 Rhywbeth y Warren森au a gwaeddaeth am yr llifennol 28 Ocean o Gwerth Mer rhetins iawn Gweithamol yn g 팬 y cychwyn nhaw ydw i'r ganddysgu gyda cefynll udd kingdomu Cadw Llyf yng Nghymru. Fierna is the consideration of a draft statutory instrument, the Transport Scotland Act 2019 amendment regulations 2023. I'm pleased to welcome Fierna. He's not the Minister for Transport. I'd also like to welcome Bridget Briden, the bus regulatory policy team leader for Transport Scotland and Kevin Gibson, the solicitor for the Scottish Government. Thank you for joining us today. The instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that it cannot come into force unless the Parliament approves it. Following the evidence session, the committee will be invited at the next agenda item to consider a motion to recommend the approval of the instrument. I just remind everyone that you can and the officials can speak under this item, but not under the next item. I therefore would like to ask the minister to make a brief opening statement. Good morning, convener and committee. The Transport Scotland Act 2019 was designed to help make Scotland's transport network cleaner, smarter and more accessible than ever before. During the parliamentary passage of the bill, which became the Transport Scotland Act 2019, a significant number of amendments were made at stages 2 and 3. For context, the convener may recall that the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee considered more than 400 amendments at stage 2, with the consideration of amendments at stage 3 lasting around seven hours. That included amendments to provisions that themselves amended existing primary legislation and the introduction of new provisions to which cross-references were made. As a consequence, the bill has contained a significant number of provisions that required to be renumbered and cross-references that had to be corrected before its publication. When this exercise was undertaken, a substantial number of cross-references and other numbering errors were corrected within a short timescale prior to publication of the act. However, in a small number of cases, cross-references were unfortunately not updated. The primary purpose of those regulations is therefore to correct those erroneous cross-references and incorrect numbering in the provisions on bus services and smart ticketing in the act. The regulations also remove duplicate provision to the parliamentary procedure attaching to regulations under the act. We are also using the opportunity to correct one minor drafting error in section 55 of the act and parking prohibitions, which ensures that the effect of that provision is clear. Those regulations make relatively minor technical amendments to the act, which will ensure that full effect is given to the intention of Parliament in passing the act. I am happy to answer any questions that members may have. I do indeed remember the bill as it went through stage 1 and stage 2 in the committee that I was convener on at that stage and probably all the amendments. I do not think that I have ever seen quite so many amendments at different stages. Thank you for coming back. I think that Monica has a question that she would like to ask you on this. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the minister and her officials. Thank you, minister, for clarifying the minor and technical nature. I wonder if you can clarify for the committee when the errors first came to the Government's attention and whether the nature of the errors that you talked about, some incorrect numbering and erroneous cross-referencing, could that have led to anyone inadvertently not complying with the law? Answered by officials if they have that information, because obviously, as you will know, I was not the minister at the time that this was happening, but I am happy to take up the responsibility to tidy up the legislation in a technical way. Kevin, do you want to come around that? Of course, yes. The errors have been identified over a period of time from some quite early, some not too long after the act was published and right up until fairly recently, so it has been a sort of process. On the specific point about whether anybody may have inadvertently failed to comply with the law due to these errors, the answer is no. The provisions in question are not enforced yet, so they are being brought into force over the next few months, so we are tidying up the errors before the law becomes effective. That is reassuring to hear that those parts are not enforced. Just for the record, because not everyone in the committee would have been involved in the legislation, that is quite a long period of time. When was the first date, Mr Gibson, that it has not become to Government's attention? Maybe I could answer that. The Transport Act, because I asked a similar question, is to obviously there are many provisions and we have to make sure that obviously the Transport Act can be enacted and there are very important provisions in that. It came into legislation around the end of 2019 and it was not that long after we were obviously heading into the pandemic and at that time right across Government people were diverted from legislation and other policy work into managing the pandemic, so the whole provisions and include the corrections were something that obviously have been delayed understandably at the time, but clearly what is happening now is that we have got a number of the provisions in process already laid that will help to take forward the powers within the Transport Act. Thank you. No further questions from me, convener. Thank you, Monica. Good point. We are well cleared up. I think that that was useful to hear that. Are there any other questions from the committee? I'm not seeing any, so we'll move straight on to the next item on the agenda, which is the formal consideration of Motion S6M-10469, calling on the committee to recommend approval of the Transport Scotland Act 2019 amendment regulations 2023. Minister, do you want to speak to the motion or are you happy that you've spoken enough? If you're happy to, I'm happy to move the motion. I'm happy you've spoken enough, minister. Thank you on that. Are there any members who want to make a contribution to this? No. Minister, are you happy to forgo your summing up or would you like to sum up? I'm happy to forgo. Thank you. The question is then for the committee, is Motion S6M-10469 in the name of Fiona Hyslop be approved? Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The committee will therefore report on the outcome of this instrument in due course, and I would like to ask the committee to delegate authority to me as convener to finalise the report for publication. Are we all happy with that? Good. Thank you, minister, and thank you to your officials for coming along today. I'm now briefly going to suspend the meeting before our next item. Thank you. Welcome back. Our next item of business is an evidence session with two of Scotland's statutory environmental regulators, NatureScot and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. The committee aims to have these sessions each year with the environmental regulators where we can discuss their annual reports, finances and main priorities for the year ahead. This will be a wide-ranging session. We're touching on many aspects of all their roles. It may also contribute to the committee's pre-budget recommendations to the Scottish Government in the coming weeks and our work in other areas in future months. I'm pleased to welcome Nick Halfard, the director of nature and climate change for NatureScot and David Harley, the chief officer for the circular economy, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. Thank you for joining us today, and I believe that you each want to make brief opening statements, and I'm told that it's going to Nick first and then to David. Yes, and good morning. Thank you very much for inviting me today. So just a couple of quick comments. As you know, NatureScot is Scotland's public nature agency. We bring 30 years of experience, expertise and passion to our nation's most vital endeavour, tackling the nature and climate crisis. Just as a reminder of the scale of the crisis, the state of nature report stated last week that, in Scotland, one in nine of our species is threatened with national extinction and that, since 1994, there's been a 15 per cent decline in average species abundance across our closely monitored wildlife. In response to this crisis, we are seeing a significant amount of policy development in the Scottish Government and a number of bills this session in the Parliament. From NatureScot's perspective, this policy development, building what has already gone before, is a major opportunity to reverse nature decline and hit net zero targets, and we are energised by the direction of travel. We know that it will increase demand on our services and advice, and this will no doubt be true for a range of other public bodies, including local authorities. We think that we can rise to this increased expectation on us, but it does put pressure on our capacity and resource. In response, as well as driving efficiency, we're getting creative. This means that we're changing our approaches to delivery, especially in the digital solutions. We're identifying new, appropriate revenue streams, and we're fully engaged in public sector reform. We recognise the value of the Scottish Government's commitment to invest 500 million in nature through to 2026. That is very welcome and necessary. We're also seeing increased interest in nature finance from private sources, with our role being to promote responsible investment in natural capital. As promising as all of this wide investment is, much of our support for the transformation that we need to see comes from our core resource funded by Grantonade from the Scottish Government, topped up by ring-fence funds for things like nature restoration and peatland action. Whilst ring-fence funds continue to increase, our core grantonade is under considerable pressure both from challenging public finances and high inflation. To close on a positive note, the public sector is rising to the nature climate challenge, where before it might have been the sole purview of organisations such as My Own, Nature Scott, we now see everyone stepping up, and this will be a cornerstone of a whole society response to the crisis. Thank you. Thanks, Nick. David. Thank you, convener, and good to be here today. This is Seeper's 27th year as Scotland's environmental regulator. We cover a huge range of functions and regulatory duties, covering all aspects of the Scotland's environment, including water, resources and air. We work with operators and we work with people across all sorts of scales, from the very local to the septic tank level, right up to national infrastructure such as Grangemouth, oil refinery and everything in between. We are protecting and improving the environment, and that protection job is something that is worth thinking about in the context of on-going development over the last 30 years. With the impacts of climate change, our staff are daily responding to events, permitting activities, auditing, inspecting, monitoring and so on. Another key role for us is our role as Scotland's flood authority, where we are involved in flood warning, advising planning authorities on new development, and in national strategic flood risk planning. As Nick Scott said, the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis presents an extraordinary challenge and an opportunity for environmental regulators. There is increased expectation from the public, and that is quite right. There is more for us to do across a very wide front. As we work on our new corporate plan for the next three years up to 2027, that need to focus is to the fore. We need to be able to make an impact in the most efficient and effective way possible. That focus in our emerging corporate plan is going to be on climate resilience, net zero, the water environment, resource use and always underpinned by compliance across the board. A little bit about finances. Our finances are 50 per cent grant and aid and roughly 50 per cent are the charges that we take in from those that we regulate. We are also using, we had a cyber attack in 2020. We are using that as an opportunity to modernise the organisation, particularly in relation to digital services. We are working on our annual report, and our chief executive and chief financial officer will be very pleased to come and talk to you about the financial report for 2022-23 in the new year. Thank you very much. Before we go any further, I just want to remind the committee of my declaration of interest in that I am part of a family farming partnership on the space side. As such, we have regular interaction with NatureScot and with SEPA. SEPA also happened to be a tenant of a small part of my farm where they have a gaging station and a monitoring station to monitor water quality, which I encourage them to do. I do have regular interactions with both agencies. My first question then, or the first question from me, is, since the last meeting, David, there has been a change in the leadership of SEPA. It was quite abrupt, and there has been a small period of time. I am sure that there has been effective leadership, but there has been no designated chief executive. Do you want to just say whether that will result in wider changes of governance and culture within your organisation, or were those sufficient when that change came about? The first thing that we did upon the departure of the previous chief executive was to have a listening exercise with our staff to learn lessons that might have been learned from the culture around that leadership. 