation.

As a particular example, let us take wave technology. Scotland could lead on that once it becomes commercially viable, so I would not want to stymie it at all. At the same time, the protections in the bill, which are robust, will ensure that flexibility is not given for anyone to do anything that they want in our marine environment. We have to do something to reduce our impact on climate change, which is the biggest impact to our biodiversity.

Part 2 of the bill will give us flexibility around that and will bring it into line. It is agnostic about the technologies.