The latest constitutional crisis between the Scottish parliament and Westminster isn’t over an independence referendum or the high affairs of state. It’s about whether Scotland can recycle glass bottles more effectively. Last week, the UK government told Scottish ministers they couldn’t include glass bottles in their long-planned deposit return scheme.
Doing so would violate the Internal Market Act, they said, which dictates that any condition devolved administrations wish to place on the sale of goods or services needs central government approval – part of Westminster’s post-Brexit reshaping of the way the UK works. But when the act was being debated, ministers were confident that the deposit return scheme would be fully compliant. And yet this week we heard that cans and plastic bottles could be included, but glass bottles could not. So what changed?