10 per cent of staff participated in that, and we have a series of recommendations that we are embedding into the way that we manage ourselves going forward. We are very much on that. We have very much moved on. Joe Greene did a fantastic job as an interim chief executive for a period of 10 months. Nicolle Patterson joined us, I think, in November last year. We are very much moving on and looking forward. Nicolle has made some adjustments about how we work, but those are largely administrative. It is very much a big focus on delivery, getting on and getting the job done. We are very much about empowering our staff and devolving decision making into the organisation, which is the way that it should be. I met your chief executive from one of the issues that we are constantly hearing about is issues relating to the cyber attack and that you are still running to try and get back to where you were before. Is that the case, or do you think that you are fully caught up now? We are not fully caught up. The cyber attack was devastating. It stopped us in our tracks. For three months, most of our staff could not communicate with each other. It was that devastating. A lot of data was taken from us, and most of our systems were completely destroyed. I can talk a little bit more about the phases that we are going through in terms of that. I would say that we are focusing now on building bespoke systems. We have got our organisation up and running from an technical point of view, from an IS point of view. We have created the infrastructure for a much more modern organisation. What we are working on now is those bespoke systems that are associated with things such as licence administration, laboratory data handling, planning and casework. At the moment, some of those systems, we have worked around systems that enable us to do those functions at the moment. They are a little clunky. They are not as efficient as they could be, but we are working on getting those systems in place. The committee would seek reassurance that your resilience to such attacks in the future has been greatly enhanced and that you have a backup or a reserve system in place to ensure that it does not destroy if it did happen again exactly where you were when it did happen, when no one could speak to each other. I would like some confirmation on that. Absolutely. There were three independent assessments done of our condition or of our status. We are working on all the recommendations. We have delivered all the recommendations in terms of security and resilience going forward, so I am very confident in that now. How much is the new system going to cost computer-wise? I do not have the exact cost. We are getting help from the Scottish Government, three-year capital budget, and we are moving into our third year on that. I do not have the exact costs, but I can… Would it be possible to write to the committee and say what the new system is costing so that we are aware? If possible, we can then follow it through into the Scottish budget. Thank you for that. The next questions on this come from… Sorry, Mark. Did you raise your hand? I was not sure. Mark, no. The next questions come from Douglas Slumston. Douglas. Yes, thanks, convener. I am just going to stick on the budget lines just now. When we look at the year-on-year funding over the last eight years, that has been a decline until this year's budget when there was an increase in funding from the Scottish Government, I mean… So, what sort of impact has that had on your organisations and the work that you are trying to do? I think that's… Is that… Both? Both. Yep. Okay, so Nick, David just had a bit of a session there, so why don't you start off on that one? Yeah, absolutely. First of all, just to be clear, the additional money that we had in the year-on-year at the moment was because the Scottish Government bought forward monies that we would usually get in the autumn change, the autumn budget change that they were given at the start of the year. What we see overall is that our grant-in-aiders have pretty much remained static over the last four years once you strip those things out. What it means, obviously at the crude level, is that we have less money to spend on services when you take account of inflation and increased costs of staff. So, what we're having to do is prioritise very hard and innovate where we can around service delivery. So, we're looking, for example, at the moment about how we can move our licensing online because we think that will be a far more efficient way and we can drive efficiencies through that. But it does mean that we have to prioritise around the key priorities that the Government set and that we've agreed with our corporate plan for 2022-26. It almost seems a bit strange to me that you spoke about policy development, the Government trying to hit net zero targets and increasing demand, but at the same time your core funding has been reduced, so it doesn't quite make sense to me that... What we've seen overall, our overall budget has increased because there have been ring fence moneys, I mentioned Nature Restoration Fund, Better Places Fund, the Peatland Action Fund, and they come with the resources to deliver those. But what we have is our core grant and aid, which is paying for everything else. For example, our on-going monitoring of nature sites, our on-growing gathering of data, that has stayed level and therefore in real terms decreased. And that is very challenging. So, for example, for monitoring we have to look more at, can we get citizens to do the monitoring on our behalf? And in some instances that's very successful, but there is still a core amount of activity that we have to sustain. And David, I think your core budget is quite similar to Nature Scotland where it is in real terms reducing, is that it? In real terms, it has reduced. It has stayed broadly the same and I'd remind the committee that it's again 50% of our operating cost, the other 50%. We have some control over, we must cost recover, but we set charges for those that we regulate in terms of permitting charges and subsistence charges. So, we do have some control over that. At the moment, grant and aid stands at 49% of our total budget. A similar response to Nick, we need to prioritise and be much more ruthless about that prioritisation. And we need to work with government on that. There's a lot of expectation coming from Government as well, so we need to really focus on where we make the greatest impact. So, are you able to make up that shortfall from licensing, for example, or chargeable things? No, we've just conducted a review of our charging scheme with that in mind. We need to, we can only recover the costs that we have in relation to those regular roles. There, marginally, we can make some tweaks and we can get a little bit extra in on that and just, but broadly, it doesn't make a huge difference in the big scheme of things. And Nick, obviously, NatureScot has been trying to move to a full recovery model in terms of licensing. Can you give us a bit of an update there and if you've been talking to SEPA, for example, on how they do it and SEPA is having to learn there? Yes. SEPA is one of the organisations that we clearly look to because they have experience in this area. It's not exactly the same because a lot of the licences we deal with are for, they're not for businesses, they might be for individuals who do bird ringing, for example. So, we're looking to trial our cost recovery on those areas where we're dealing with businesses who we think can afford them or won't be adversely affected by paying them without putting a burden on individuals who often, we need to licence but they're doing activities almost on a voluntary basis. So, we're absolutely learning from SEPA because there's a model in there I think can be useful. There's a question about, that will hopefully cover the cost, the additional costs of the additional licences that we're about to take on through the Muirburn legislation. But I'm not sure it's going to be a good cost recovery model for our whole load of the other licences that we already deal with. Over the summer I've been talking to, like wind farm developers, for example, and there may be changes to the planning process to try and make that, to try and speed up that process. But one of the complaints I do get is organisations, it's probably because lack of resource, it takes quite a while for those organisations to give a approval or to make comments on the application. So, do you see that as a problem or due to lack of resource or is it something that could be changed by maybe changing the way that the licensing works or the fees work? Yes. So, when we deal with planning applications, we don't charge for those. They're not chargeable from us. So, that's different from licensing. So, we will be commenting to the decision maker on giving advice and that is quite difficult to predict the volume that's coming through. We don't control the volume and it varies hugely. So, we try and be as flexible as we can to make sure that we have the staff available when we have a surge of applications. We've been quite effective in saying we're only going to look at the most impactful applications, whether they be onshore or offshore. What we are really challenged by though, which is a kind of nice challenge to have in a way, is the increased volume of applications particularly for wind farms, particularly offshore, where it's kind of new territory and the amount of data and the quality of that data and the specificity of applications can be really challenging. We're as efficient as we possibly can be because we want particularly wind farms and other renewables, we want them to happen if at all possible, but we have to make sure that in doing so, particularly offshore, we are not driving the one industry's success but at a huge cost to nature and biodiversity and it's getting that balance right that it can take quite a bit of time. Is that anything that developers could actually pay more into to try and increase your capacity so that could be done quicker? Potentially, if that were paid into a central pot to all of those advisers, what we would find very difficult is to do that unilaterally because to do it unilaterally would appear to be favouring one applicant over another, which we wouldn't do, but theoretically, yes, there could be a greater contribution to give greater resources and improve data. Having said that, some of this stuff is just really difficult. If we're dealing with birds, seabirds for example, we may need two years' data to understand what's happening. One isn't enough, two years to see that we can compare. Some of those things just do take time to get right. I wasn't trying to single yourselves out. I hear the same about Crown Estates and Marine Scott as well that it does take a lot of time for these organisations to actually give a view on new developments. David, I think you wanted to come in. Yeah, if I can. It was just to say that one area where I think we can be more efficient in the widest sense is that pre-application discussion is really important with any developer and that can be potentially with other regulators and doing that early on. That requires the developer to be ready as well. That can result in big benefits then when it comes to the formal application process. That's something that we're trialling with Aquaculture, with the relevant local authority and NatureScot. We're looking at a way of doing a parallel, sort of a streamlined, parallel process there, which should result in efficiencies. You go on to your next lot of questions. There are some other questions that members want on budget. Is now the right time to bring them in? Ben, I think you wanted to come in. Sorry, our deputy convener, Ben. Thank you, convener. I was also going to ask about the consenting process and I think your answer is there in response to Mr Lums and we're really helpful and gives us some input for thought in terms of also inquiring with other organisations. Also on organisational priorities and therefore budgets, I just had one other question for SIPA. I noted that in your submission, sorry, in the priorities, you list the response to waste crime as a priority. I just wondered if you wanted to emphasise any parts of that as a priority in terms of the challenge of dealing with the influence of both organised and small operational criminals within the sector and the challenge that that presents to all of us. I can absolutely share your concern in terms of the environmental impact but also in terms of the fair play across all the legitimate operators in that sector. We put a lot of effort into that. About 10 years ago, we set up a dedicated enforcement and investigation unit that really lifted our game in terms of investigations using intelligence, working with the police and, as you'll appreciate, there's a lot of criminality involved in that sector as well. It's a very specific type of regulation and enforcement that we need and specific type of skills. We have—I can go on at some length about the different types of investigations that we've got on going over the last years. I don't want to pre-empt this but I think that you're going to get a chance to do that in the next session when we look at the actual within that part of the bill. I'm happy to wait until later. If there's any follow-up thereafter that might be helpful for the committee, we'd appreciate that as appropriate. I know that it's a sensitive area. If I understand this rightly, you've got the hunting with dogs licensing scheme just landed on your—well, it's landed on your plate before but it becomes effective. I think it's today, isn't it? You're about to get the Grousemore licensing scheme. Last time I visited Nature Scotland or SNH, I think it was Donald Fraser, if I remember rightly, was your licensing officer and a very, very small team. He said he could do everything. Does he need more resources and, with this extra legislation, are you in a position to give it to them? You're right. We are—well, it's Donald Fraser—and our licensing functions are expanding rapidly. Obviously, we have the hunting with dogs, which is quite contentious but relatively modest in terms of the number of applications that we expect to receive. But having said that, we do expect it to be contentious so although our licensing function to deal with that, I'm sure, can be done in-house within our existing team, if we get taken to legal challenge on any of our decisions, that is hugely resource intensive, but we're anticipating that. Far more significant in terms of resources will be the licensing envisaged around Grousemores and Muirburn. As you'll know from the financial memorandum that was published with that bill, we're looking at start-up costs of, I think, about 400 or 450,000, and they're not going running costs of about 350,000. They're detailed in the financial memorandum. We are looking at how we're going to fund that. We would wish to get that through some sort of cost recovery in due course, but that won't be immediate. So that is part of our ongoing discussions with our Scottish Government about funding, what are additional responsibilities, and clearly we're looking also beyond that legislation to the other bits of legislation that are likely to be in the Parliament, particularly around the natural environment bill, so we'll be working hard on the financial memorandum to make sure that it's clear what the additional costs to us will be and discussions around how we're going to fund that. Sorry, I just picked up on one word. You said legal challenge, which you are ready for. Does that mean you're anticipating it? With all our functions, we're looking at the risk of legal challenge, and this is a very new area, and our intelligence is that it's not unlikely—gosh, that sounds weasel-worthy—it might well happen that we get legal challenge around this, given the nature of the function and the applicant's appetite. So that could take a considerable time and a considerable resource to things. I'm just trying to work out in my mind if there's enough people in that department