The Circular Economy Minister has been accused of being “disrespectful” to a Holyrood committee by failing to hand over the latest review of the stalled Deposit Return Scheme (DRS).
Lorna Slater was told she had had “taken too long” when it came to handing over a review, carried out in March into the state of preparations.
Scotland’s DRS, which aims to increase recycling of single use drinks containers such as cans and bottles, had been due to come in to force from 1 March 2024 – but this already delayed start date has now been pushed back further to October 2025, to tie in with similar initiatives in the rest of the UK.
Last week, Slater told Holyrood ministers she had no option but to do this after the UK Government ruled the DRS could only go ahead in Scotland if glass bottles were excluded from its remit.
On Tuesday, she told MSPs on the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee that the gateway review in March had at that time identified issues around the UK Internal Market Act (IMA) as a possible “significant blocker”.
With the IMA having been brought in by Westminster in the wake of Brexit to create smooth trading across the four nations of the UK, the Scottish Government was forced to seek an exclusion as its scheme was to have come in ahead of initiatives in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The gateway review in March “identified that the lack of a decision on an IMA exclusion was a significant blockage of progress”, Slater told the committee.
She added: “The risk that was identified has materialised and so we are now working on next steps going forward.”
But convener Edward Mountain accused her of being “disrespectful to the committee” by failing to produce the report.
He said the minister had told MSPs in March that it was “imminent”, and had said later that month she would “make it available”.
Mountain stated: “I make an observation that if a committee asks for a report back in March, and we still don’t have it by June, I think that is disrespectful to the committee.
“I make that observation with no political point, committees in this Parliament are there for a reason and it would have helped our session today if we have had that gateway review before us.”
The convener said that his committee “has been pushing” to see the report, claiming the government had “taken too long”.
He told Slater: “I am not asking you to respond, I am just saying I think it is wrong.”
The minister insisted though that it was “not the normal standard to publish gateway reviews” saying she had previously pledged to “respond with the findings of that review”.
She told Mountain: “I have shared some of those findings with you today, in terms of that it identified the lack of a decision on IMA exclusion as a significant blocker.”
Slater continued by saying there had been “substantial change in this space in the last few weeks” adding that she wanted the report to the committee on the findings “to be up to date with the context where we find it now”.
As a result, she said: “We will publish the findings and the response before recess.”
Her comments came as she told the committee that cash for compensation to businesses, now the start date has been pushed back again, was “not part of the Scottish budget”.
Some businesses have threatened legal action in order to recoup the expenses they have incurred in preparing for DRS now the launch is more than two years away.
Slater, however, insisted: “We are working with industry to launch the scheme and the matter of that sort of compensation is not part of the Scottish budget.”
She added that while the Scottish Government recognise the “steps that businesses have taken to get ready for DRS”, in delaying the scheme further, ministers had had to “respond significantly to challenges imposed on us by the UK Government”.
Slater also stressed: “We do not consider that any action we have been required to take gives rise to any obligation to pay compensation.”
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