THE UK Government is “playing politics” and “point scoring” over excluding glass from the deposit return scheme (DRS), a charity director has said.
On this week’s Holyrood Weekly podcast, Dr Kat Jones, director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), discusses the fall out from the latest devolution row centered around Scotland’s DRS.
Last week, it emerged that the UK Government would only allow the Scottish scheme to go ahead if it excluded glass and imposed a number of other conditions.
APRS have been campaigning for a DRS in Scotland since 2015, and told how the charity was left “surprised” by the UK’s last-minute intervention at the end of last week.
“It's all about politics, it's not about what's the right thing to do here,” Jones told the podcast. “I think there was sort of short-term points to score from the UK Government onto the Scottish Government, and you can see that in Alister Jack.
“He was in the Scottish Affairs Committee last week, really very much still fighting talk about oh, we haven't received the right paperwork, or we're not gonna be able to grant this exemption and all of these things.”
Jones pointed out that it was only a few days later that the letter from the UK Government to First Minister Humza Yousaf arrived stating that glass would need to be excluded from the scheme.
“I just think there's this politics going on, that is about the kind of relationships between Scottish Government, UK Government, even between ministers in the UK government that we have no sight of. We don't know what's going on in there, but that must be where it's all coming from.”
Jones also pointed out that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) “presented the case for glass” for Wales in its parallel scheme, despite it being excluded in England and Northern Ireland.
“That's their position as far as we can tell, but there seems to be politics going over the top of that,” she added.
“I suspect if they were to apply for an internal market act exemption, Wales in the next few weeks, then the UK government wouldn't be able to allow it, having just turned down Scotland. “So I think we just have to wait and see what's happening. It's so confused.”
The charity director added that she was “completely baffled” by the entire situation, and how the DRS had become a constitutional row.
“We've got a recycling scheme or process that just improves the way that recycling is done, it gives waste in people's hands a value, so they take it back to get recycled, it just works,” she said.
“It works where it's been done, it's in 50 or more jurisdictions worldwide.
“It’s pretty failsafe, it's tried and tested, it's been around for 40 plus years, and so the sort of thought that this would become such a political kind of event, which is something that has been in the leadership race, it's been sort of discussed between the First Minister and the Prime Minister on their first meeting, these kind of things, you don't expect that is something that is this sort of mundane, it's normal in many places.”
Jones also told the podcast that the latest intervention from the UK on an environmental policy, which is devolved, is “concerning”.
“We don't expect the UK Government to be intervening on decisions that are made within the Scottish Parliament on ways to make Scotland's environment better," she said.
“And that's where the real concerns are coming in with the deposit return scheme is, it's something that we've had the power to do since 2009.
“It just seems a new way of doing politics that really concerns me that it's that sort of calling in of the UK government into this issue where they don't need to be and in fact, some of that decision making, it needs to be done in Scotland where we're trying to deal with these issues.
“It's frustrating and I'm worried about the future of environmental campaigning if this is the way forward.”
Holyrood Weekly will be available on the Omny streaming platform, Spotify and The National’s website each Friday. You can listen to Episode 21 with Dr Kat Jones below.