to do what you're being asked to do. It sounds by what you're saying there ain't any need more money. There aren't at the moment, but we're anticipating having those discussions about how we're going to cope with additional responsibilities as a result of legislation. Well, that's interesting, because I think when we discussed it as a Parliament, we were told there was no additional resource required. Anyway, we'll leave it there, and Douglas, I think the next question for me. Mark, you wanted to come in. Was that on this side? You just so peaked my interest in you talking about the licensing of hunting. I just wanted to get a view from nature, Scott. Do you think that there isn't a circumstance whereby a mounted hunt could credibly claim to be meeting the criteria for licences to be issued? This isn't my area of expertise, but I understand from colleagues that the bar is set incredibly high. So it's not a general licence idea where everyone will get one who applies unless they do something terrible. It's more the other way around, where there's an incredibly high bar to be met for these licences to be issued. Because there's a high bar, that is why we are thinking that there may well be legal challenge, particularly as it's quite new. Convener, could I just come back on something you said previously? The financial memorandum, which I looked at again this morning, does make clear the additional costs to our organisation and, indeed, other organisations from the Muirburn and Grouse Muir licensing. So it is in the public domain. I accept that. I was talking about the hunting with dogs one, which I'm not aware there was any additional funds made available, but if I'm wrong, I will obviously correct the record. Douglas, back to you with your next question. Yes. Thank you, convener. I'm moving on to peatland restoration. So three years ago, the Scottish Government committed to spending 250 million over a 10-year period. How much of that has actually been spent today at evil to give us that figure? I don't have that figure in front of me, but I'm happy to, obviously, supply it subsequently. What I would say, comments on that, is that this is a new industry and what's been challenging us isn't the availability of money. What's been challenging us is the availability, particularly of contractors, to undertake peatland restoration work and the willingness of many land managers to come forward because they have said, well, if we do this peatland restoration, how would it relate to agricultural support mechanisms? How does it relate to the carbon market? So there's been a great deal of really understandable reticence, I think, in a number of landowners to come forward with big applications until some of those other areas have been sorted out. We've been working really hard with the contracting sector to get increased volume and to help them. What is a very seasonal piece of work? How we can help them develop the peatland restoration alongside other activities and get the skills and the machinery, because it's a very skillful job. So do you expect the spend to ramp up then over that 10-year period? Absolutely. As with any industry that is new, we're in those kind of early foothills, but we are absolutely expecting it to increase. The feedback that we have from contractors is that they kind of get this and they're tooling up for this. The feedback that we get from land managers is that more and more of them are willing to come forward as it becomes clearer how this does relate, although it's still not 100% clear yet, with other elements of policy and also how it can be a source of income to them through carbon credits. So it still sounds like there's a lot of work to be done then before it would ramp up? It is taking time, but we are beginning to see it rank up, but it will take a number of years. It's a bit like the North Sea oil and gas industry in early days. We're finding our way through that. In terms of, there was £20 million committed back in 2020-21, and if that wasn't spent, I presume that doesn't come to you as much as you would like it to, that would probably just drift back into the Government's own coffers for them to spend on anything they like. To date, the peatland restoration money has been ring-fenced, so if we haven't spent it and we'll declare it back to government that we're not on course to spend it, then we return it to the Scottish Government. So you can't spend it on anything else? Not to date. Thank you Douglas for those. The next questions, I think, come from Mark Ruskell. Yeah, thanks, Covina. I wanted just to come back then to natural capital finance. There's obviously quite a debate at the moment around how the regulation of these markets can be done in a way that builds in the right values and that the markets have some integrity behind them as well. I was interested in your thoughts on that, and specifically on the finance pilot at the moment and the MOU that's been signed around that. I mean, the headline, I think, is £2 billion worth of funding. If you could just tell us how much of that, well, is there additional public finance that will come in on the back of that £2 billion? What the kind of mix is of private and public, but yeah, your general thoughts on natural capital finance would be useful as well. Okay, I'll kick off on that if I may. I think a couple of general points to start with. The size of the funding gap, if we are to ought loss of biodiversity and restore nature, not just for its own sake, but principally as a way of adapting to the far more chaotic climate we have, is estimated to be around £20 billion, could be higher, could be lower, but it's in that order. So our thinking initially is that that is way beyond public finance, however optimistic we are about growing the economy. So this is why we have been looking for a number of years at bringing in more private finance into the sector. The example that you talked about there, where we're working with Hamdons and a number of other individuals, is just one area in which we're seeking to explore. It's like a pilot area where we're looking to explore where we can get private finance in, blended with public finance, and land management businesses to see if there is a model that will give a return to the private interests, but also to the public objectives that we're trying to achieve. We're also looking at a number of other routes that we might achieve that. So that's where the ambition is, and driven as I said by the fact that there is a huge amount of work to be done, and at the moment we see no other route other than engaging responsibly, and it is absolutely responsibly, and there's a framework that we know colleagues in Scottish Government are working on so that we can do that responsibly. Okay, so can you just go back to my question at the end there then around how much public finance will come in, and if you could just explain a bit more about the model, so how will it be monitored, what you see as the opportunities and risks with the model, what stage of development is that pilot with Hamdons? It's still at a fairly early stage, and elements of it are commercially sensitive at the moment because we are still in discussions, we are talking to private businesses, but I would say it is maybe at a too early stage to be specific about the element of public finance and private finance, but what we're absolutely clear is that, to come to your monitoring point, it will need to be very closely monitored because we will not only, we want to make sure that we are getting the public benefits from the public sector investment, and equally, the private investors will want to be able to show that they are gaining the kind of credits as it were, almost the biodiversity credits or climate change credits that they're wanting from what is an incredibly early and emerging market. So I'm happy to give more details in letter if you like, but I'm not sure I can offer much more at the moment given the stage at which those negotiations are up. Sure. I mean, it's clearly an area of interest for this committee, so, you know, as details emerge, I'm sure we'd like to have a look at that and, you know, see exactly how projects are emerging on the ground, but it may be too early to see that at this point. Back to you, convener. Thanks very much. Just before we leave this, Nick, can I just push a little bit? I want to understand where that 20, I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't think there's enough money in the public sector to fund all the things that need to be done, but I don't understand where that £20 billion figure comes from, and I don't understand the methodology of receiving it. If you're happier to write, I'm happy to receive that in writing. Yeah, no, I will write, but I will just say it's a midpoint estimate. This is not an exact science, and there have been various different studies that have tried to estimate it, so 20 billion is the headline midpoint figure, and it isn't exact, but it is, I think, a scale, but I'm happy to provide the provenance, as it were, of those estimates. I know where it came from. I'm just not sure I understand how they got there, so anything to stop it being a guesstimate would be helpful. The other question I've got is that if £2 billion comes from the private sector, to invest, they will be obviously selling on or trading the carbon credits for that. So I want to know, I'd be helpful for me to understand if it's a joint public-private partnership, is should the carbon credits be jeopardised because the terms of the agreement for locking up those carbon credits, and remedial work needs to come forward and be done to protect them, who carries the risk, the person who sold them, or the person who invested them at Novis or the scheme, or is there a joint risk, and what risk is there to the public purse from this, because it slightly concerns me that once the money's been paid, it's probably 80 years those carbon credits will be traded for, and I want to know who's going to be carrying the can in 60 years' time if there's any infringement. Is that nature, Scott? I'll have to come back to you on that. Okay, perfect. I'll leave it there. It's quite a nice subject, as Mark says, but an interesting one. The next question comes from Monica Lennon. Monica. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. My questions are, I think, all for David Harley of SEPA. First of all, I want to pick up on enforcement, because there has been some recent criticism played out in the media, and by some environmental groups and communities, there's been a decreasing trend in enforcement action. So I wonder, Mr Harley, if you can respond to some of those concerns and explain to the committee whether you believe there's a right balance within SEPA between supporting business and communities and enforcing compliance with environmental regulations. I'm aware of those concerns. I think it's quite a reductive way to look at SEPA's performance, to look firmly at prosecutions and the number of those. It's really about the impact and working with those operators and pulling levers further upstream in the process to ensure that we don't get those non-compliant activities in the first place, and that can be more effective in the long run in terms of environmental outcome. That said, we have plenty of prosecutions and lots of enforcement work under way, and a lot of that isn't visible until it actually happens. It's still very much our ethos that we wield a big stick when needed, but at the same time we need to be strategic about that and pull all the levers we can to ensure that we don't get that non-compliance in the first place. Thank you, Mr Harley. I think many would agree that the prevention of that non-compliance is really critical work. I have to say that those who have been quite vocal are friends of SEPA, including two former chief executives who have expressed sympathy. They have made comments, including that SEPA has been starved of funding. We have heard that your funding has been splashed by more than a quarter in real terms since 2010. Starved of funding said one former CEO, and another said that it is distracted by cost-saving exercises, which takes officers away from the front line of environmental regulation. It sounds like those people are critical friends. Are they saying the things out loud that people within SEPA today would perhaps like to say to committees like ours? I don't think so. We both talk about the challenge in times that we're in and the need to focus. That's really important, that prioritisation of activities, to where it's the greatest impact, because, as the public, quite rightly, get more concerned about environmental issues, they can distract us from some of the work that can be truly impactful. It's interesting that expression about cost-saving exercises. I don't see a situation where our front-line staff are distracted on working on cost-saving exercises. I think that we can be more efficient and we're building our systems to enable us to do so, and I think that we need to prioritise further. In terms of the original question about striking that right balance between supporting and forcing compliance by businesses, you think that right now the balance is good? Yes. We'll be slightly moving away from enforcement. I wanted to ask about your information and what's available in the public domain. I think that this was touched on slightly by the convener when he asked about your recovery from the cyber attack. I think that you said, Mr Harley, that not all your systems are fully back up and running and not all your data is fully available. Now, this has caused a lot of concern. I think that it's environmental right centre of Scotland that made an official complaint to Environmental Standards Scotland about SEPA, so I'm not sure the status of that right now. This was based on media reports from a couple of weeks ago, but they're very concerned that SEPA's failing to maintain the public register, and that means that pollution permits for around 175,000 sites are not available. It's not in the public domain, so what's going on there? As an evidence-based regulatory organisation, it's in our DNA to be transparent and accountable. It pains us greatly that we don't have that information publicly available. We do actually have a public register, but it's in boxes and in paper format and it's not easily accessible. That's where the main problem is. It was absolutely significantly impacted by the data that's available electronically, but also the ability for us to interrogate and for the public to interrogate that data is significantly compromised. We're rebuilding our public register in phases with a short-term focus on making more information publicly available. The other thing that we're working on is that it'll be much, much more accessible. The other area that we're really struggling with is access to information inquiries. Again, we had a huge backlog that was