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This year, we will be commencing the packaging extended producer responsibility—EPR—scheme. It will have a transformative effect on the packaging industry, impacting the packaging that we see on the shelves of our supermarkets and shops and the funding model for local authority recycling and waste management.

Packaging EPR will implement the polluter-pays principle and place responsibility for funding the collection and disposal of household packaging waste on to the businesses that produce it. The order that is before you will enable SEPA to use civil sanctions in relation to offences under the UK EPR for packaging regulations—the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024—which came into force on 1 January 2025.

The order provides SEPA with access to civil enforcement measures, such as fixed and variable monetary penalties, rather than relying on criminal offences. It confers no additional responsibility on to SEPA but provides it with a wider range of enforcement powers to allow a flexible and proportionate response to offences. These powers will support the implementation of packaging EPR by ensuring that SEPA can take appropriate action against businesses that do not fulfil their obligations, enabling the correct funding to be available for local authorities and creating a level playing field for compliant businesses.

I am aware of general concerns about the time that it takes for applications to go through. You have highlighted, and I have previously mentioned, the work that the Scottish Government has done in doubling the capacity of the ECU. I have also had discussions with SEPA, which is currently working on its business plan to deal with the volume of applications that it is getting, not only from the pumped hydro storage sector but from all areas in which it has a responsibility to report.

You will be aware of the work that the Minister for Public Finance, Ivan McKee, and I have been doing to provide local authorities with access to the expertise that they might not have in-house but which they need in order to be able to make determinations on complex applications. Mr McKee is rolling out the planning hub model, not only for energy consents and applications but for planning applications more widely. The more complex applications get, the more individual local authorities might not have the necessary expertise in-house, but they will be able to procure it centrally to allow them to assess the applications that come before them.

A number of things are being done, but I take your point about SEPA in particular. You have provided me with some detail on the issue. Anyone from the pumped hydro storage sector who has concerns about it can raise them with me directly and I can speak to SEPA directly about it.

I have spoken to SEPA about its capacity in general in dealing with energy consents. SEPA is aware of the concerns about its capacity in that regard and is looking to manage its resource to cope with the demand and the complexity so that we can still get consents out to people in a timely fashion.

Douglas, this is why men need bags. I do not know your habits, what you take to the pub or—

No.

I am glad that you mentioned the extended producer responsibility. We will talk about that later in this session, but glass is included in EPR—the polluter-pays principle will apply to it. The DRS will work alongside EPR in that respect.

With EPR, funds associated with the recovery of packaging materials will go to local authorities, with the desirable outcome that local authorities will be paid by producers for a lot of the recovery that they do. I hope that, over time, producers will look at reducing the amount of packaging that they use so that they do not have to pay the fees, so there will be less for local authorities to recover.

Your point is well made. If you want details of the analysis of the cost, I am sure that we can provide them, but the point is that glass is covered by EPR but not by the DRS. Wales is taking a different view. As you will remember very well, when we looked at schemes across Europe, we saw countries that had decided to extend their schemes and include glass at a later date. At the moment, however, the scheme covers plastic and aluminium.

That could be the case. I look to my own area—a developer came in many years ago, promised a lot of things to the community for a development and never delivered. That sort of approach will sour a community’s view of all developments, regardless of who the developer is. There are lots of cases like that across Scotland. People are right to be angry when developers do that, but now we will have a law that they will have to follow. Whatever we bring forward in secondary legislation will be mandatory, and if developers do not comply, they will be jeopardising the success of their application.

I have regular discussions with my counterpart Huw Irranca-Davies, the Deputy First Minister of Wales, about this. He is very determined that Wales will have a scheme that includes glass, so Wales has opted out, as you rightly put it, of the DRS regulations that we are putting forward as the three remaining nations. I would not want to speak for him, but he hopes that he will get an internal market act exemption to be able to do that, in the same way that Scotland did. My officials have been working with Welsh officials on how we thought that we could do that in order to assist them.

We continue to discuss the impact of the internal market act not just on DRS but on devolved competency and responsibility. The issue is still very alive. The Scottish Government’s position is that we would like the act to be repealed in full to allow devolved Governments to make their own decisions in the way that we should.

I am supportive of what Wales is doing. It is up to those in Wales to decide how they will do it. They are still in negotiation with the UK Government on that and are looking at how any scheme that they come up with will be interoperable with the scheme in the rest of the UK. That is for them to decide and they will be given the space to do that.

I might need to ask my officials for a definitive answer, but the oversight group has been set up so that we actively monitor the situation. As I said, the group will meet every month, and we will get reports on staff training and our ability to meet the deadlines. I would hope that, if things were not going to plan, we would find that out early and be able to provide assistance or guidance, even if resources were required. I would hope that that would happen well ahead of a situation in which we had to think about stop-go.

Phil Leeks might want to add something.

I have in front of me some definitions and the schedules that they relate to. Waste feedstock permit level activity is set out in proposed new schedule 20 to the 2018 regulations, as inserted by schedule 11 to the amendment regulations, while permit level activity for non-waste feedstock is set out in proposed new schedule 26 to the 2018 regulations, as inserted by schedule 17 to the amendment regulations. SEPA determines the environmental limits. I hope that that is helpful.

I am trying to give you as much information as possible, but I think that SEPA is, as Phil Leeks has said, the determining body as to whether something is waste or non-waste. That is the discussion that it is having at the moment with the Scotch Whisky Association.

Not really. The reduction of ammonia emissions has been incorporated into existing codes of practice; for example, there is the “Prevention of Environmental Pollution From Agricultural Activity”. Instead of having a completely different document and code of practice, we have brought ammonia emissions into an existing code of practice. That work has been done.