very, very difficult for us to manage, and we've had to make some fairly draconian decisions around that so that we can essentially start again. For us, as an organisation, it's probably one of the most difficult decisions we've had or difficult predicament we've had to face is our inability to be as transparent and as accountable as we possibly can be. I appreciate that. It must be really difficult for staff who are working very, very hard to get this all back up and running. What does that mean in practice? If I, as MSP for Central Scotland, want to get information about a site in Lanarkshire, I can't go online today and get that information from the public register, so how do I go about getting the information? Is it available or do I have to physically come to an office? I can't take any of us directly, and there may be ways of getting you that information through information that we hold internally. It's just not very easily accessible and it's not complete, but I think contacting SIPA in person and asking for that. What we're finding is, and it's a double-edged sword, is that as a result of the deficiencies in our ability to provide that information proactively, that then people are coming to us through access to information and freedom of information, and those requests are increasing, which then is another area of difficulty and really hard for us to resource. It's a challenge, but we're working very hard on that and we're investing in those systems. Get in touch with us. That applies to any member of the public in Scotland. Absolutely. Even lifting the phone to our contact information or contact centre. I'm really interested in what you've been saying. Thank you for being so open. If more people are having to resort to freedom of information, does that mean that SIPA is getting bogged down with FOI requests? We have been, but over the last year we've made good inroads in that. We had a response time—I think it was 10 per cent of our requests a year ago or so were being done in the time allowed by the process, and now we're up to 80 per cent in July, so we're moving on that and we're putting more resources into it, but it is a challenge and area and we'll continue to be. I just want to pivot back slightly on funding and resource. This is my final question because there has been some pretty harsh criticism, and I'm sure you've read it the same as we have. Kim Pratt, from Friends of the Air Scotland, said that this was in the ferret, who did a big investigation. Three years on, the excuse that SIPA is still recovering from a cyber attack is wearing thin. That's quite hard to hear, but I go back to the comments from your two former CEOs who are very concerned about your funding situation. The question has been asked, is SIPA a priority for the Scottish Government? Do you feel that SIPA is enough of a priority for the Scottish Government? We're very much focused on moving forward from the cyber attack, so it pains me in this session to actually have to refer to it. We're moving forward and we're going to build back better. I think that we are being supported. The critical thing is that prioritisation. We're working very closely with Government officials and, under the banner of public sector reform, to get that joint understanding of prioritisation of what we're going to concentrate on going forward, and that's what we're concentrating on. I think that if we do that, then we can manage what the finance is that's available to us, but it remains a challenging time. There are also other efficiencies about how we can run our estate, for example, our buildings and sharing with others. There are other things that we can do as well to be more efficient. I wish you and your colleagues well, I'll hand back to the convener. Thank you. I'm afraid, David, that there are still some questions to come. One is from Jackie Dunbar. I don't know why I called you Jackie Bailey. I apologise. I'll pay for it later on now. It was just a supplementary to Monica's first question in regards to enforcement. David called that nobody notices unless enforcement happens, so that made me kind of think that if David could maybe expand on that a bit for us, does SEPA go straight to enforcement for non-compliance or is it a last resort? If he could maybe talk us through it a little bit, that would be helpful? It's a last resort. Our enforcement policy might be worth sending to you, actually, because what's very much clear in that is that we will work with those who are non-compliant to achieve compliance, so we're very much a helping hand. However, it does depend on the circumstances. If people are trying to do the right thing, we will help them to do the right thing and we will only wheel the stick when we need to at the end of that process, and that does happen. If somebody is willfully, if somebody is a chancellor and willfully or criminal, then we will come in hard with the big stick, and we've got various tools to do that with, including writing reports of procurative fiscal. So it is a range of approaches very much dependent on the circumstance. Mark, I think you've got a question that you want to ask in this section here. Yes, I did just staying with David Harley there. It's about the environmental standards Scotland Air Quality report, a number of recommendations that were made about how CEPA progresses its enforcement on air quality issues. So I wanted to ask you about what changes are planned on the back of that. How has it actually affected your enforcement action on the ground? Air quality management in Scotland is shared through various agencies. We directly regulate large industrial emissions to air. We also support local authorities in terms of the data that we provide and the modelling and advisory expertise in terms of how they manage air quality within those localities. We also have an ability to take action against local authorities if we feel that they haven't done enough. We've not used that duty yet. We feel that we're working very much in partnership with local authorities. That is something that we could consider if we felt that local authorities weren't doing enough in terms of local air pollution. So we feel that we're doing okay with that, very aware of that investigation, but we think that we're doing okay. Okay. Okay. So no other changes then on the back of the ESS's review? No significant changes that I'm aware of. I can follow up in more detail if that helps. Yeah, it might be might be useful. Focusing in. Yeah, one thing that was highlighted to us when we were doing a kind of mini-inquiry into air quality in ESS's review was the positive role that CEPA plays in the development of air quality management plans, particularly working with local communities, enhancing data, helping that public understanding of what an air quality problem is in a particular quality and what the solutions might be. Given one of ESS's recommendations was that need to see local authorities develop more of these plans and to develop them within 12 months, are you able to resource that side of things? So there was a new group that was set up for example in Perth or somewhere else to help develop an air quality action plan for the area. Would you be able to resource that that demand? We would probably struggle to have a significant uplift in resources on that if it went across the country in the same way that it has done in some of that, like Glasgow for example. We're very proud of that work that we've done locally with communities. It's gone very well. That would be a challenge if that significantly, if there was a big upticket in that sort of work, and that is granted aid work. That is not something that we can directly recover from. Okay, okay, so that's useful to know. Camille, I'm just going to move on to another question that I have here and it's really a kind of bigger picture question about climate change plan and also the biodiversity strategy. I wanted to ask with NatureScot and CEPA about your views. I mean, how are you input, putting in, how have you input it into both of those strategies? Do you see a way that we can create synergy between tackling both climate and biodiversity or are there tensions in there? We mentioned wind farm development already. Are there other ways that we can maximise biodiversity gains while at the same time developing more ambition and more ground on climate? Who would you like to ask first, Mark? Nick, half-hearted would be good. Okay, yes, as you say, a very wide-ranging question. So, we've been very closely involved in developing the Scottish biodiversity strategy. So, very closely involved in that. We have also been working closely with officials in the Scottish Government on the climate change plan, obviously the one about reducing emissions, but also on the climate change adaptation. So, and the three of those are obviously, there's a huge amount of overlap around those, particularly around the Scottish biodiversity strategy and reducing emissions, because about 50% of Scotland's emissions are related to the land in one way or another. There's also a major opportunity for sequestering carbon through woodlands and peatlands in good condition. And then we also know that looking forward as the climate becomes more chaotic, that one of our best kind of insurance policies for dealing with that more chaotic climate is going to be a more robust natural environment. I mean, and the science tells us that that's the way to go, whether we're looking at reducing flooding, a more natural environment in better condition. It won't stop flooding, but it will reduce some of the challenges around that. It's also one of the ways of helping deal with water scarcity issues and drought issues if the land is in better condition. So, they are absolutely interconnected. And in helping to develop the Scottish biodiversity strategy, we have had a very firm eye, both on climate change mitigation and adaptation. There are a few tensions in there. There are bound to be, you mentioned one about wind farms. These aren't insurmountable, I think, the ones around renewable. They just need very careful working through. Where there are maybe a few more intractable tensions around land use, we have a finite amount of land and finite amount of seeds for that matter. What we do with it is really, really important. And there will be challenges how we increase the land that we make available for nature, how we increase the amount of land that we have available for adaptation, sequestration, how we produce all the food that we need to eat. And bioenergy crops are maybe at the centre of one of the particular tensions within all of that. Should we be using land to grow crops for energy when we need that land to be doing all those other things and where there may actually be alternatives to using bioenergy? I use that as a classic example of where I think there are tensions, but I would say 90-95 per cent there's a very good overlap and complementarity. Would you agree then that dialogue with industries is really important? I've heard, for example, from the onshore wind industry, some criticism of NatureScot that you didn't consult with the industry on the development of peatland guidance. So, I just wonder if you're aware of that and how NatureScot really prioritises that good quality engagement with different sectors that obviously have a vested interest in terms of developing the land, including renewable sector, but clearly we need to find a way through on these issues and ensure that development can proceed but in a way which supports both the objectives of climate and biodiversity. I wasn't aware of that particular criticism, but I would say one of the things we pride ourselves in is working very closely with all of those sectors to whom we interact. The renewable sector, we work very closely with them, but clearly they have a slight different objective at times, so whether it's on peatland code and enabling some applications to go ahead with conditions that they will then restore areas of peat, that's an area we've worked hard with on the onshore side. In the offshore industry we've worked very hard with a sector about where they place their turbines, how they service them and how conditions can be put on to help the development to go ahead in such a way that it is sensitive to and indeed in some instances helps to restore the nature that is being displaced or killed. So, I think we work really closely with all industries, whether it's the farming sector, whether it's the renewable sector and so on. Okay, well the criticism is that there hasn't been any consultation, is what I was told with the renewables industry, but maybe that's something that you can go away and reflect on. Okay, can we get a view on SEPA then on how we square the climate and biodiversity? Like Nick, I think there's huge synergies between both global issues and we should concentrate on where those synergies are, huge overlap. Essentially, I think, when natural systems fail and we are talking about systems failure, we get that degradation, but then if you're able to rebuild the system, you get huge multiple benefits for many, many areas. For example, just one example in the area of land management, I mean more trees by rivers, it sounds very simple doesn't it, but more trees by rivers increases the carbon sequestration, protects from flooding and increasingly that'll come about from climate change, protects the soil so we enable a sustainable food production, biodiversity improvement, potentially immunity improvement, fisheries protection, fisheries resilience from the shading from the trees. There are strategies that we can use that have big multiple benefits that I think in a very, very complicated world we should concentrate on those win-win areas. Is that something that you've fed directly into both the biodiversity strategy and the forthcoming climate plan then? Okay, thanks back to you convener. Thanks very much Mark. The next questions come from Jackie Dunbar Jackie. Thank you, thank you convener. I think my first question is both my questions is regarding water quality but the first question will probably be the way it is for David. Last year we discussed the issues of monitoring sewage overflows with SEPA and we also raised the concerns that stakeholders had regarding the small percentage that was being monitored. Can you give us an update today on the progress that's been made since then, has monitored and increased and what the impact of sewage and overflows is currently having on our water environment? We're the regulator in this. Scottish Water is the provider of the monitoring but I can give you an update, I won't speak on their behalf but we do hold on to account on their improving urban water courses plan, which is fairly multifaceted but absolutely includes monitoring. I think there's 3000 plus combined sewerage overflows in Scotland of which currently there are about 10 per cent which are monitored but they're very quickly increasing that to a third so there's going to be a thousand monitors and that's already underway. I can give you much more on the exact timescales on that so moving fast in that area. In terms of water quality and sewerage, in terms of ecological water quality, even though there's a lot of concern from the public and I do understand that, the impact on a national scale is quite low compared to other impacts on the water environment say for example from land use, from diffuse pollution from land use, that's not to say that there aren't some other parts of more urbanised areas of Scotland where this is a problem and it's been exacerbated by development and particularly by climate change and increasingly flashier flooding and those areas need to be dealt with. There's a really interesting question here about when I mentioned good ecological water quality that's not the same as good bathing water quality and that which isn't the same either is good potable water quality so there's very and I think there's a big public education opportunity here so that people understand the differences between what's safe for bathing and the requirements around that and what's sufficient for good or better ecological water quality. So we have a plan for the good ecological water for both. We have the river basin management plan which sets targets across all the impacts on the water environment across all our 3,000 water bodies to where there are less than good status. There's a plan in place. It's a ministerial objective to improve waters across Scotland and that includes sewage but also includes agriculture from abstractions and a host of other impacts. Just last point, water quality is in good condition. 85 per cent of Scotland's water bodies are in good or better in terms of water quality. Sorry Jackie, can I just ask just a quick question on that? So what you're kind of saying is that the environment, it might be fine for the environment but for God's sake don't drink it and the last thing you should do is swim in it. Is that what you're saying? I'm not saying that. I'm saying that there are different requirements for different purposes. For drinking water you can understand why you might have a very, very stringent requirement. There's no bacteria at all in that water, there's no contaminants. That's because it's called chlorine. There's a very good reason and other treatment although I won't speak for Scottish water but that's the highest standard. For bathing water there's a very high standard particularly in relation to the presence of bacteria and viruses and we want in those places which are designated for bathing water we monitor for those pollutants and we require improvements accordingly in line with the European standards. So is it fine to swim in every river in Scotland? I don't think it is fine to swim in every urban river in Scotland. I think that but I think public public this is why the monitoring is really important. I think public education and awareness is really important. There are times of the year and weather conditions where the risks are much less but after a large shower in the middle of summer that would not be the best time in some areas. Thank you, just giving me an excuse not to go swimming with my wife. Sorry, back to Jackie Dunbar. Okay, thank you. So on the back of that how do we find out what rivers are safe to swim in because I used to swim in a river as a kid and never gave it much thought. You know how does a public out there find out where it is safe and where it's not safe and also David I can quickly ask you I know you said you couldn't give me a timescale but regarding increasing the monitor into a third but I mean are we expecting it by the end of this year the end of spring next year you know are you able to give us an indication of that? I think it's in the coming years I don't have that exactly to hand but I think I can but Scottish Water have a website with their progress against these targets improving urban water courses is the name of the is the name of their project on this and we can we can forward that link and pull out the the specific areas you asked me a question oh yeah where is it safe so we can where can it go for a duke we could we could definitively say that it's safe to swim in scotland designated bathing beaches and there's and where there's a situation after heavy rainfall where that base that bathing beach might not be safe there are there's information available at the beach to to inform people and we and we have a role in providing that information it's a really tricky area about the rest of the environment it does depend I mean we don't know what land management practices are happening for example you could be you could go for a swim in the highland somewhere where you think is absolutely safe to swim and there could be a dead deer in the river a mile upstream it it it it is it is impossible to give a definitive on that but I do think there's a huge public awareness element on this that we're very much part of so that people can make decisions based on the environment that they see around them and the conditions that they see around them and I do think the monitoring of the sea is always as part of that but I think it could be something much more holistic which helps people because there's been a huge increase in wild swimming over the last three years and an understandable increase in concern okay thank you my next question I'm going to put to both of you so I'm going to ask Nick first to give David a bit of a break because maybe get a touch of water um there is a programme for government commitment to develop legislation on adaptation of water infrastructure to deal with future water scarcity um can you tell us how the how water scarcity is impacting on your organization's functions and what role would you like to have or indeed expect to have in developing the new legislation going forward thanks very much um the main impact of water scarcity on our organization is in relation to protected sites and protected species um so if there is a period of drought uh we will work closely with Scottish Water and SEPA and local authorities on um where they might need to use alternative sources um and if for example that would be uh their backup source is a protected site we will work closely with them on levels um that might be appropriate before that site is adversely impacted um and there have been live cases on sky there was one this year um and we are expecting those to increase as all the research we have seen suggests that there will be more severe and more regular periods of drought throughout Scotland um as climate change happens and then there's impact on on species um most water species are reasonably mobile so our greatest concern is freshwater pearl mussels um so and this happens regularly in one or two of the rivers um particularly up north where in periods of drought we work very closely particularly with SEPA on whether or not to move um populations of mussels to deeper water it's a tricky one because uh we're not sure that it actually that the survival rates of moving these these creatures is is that high so sometimes it's better to leave them there and there's an absolute judgment to be made um and depending on the in circumstances so that's that's how it impacts us specifically on our roles and the second part was guess what what role would we want to play we're not a leading light as it were in in the water world but we would absolutely want to make sure that the interests of our protected sites our protected species are taken account of as that uh those regulations come forward um but also the wider environment we know from the Scottish biodiversity strategy um and indeed as I mentioned from the climate change adaptation it's not just our protected sites that are important there are only 18 percent of the land at the moment actually all our land matters so we need to make sure that even in sites that aren't designated that the approaches to how we manage our water resource is given much high priority whether it's in in farmland in our uplands or wherever because we've rather taken water for granted I mean kind of rains a lot but it's it's the all the climate change projections suggest we're going to have to look after our water resource as if it were much more scarce and it's interesting that um when we look at where we might go in the future we're looking to places like east anglia in england for how the northeast of scotland might progress in the future looking at the strategies they have there not only for the water management for drinking water and agriculture but also for its impact on protected sites and species okay thank you and I probably should declare my interest um as nature's champion for the sea trout which I discussed at my my my recent members business debate if I can go to david now please yeah I think we're more directly involved um it's been a busy couple of summers the last two summers for us um a lot of effort and uh good work done in uh helping the country through water to water scarcity incidents and this is why climate change resilience is right up there in our priorities going forward not just from having too much water around the country but also in terms of having too little um yeah our main roles are one of expertise and information and we are the organisation that must understand that must understand the risks going forward and project where uh things are going to get difficult in the country both in terms of within an event but also in terms of that long term understanding um we're very proud of our weekly report we have a two page weekly report throughout the summer which is a which is really factual really a very helpful service I think to the country in a very elemental way um on the back of that we also regulate abstraction so we have an understanding of where water use where the water is being taken from the water environment and we regulate to the standards within those within those licenses um we have a water scarcity plan which when we find ourselves in the water scarcity situation has a step wise series of actions ranging from the provision of advice in the early stages working with operators on how they can be more water efficient uh moving right through to potentially removing their ability to take that water and there's been times of the last couple of years where we've been we've actually had to do that um and that's a very you can uh yeah that's because it's very challenging for all concerned but um we have uh we're working closely with the legislation you mentioned with the with the government officials on that one area that that is being discussed is whether or we could have a more defined role in terms of the assessment of water scarcity in relation to private water supplies um but we're uh very very close working we've we've actually got joint teams multi-agency teams working with Scottish Government on the on that legislation it's very close okay thank you um i've got no further questions just now conveners of Alhambach to you thanks very much Jackie um i think mark you wanted to come in with a question when we were talking about water quality uh and also i think you've got a further question after that yeah thanks thanks so much convener yeah i just want to go back to david on the bathing water quality designation process because my understanding is that in scotland there's a minimum threshold of 150 daily users um that that's required in any in any kind of application um for a bathing water uh designation that that differs to england of wales where i think there is either no uh requirement threshold for for daily users or a very very much lower number i think in england it's around 40 is that an area that cipra are looking at in terms of reform and making suggestions to ministers because i think your point earlier on was it's all fine and in designated bathing water quality areas um at least over an entire season but you know if you can't get your area that you you regularly well swim in designated then you know who's monitoring that and how are we getting that kind of partnership approach to address the problems of uh of pollution in these areas that people are using but maybe not at the 150 threshold limit yeah i'm aware of that uh that issue mark um our ministers sorry um the um that that process is um that decision making is is made by ministers and it's but we do help uh Scottish Government in relation to and support in that process um i think that's that that could be done um there are very real implications on what that means in terms of expenditure on increasing the water quality in those areas it would not be insignificant if we found ourselves with double or treble of the the number of bathing waters as i said there is a difference in standard required sort of for environmental standards in terms of bathing water standards and that would have to be taken into the mix but that would be a that would be a question for for government to to weigh up the pros and cons of that okay thanks um and if i can just stay with yourself david or maybe bring nick back in uh and ask you about the retained EU law bill um i mean obviously now this bill is a is an act um perhaps the you know a dramatic cliff edge of you know a lot of EU legislation um being rescinded as not as not materialised but nevertheless you know the act is in place you'll perhaps have noted the committee's interest in the national air quality performance framework and how how that particular legislation is now being withdrawn um through the the the bill and that there's like a clarity about you know how that will be um replayed what it will be replaced with i wanted to see perhaps reflections on retained EU law bill and where we are now and what implications are for environmental standards well i guess the lead that would really be with Scottish Government officials to manage that and work through that but we haven't seen a significant shift in what we do and going forward we don't expect it for example in the water environment that river basin management planning process which is really quite powerful driven by the water framework directive is something which we don't see any change in expectation around that and we welcome that so we're not seeing a significant shift on the at the call face okay and nick i don't you have any reflections on that from biodiversity provisions or yes i mean just two points to make here i think what one is you know we're not seeing much change overall either um in terms of our continual kind of engagement and alignment to laws that have originally came from Europe but what we are unsure about is the impact of that new piece of legislation in Westminster on the supremacy of EU case law and that is an area that is still unclear and we're not expecting it to have been clarified by the 1st of January but is potentially in the medium term an area of concern because we do rely quite a lot on that that that case law and if it were not to be relevant any longer then that would have some impact on some of our decisions around licensing in particular if you got a particular example of that i mean are we looking at offshore wind or ticker areas where there's a there's a weight of EU case law an interpretation of key environmental principles that now could be challenged or i don't have a very specific example but i know we have relied on that case law in some of our our planning advice around species uh european protected species for example okay thanks back to you convener uh thank you i think that draws us to an end of questions on this session so um in case i don't do it after the next session thank you uh for both you nick and and david giving evidence to the committee this morning it's always useful uh to hear what's going on and what's being achieved so i'm going to briefly suspend the meeting till 10 55 where we'll move on to our next evidence session so suspend the meeting ready our next item of business is an evidence session with environmental bodies as part of the committee's stage one scrutiny of the secretary economy scotland bill this is our second session on the bill following a panel uh with business stakeholders last week and i'd like to welcome back nick half-eyed director of nature and climate change for nature scott david harley the chief officer for circular economy Scottish environmental protection agency and i'm also pleased to welcome in gallant the chief executive officer of zero waste scotland there are a list of questions and uh uh to do with this and i was just just i mean i've read your evidence uh to the committee and i just wanted in a brief sentence from both nick and david or a couple of sentences is is uh do you support the bill and do we need it nick yes we do need it um and yes we do support and the reason we need it is because um the matters it deal with it deals with are one of the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss we need to so i think i'm going over your couple of sentences but we absolutely need to get to reduce our use and make better use of our material flows and where we would extend not the bill but the conversation is into organic flows as well but maybe come on to that in a bit david absolutely we need it around 80 of scotland's carbon footprint comes from products and services we manufacture use and throw away essentially our consumption scotland's consumption per capita or our material footprint is double the world average and that's just unsustainable this circular economy is a game-changing opportunity to meet scotland's climate change targets and ambitions create new industries and economic opportunities and reduce the harms associated with waste management okay so one of the one of the important things about the bill must be to ensure that we take the public with it and get the public to support it the problem is is there's a lot of enabling legislation within the bill there's not often a lot of clarity do you think public support would be enhanced uh by more clarity rather than just enabling legislation um Nick do you want to kick off on that i'm not sure i've got much to say about that that's a sort of almost like a political judgment isn't it um but well i mean there's an organisation you'd love enabling legislation because it could enable you to do a huge amount of things but it doesn't allow the public necessarily to see what's behind it um you can dodge it you can do what i'm just saying there's there's a lot in that about the role of of legislation primary legislation and secondary legislation i mean there's there's quite a lot to be said for having as much detail as you can in primary but um we tend to be in a system where a lot of that goes into secondary legislation and therefore that's where the scrutiny happens um sorry i'm not answering your question well no i mean i think as a parliamentarian i'm trying to push the fact that enabling legislation allows for less scrutiny scrutiny happens when things are on the face of the bill ian i'm going to bring you in because you might have a view on this or you might not yeah and if i could just go back to your first question if i could well i i kind of guess your answer to the first one but i'm very happy yeah no i support but i think we just just we talked about the environment obviously in the climate emergency but i think we do need to just reflect on the context of the circle economy in terms of our economic opportunity here you know and that's not just in terms of businesses you know this is a much bigger you know thinking about the use of resources globally here now and the impact of that on the global economy the geopolitics and everything that's involved in it and that's what's really driving the kind of real shift in the circular economy so it's not just about our climate ambitions and environment absolutely these things are critical to our survival but thinking about our broader economy as we go forward particularly around the net zero transition then thinking about our use of resources and reducing our consumption thinking more about the materials we already have and supply here in this country is really going to be critical to our success and that feeds into our kind of broader well-being of our communities and our citizens here in scotland so yeah i do think i think to be honest the public are more on board with us than you would imagine i suspect a lot of the the driver that have enabling legislation and then to get into more of the detail is actually to engage more with some of the key stakeholders in terms of some of the industries and some of the business businesses that could be effective affected hopefully positively by the shift to the circular economy so i generally think citizens of scotland really get the consumption piece you know when you talk about climate change particularly the impact on biodiversity loss not just here in scotland but globally that is very visible to them it's very visible in the media they're very much aware that they need to start making choices different choices what they want to be do they want to be enabled to make those choices and that is down to businesses and sick key sectors and even you know local authorities and people on the ground to help and support the accessibility for people to make the right choices so i actually think you know the the kind of secondary legislation idea is really about getting into those more in-depth conversations with key stakeholder groups many of which are possibly just uh the circular economy is is a bit newer than some other the groups have been working with who are coming to the fore and really trying to get immersed in the opportunities that are in front of us okay david do you want to add anything to i agree with what ian said there i guess the one thing it would add is that it just in terms down to individual behaviours we do have a problem in scotland uh 60 of the material in residual waste so that's in the you know your black bag or the bin that the stuff that isn't going to be recycled is could be recycled 60% and that's stuck we've got 43% recycling rates which is plateaued so there is a there is a there is a public element to this which is really important public awareness and encouragement in that area is going to is fundamental to all of this okay great the the next question comes from uh mark sorry did you want to come in hold on mark before i bring you in um i did the deputy convener's quote my eye wants to come in with a follow-up on that thank you very much convener and just just on that point mr harley i think you touched on such an important element here that there's a a way to go in terms of taking the public with us through the different means to nudge and encourage and you know punish if necessary and we'll get on to that later in the bill does the fact that there's a secondary legislation process following any primary legislation passed in terms of this bill is that necessitated because of the need to walk through the process in terms of implementation and also greater awareness raising amongst the public yeah i think so i think like ian said i think we need to be really we need to there's a there's a mix of actions that can be taken here from system wide to individual and i think we need to and also there's a there's a danger with with the system is complicated of this of unintended consequences so i think it's important to get to to walk this through with the public and to get it right to get the right target set and the right measures and the right set of interventions and the secondary legislation gives that flexibility yeah thank you computer okay mark sorry having introduced you and then cut you off i'm not going to introduce you again mark thank you so can i turn now to the disposal of the disposal of unsold goods in scotland how much of a problem that is which sectors of product so particularly problematic for the environment you start with ian actually on that one thanks mark i'm not sure i have the details in front of me about the actual amount so maybe that's something i can feedback at a later date but obviously we know it's a you know we know it's a it's an issue uh from the kind of online shopping phenomenon that people return stuff and the logistics operation is very is not really set up to receive that stuff back so there's a growing challenge around some of the online operators and in store take back as well what to do with that uh so we know it's a growing challenge for those operators uh and it's something you know to somebody saying they've been set up to distribute the stuff but not to take it back so the obvious thing at the back end of their logistics is just to dispose of that stuff as quickly as possible and get out of the system so that's really the challenge how can we then bring forward legislation or regulation to ensure that those organisations are then thinking about that end of life so just as well they're focusing on how to get the material of the products out to the customer then what are they going to do with them when they come back in so i think that's really important and i think genuinely all of the certainly the bigger companies that we speak to are very uh on this they're very aware of this uh it's a cost obviously i mean we're you know it's don't have the figures again but we're talking globally you know billions of pounds particularly in textile trade uh for returns that businesses are having to deal with so that's a cost that they're either bearing or they're passing on through their supply chains so it's in their interest to come up with avenues to kind of you know not just to do the right thing in terms of the environment but obviously to reduce their cost and think about those but it's the scale of the challenge i think which is daunting to most of them if you were to have them in the room and how do they reorientate their reverse logistics which that's not what they've set themselves up and how do they then partner with people at the back end of their system to actually make sure that they're you know not disposing but they're reusing and making available those products again for uh you know to keep the products in circulation over and over again but it also offers the chance for those businesses to think differently about their model i mean ultimately that's what the circle economy is about so while that's just trying to tidy up the retail environment how could we change that retail environment so people are not thinking about product you know as a sale but how do they think about subscription services how do you think about leasing and rental systems or engaging with different actors in the supply chain that could provide a different type of service, servitisation rather than the product so that's so hopefully by enabling this legislation in that way is not just going to tidy up the reverse logistics operation but get businesses of every shape and size to think differently about their model that ultimately just passing or selling things is not the future we need to think differently about that model yeah so in terms of the conversations that zero a scotland's had with with particular sectors particular scales uh businesses uh what what kind of feedback have you if you had are there are any concerns around unintended consequences or other issues we haven't found any unintended consequences when the conversation is very positive for the companies that we've engaged with again it for some of them you know it's the scale of the take backs and having outlets for that particularly at a local level to to redistribute that so some of that is a challenge some of them it's not just what happens here in Scotland you were talking certainly UK wide companies or global companies so it's not just a Scottish challenge but it is something that they're engaging with and they are keen to support measures that will help them because as I say it's a cost it's a cost that has been had to be passed on to somebody and they're very interested you know mostly in terms of their wider sustainability challenges and recognise that this is something that they can keep on doing to some extent that spotlights on a lot of those companies as well and new companies who are coming on to the market where that's you know smaller SMEs Scottish own companies are very aware of this because obviously they're being pushed into the online space that's obviously you know where consumers are now much more comfortable in that space so that you know again they're in challenge with that as well so it's something that getting in early with those companies to think about what happens to returns and what happens to that sort of model going forward I think is is quite encouraging I think I've seen a lot of interest in a different type of model but that might need different types of platforms different collaboration across different companies in the same space where that's clothing whether that's electricals so again that's you know that's possibly new for some of those companies how could they work much more collaboratively together within a location whether that's Scotland or regional parts of Scotland you know and again it's something we've talked to the chambers of commerce through our work through the circular cities is trying to understand is the actual solutions that we could put in place at a local level that could actually help those businesses individually but more importantly create opportunities you know both economically and socially within those locations but ultimately trying to reduce the consumption because this isn't this can't be seen as just cleaning up the kind of back end of an inefficient retail operation this has to be seen within the wider context of reducing our overall consumption what are those positive opportunities then I mean you talked about more of a kind of local approach to to redistributing goods although ultimately you know we're trying to reduce the amount of unsolved goods just being distributed like that but do you see you know what what are the kind of positive opportunities of discussions that you've been having for businesses that are under under development at the moment some of it is about I mean getting into reverse logistics some of it is simply about having the space you know these operations are not they're not set up to receive things back in so having that space available to them and again you know rather than all having the space could it be shared space and having then either themselves or a logistical partner and that could be within the social enterprise sector or the community sector to provide the actual mechanism to redistribute that stuff if that's what the answer is I actually think there's a role there for local authorities potentially to think how could they facilitate that you know facilitate that particularly at a local level rather than think you know so again multiple companies working together would be much more efficient and effective to some extent than every company trying to deal with it themselves because that's their challenge they're all trying to think about themselves but actually we'd sit and there might be operation there might be other operations I mean we've had work with conversations with the NHS as well so they have they have their own similar challenges around things like walking aids and other equipment being returned and again they have a big distribution network but they're not really set up to bring all that stuff back in so there might be partnerships you know utilising some of the public agencies as well who are who have similar challenges possibly not at the same scale as the online retailers but certainly they have similar challenges and it is how could we work collaboratively to create that efficiencies but again as you said it's not the whole answer we need to start thinking much smarter about that consumption piece up front as well so we don't end up with all of these things residing on a warehouse trying to find a loan yeah okay so if I can turn into SEPA just about how a ban on non-soul good disposal could be enforced and could ask for your reflections on on that I don't have a huge amount to say in addition to Ian we're broadly supportive of the principle the one thing that we would urge caution on is that it really needs to be where this is applied needs to be supported by good evidence to make sure we don't have unintended consequences okay but I mean would we expect SEPA to be the enforcement body that's that's a possibility absolutely yep okay so what what discussions have been taking place I'm not aware of discussions in detail about what how that's practically done I'm not sure that's happened yet okay I mean that that's obviously pretty critical to this bill so it would be good if SEPA could write back to the committee and detail how you make bake on those duties uh and how our monitoring could take place as well around compliance yes you can do that yes good um any views on each scott uh nothing on this thank you thank you mark and just but just before we move away from this I've got a question but I should say mark the committee did write to uh one of the big uh suppliers in scotland amazon and ask if they'd like to come and give evidence to the committee on this subject about redistribution and unfortunately they're not prepared to come and give physical evidence committee they have offered written evidence it would have been so much stronger to hear from them in person I think but just go back to the disposable of of unused goods is there a concern that if it's not kept pace across the whole of the united kingdom that companies in scotland might move stuff south of the border uh to avoid this regulation just saying that it still can be used um in other parts of the united kingdom would that concern you in or do you think that's uh totally impossible to happen yeah we'd obviously concern me uh I mean it's possible and I think I guess my answer would be depends on how the regulations are set and how that's monitored to make sure that that doesn't happen against the regulations but I think engagement with the companies would help to try and understand you know the opportunity that they see doing something in scotland I definitely think this is this is a journey that all these people are on so you know and you know by going down this route as well you know said all the benefits like you know pushing things further up they're kind of hierarchy so to speak and getting people thinking differently about their business model you know one of the challenges well one of the opportunities could be a lot of these retailers could see the opportunity to resell that stuff within their stores because that's something they're not doing you know the stuff goes out the back door and okay some of it gets into other markets some of it gets handed over to charities but they're they're kind of washing their hands of it because it's not new but actually encouraging them to see this as part of their business model their business strategy some of them are very interested in that you know it's a bit like who wants to go first and we're already seeing some of the bigger retailers thinking about you know selling second hand clothing in store in some of the bigger retail so we're beginning to see that creep into the high street already so anything that really encourages them to think that this is part of your business model is to do this I think we will be well received because they'll start to see this and that they might embrace this as a way of something that they could then replicate in other parts certainly of the UK if not abroad so it's about you know to some extent helping them get over what they see is quite a big challenge within their wider business model so if CEPA were going to be the regulator of this do you think there might be problems with the company moving stuff around the United Kingdom or even around Europe or wherever to avoid having to comply with say more stringent conditions in Scotland and David are you confident you could be on top of that CEPA I think it makes it more challenging I think the level playing field across the UK is definitely easier yeah make the regulatory job more challenging if there's a different approach in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK and just Ian I'll come back to you but just also maybe you'll just address the fact that if I was struggling to say sell items I might be prepared to give it to a charity to allow them to to use or sell it but if they don't sell it they then take on the obligations of the disposal of it do they not with that frightened charities or do you think they'd have confidence they could keep shifting items through yeah so that kind of leads on to my other answer I was going to say CEPA sometimes we can't look at this in isolation so we're bringing in something like this we need to think about exactly that the supply chain or the broader system so what will what will again stop the retailers or whoever we're talking about the online you know trying to circumvent this is if we create the right market opportunity in Scotland so whether that is working with charities charitable sector social enterprises or creating a different model for them or platform for them whether that's actually reusing some of that equipment into different functions so we create that market here in scotland so if we don't create the market absolutely all of those will be challenges you know they won't they won't find the outlets so they'll be on they'll lack confidence in them and the markets that are already available so how do we we're going to go down this route we could pick textiles we could pick electrical goods we could pick beds you name it we have to embrace the sector that's going to be behind that well that's the charity sector as you've said or the social enterprises create the right system the right ecosystem that sits behind that so that's so that's what this is about the circle economy is it's a system approach rather than seeing these things in isolation and saying it's all on you to solve this out because that will happen we've seen that you know we've been very good you know probably heard me say before we're very good at recycling in scotland you know both at household level and business level but you know the vast bulk of that material now gets shipped out of our country apart from organics and glass most of the material that we collect for recycling goes somewhere else because we haven't set up the systems we haven't set up the reprocessing infrastructure and the kind of market to make that a much more viable proposition so for every job there is in recycling collection and recycling there's eight jobs further up in terms of the reprocessing resupply of those materials back into the economy that's the economic opportunity we want to embrace so if we go down this route let's think about the system that sits behind that and all of the organisations and all of the businesses and all the sectors and all the citizens who will come around that and make this happen for scotland I share your enthusiasm for making it work it concerns me we're being asked to pass a bill which will enable this and we haven't really got all the details behind it to make it work or understand them in my mind anyway I'm going to go to the deputy convener Ben thank you convener and we'll come on to household waste again in due course but I would like to ask some questions to the panel about charges for single use items I'm just to start off how should the Scottish government strategically use powers for single use charging which is of course proposed in the bill to support a transition to a circular economy and what role can charges play alongside potentially multiple other measures or options such as producer responsibility deposit return and any relevant taxation I don't know who wants to come in on that first David thank you yeah I think like you said this is all part of the system and I think it has a role to play in conjunction with the other parts with the other with the other levers absolutely I mean in that do you think it's important not to overemphasise the contribution of single use charges and make sure that it's presented and considered within a wider absolute suite of measures to reduce waste and encourage upcycling and recycling yeah and I think this is where the evidence space and I know it's kind of a dry statement the evidence space but it's so important to get this right the information the data the understanding the behaviourals all of that understanding that in the interplay is crucial to the successful delivery of this ambition and just on that I mean in the call for views just as you've you've emphasised there many respondents also emphasised the the need for proper life cycle analysis of any new charges to ensure there would be environmental benefits and crucially engagement with businesses and consumers to avoid unintended consequences and to make sure that there was a collegiate and collective approach to implementation do you think the bill provides a framework for the assessment and engagement required around introducing any new charge are you confident that the what's in the in the draft bill is is robust enough and appropriate enough I'm not familiar with the detail of the actual you mean in terms of actual engagement required yeah I'm not I'm not close to the detail in terms of that engagement requirement but it but it but it will be needed because we're talking about a systems change societal shifts for us as a regulator it really puts us in a different in quite a different role in terms of how in terms of that societal behaviour so engagement's going to be crucial to this which does take time unfortunately that's the reality do any of the other panelists want to to come in on these points raised yeah I mean obviously the zero way Scotland as you know one of our you know our key contributions to the circle economy is that evidence base so we've looked at a number of those opportunities and we'll continue to do that what was going on that's our role you know looking at the evidence both from a life cycle point of view and from behavioural change what works but you know there's a whole range of options policy options that could be used but yeah a single use charge you know we've seen that you know well well versed that you know we are as human beings we're we're kind of motivated motivated more by loss than by gain so you know that's one of the things and we have you know a successful uh introduction of the carrier bag levy single use carrier bag levy is a good example you know of uh taking everybody you know through through a journey in terms of stakeholders through uh retailers training and all of the things that went with that for the successful implementation of that in 2014 so yes it can work you can you know there are good examples of that working but it is about the evidence base and taking people on that journey and making sure it's no unintended consequences and you've thought that through so I guess it's an evidence-based organisation you know that's part of our our remit but also that engagement piece I mean that's something that we stand behind is is making sure that we're working with with partners to engage with industry businesses you know individual retailers or whoever's involved in this to make sure that they understand our on the journey with us and just just building on that what what possible limitations are in consistencies are there in existing powers to to ban single use items and and the proposed powers to introduce charges for single use items are there any points around that you would wish to add Mr Gulland before I bring in Mr Halfhide I don't have anything I want to do with environment I don't have any further to add to thank you just on the concept more on all the questions I've asked Mr Halfhide I don't know if he wants to add anything we're not involved in in that kind of the detail of this is very much for my colleagues on the left but there's kind of a more general point that I thought useful to keep sight of which is that the kind of behavioural changes we are expecting right across society are pretty profound over the next decades in response to climate change and why I was so assertive at the start why we need the circular economy bill is we do need in its own right but it is part of a of many bits of changes that we're going to need because the kind of behavioural changes we need in relation to our natural environment are pretty profound and this is just one part of them about how we use what I think of the kind of inert resources like tin cans or whatever but it goes right across the piece as I said earlier on in my introductory this is how we use all our resources both inert ones but also the kind of live ones and hopefully we'll get on to talking about soils later because that's one of my favourite topics but it's in the same sort of space about how how we use all our resources and how we need to reduce our pressure on all of them because they're both direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss but also contribute to our emissions but also make it harder for us to adapt and they're all part of that really complicated system absolutely and just just lastly in terms of charges for single use items and let any other colleagues might want to come in on this topic but you talked about the success of the carrier bag charge in 2014 an undoubted success environmentally but also in terms of behavioural change and it has been argued to us last week by some members of the business community representative groups that the fact that those charges for those for the plastic bags are able to be put into local causes has in their view helped with the collegiate buy-in to the policy both in terms of implementation and seeing the benefits so i just wondered if you had any comments on how the the net proceeds of charges for single use items should be used because there is a different proposal in this piece of legislation as things stand compared with what happens with the 2014 charge for plastic bags absolutely i want to and obviously putting a charge on something where there's an alternative is key to this so in terms of the bag charge there was a tentative if you could get a reusable bag and continue to get your shopping home conveniently absolutely but i think that's a transparency i mean all of it is comes down to being up front and honest with the citizens about what happens to the money whether it's a it's a tax and it's going back into central coffers or wherever or it's going to be hypothecated into something else or it's being gathered at a local level i think all of those i think just that transparency i think benefits the the engagement and we knew that with the carrier bag charge engaging with them around what happens to the money where's how it's going to be spent absolutely and we know that from you know talking to individual citizens it's much more aware of what's happening in their own area whether that's charities or you know provision of recycling services so they've got an engagement with it and i don't think we should lose sight of that that people genuinely live in a community live in a place and if they see a benefit coming back to that place then yeah they're more likely to to directly respond to that so but some of it is just about transparency about this isn't you know there are examples not in scotland from other countries where certain single use charging has been seen as a tax and it's just and there's a challenge there about where does it go it just disappears back into kind of government coffers and there's no real appreciation of what that's about but that might have other drivers as well people trying to avoid paying tax maybe that's not a conversation but there is an opportunity i think in taking this legislation forward to both engage with the local community and the local businesses about how best to to provide that transparency of where the money goes but ultimately you know it's like the carrier bag chargers the carrier bag chargers wasn't about raising money you know i think we just have to remember that and putting a price on whether it's coffee cups or whatever isn't about raising money for good causes it is about reducing single use ideally we want a hundred percent shift so actually there'd be no money to be you know recirculated within the community and that's a hard thing to talk about as well but ultimately the reality is there won't still be some money available so that's how we do that but they shouldn't be seen i guess that's one of the challenges particularly with the carrier bags but this wasn't to be seen as a kind of you know a fund a you know an ongoing fund really okay does anyone else want to comment on that point okay and convener does anyone else want to come on on this issue before i'm not seeing any raised hands and so i think you've got more questions you want to ask so so where all he is thank you convener so i'm just now going to move on to the considerations around household waste which we've touched on briefly already um what impact do you think the strengthening of enforcement measures regarding disposable household waste will have and how in in your view should high levels of compliance with household waste and recycling systems be achieved and is what's in the bill enforceable start i think it's really helpful to have options there around household waste and then i guess enforcement i guess around that but in the mix and in countries where this works it's in the mix with a deposit return you know something like a deposit return scheme with a powerful producer responsibility framework and then having that the that sort of householder responsibility element as well so it's very much a mix and i guess we keep coming back to that isn't it it's it's one part of the puzzle that needs to be put together to make this work and again and we keep saying it but that that evidence base on making sure it does work that we understand the impact but there's no doubt about it that there's work to be done there in terms of that 60 percent that could be recycled in those bins yep just does anyone else want to add anything on that before i move on so it definitely is part of a puzzle and of course one of the advantages of a deposit return scheme as it helps to reduce contamination so there's not just the challenge of the 60 percent who are recycling and therefore the 40 percent of recyclable materials that are going into landfill rather than than being recycled but it's also about how we improve the quality of the recyclet that's going into recycling provisions as they are so to me the the puzzle is is deposit return it's the considerations within this bill but it's also about public awareness and cultural change so regarding the provisions to put in the recycling code on a statutory footing and to enable the setting of local targets what evidence is there to suggest that taking a statutory approach in these areas will will drive up standards then what are the key opportunities in making systems more consistent across the country so how do we drive up the standards and make the systems more consistent and how important would these these elements be i could just come back on that and then maybe move to others i think there is an opportunity to be to explore some sort of charge potentially in relation to weight in terms of that residual waste on householders but very much in the mix i think there's something about the code of practice for local authorities which is really important that there's a consistency of collection and process and that there's an associated confidence in the system from those people who would need to who are investing in all the processing and the recycling and that that's a really important element in this as well in terms of household waste local authorities will need to coordinate between themselves and establish best practice i mean i think of an urban constituency like mine of Edinburgh Northern and Leith where there's general recycling large street container bins and all it takes is one person walking past to dump some contamination in there sometimes unwittingly and the whole recyclet is contaminated and therefore cast aside in some cases so i just would you envisage you know significant engagement and strategic decision making from local authorities in order to make this work in both in terms of making sure that the public are aware of their expectations before considerations of enforcement are applied and then how is enforcement carried out and done in a in a just manner yes i think consistency of process around the country consistency of message consistency of approaches is crucial here and consistency of practice and how it's how it's implemented because um yeah any other feedback on that because i just want to to come on to a last point that's already been raised by mr guland which is about our facilities here for undertaking the requirements of this bill and the the shared collective aim of reducing waste and increasing recycling and what investment in waste whether that's recycling reuse redistribution infrastructure will be needed to support the aims of the bill i'd be grateful if you could elaborate on what you said earlier because i think it's really important yeah i can give him another just to go back to that yeah i definitely think that kind of enforcement and the consistency approach are together i think you're out you need to do the consistency for i mean just that 60 i mean there's two elements to this isn't it the 60 of stuff that could be recycled in our current infrastructure that is in the residual bin you know so that's that's just an education that's about awareness and you know keep you know giving that message across to people because a lot of people will not be aware of that so then there's that's before we get into the contamination challenge of people putting the stuff in the wrong bin with simply people are putting it in the residual bin but also getting that message across continually about the impact of that again it's transparency you know a lot of people don't know where their recycle ends up we're not you know we're not sharing that information broadly across you know the whole of scotland around what happens to that material what it gets turned into where it ends up you know what's the end destination of that and we've all seen the kind of horror stories in the media about you know not specifically scottish recycling but UK recycling ending up in other parts of the world and being dumped so we does that niggle at the back of the consumer's mind that what is this so we need to be much more transparent and you know having much more obvious communications with the citizens will help not just in the put it in the right bin but less recycle more but an answer to the question yeah there's a whole list i mean that's that there is a list name the material there's an opportunity both at a kind of national level but certainly at a local level you know this is the circle economy the thing we all forget is the circle economy is a is a distributive economy it's not about sucking all the materials out into with respect to central bit of scotland you know with particularly with digital enablement technology you know you can size size solutions into the rural parts of Scotland as well but again it does need coordination you know for some of those things whether it's mixed plastics plastic film you know electronics all of those things need a coordination you know with every spec we're still the supply chain ie 32 local authorities is still quite fragmented you know they're all doing their own different way of collection again i come back to the consistency so we had consistent approach would have the same materials being collected but then how do we aggregate some of those materials either at a national level or a regional level to kind of to kind of make these solutions maximize the opportunities there's lots of interest i mean you know i was only down at our exhibition in Birmingham just a few weeks ago there is lots of interest in a number of products plastics you know electronics from a range of industries who are interested in coming to scotland because although we're a small country we do have the scale of materials that potentially is available for inward investment but it does need a bit of coordination and it does need the signals around that consistency that that supply is going to be consistent across the country and it's going to be of good quality and it's going to start coming you know into these economic opportunities but it's also about reuse and repair shouldn't forget that you know how do we create the right accessible infrastructure for those things to happen and that's there's a role there for individual local authorities or local authorities working together to size some of those opportunities both that are kind of really local level but also within a kind of regional base as we spoke to before about even if we were talking about reusing unused unsold goods so so the points about reuse absolutely appreciate them don't you just going back on part of me the tool library in well exactly and and several others but just but just going going back to recycling i mean are you able to be any more definitive about what additional recycling infrastructure scotland needs as a nation in order to meet the requirements of what's ahead and and obtain a position where less of our recyclet is going offshore and elsewhere to be utilised i'm happy to provide a list for the committee i mean there's i mean yes there are a number of opportunities some of them are like i said at national level you know for things like plastic bottles for instance you know pet there's probably enough for one or two plants in scotland some of them you know different scale could be more distributed around the country uh so yeah there's there's a whole range any material we could look at you know and also there's an opportunity for doing land in something in scotland that could potentially uh you know attract material from over the border you know from the northeast or the northwest of england and you know so having that ability to land one of those opportunities here in scotland could have far reaching dividend to the local economy just as opposed to just looking afterwards what's in the local area that follow-up would be appreciated but that needs economic opportunity that economic parts of government as well to think about this so it's not just about waste management that gets into how can we harness the economic parts of government to see this as whether it's inward investment or job creation so if you could follow up on that that'd be helpful and and your points about inward investment and job creation are absolutely of interest and the fact that the consistency of a uniform position in terms of local authorities and the processing the fact that that would attract inward investment is an interesting point. I mean interesting I'm visiting charterie mcdonald from america from oregon from new gene in oregon it's just in he's in scotland this week he's speaking at the scotland resources conference in perth tomorrow so he he runs social enterprise in new gene it's about 250 000 people in a you know and various various reprocessing or reuse and remanufacturing opportunities in that area it's a 60 million dollar business based on resources based on resources in the local area and out with that into reusing remanufacturing repurposing materials and all of that 60 million dollars is deployed back into the community for emergency shelters relief for people in poverty so it's creating a massive dividend and it's all based on resources so that's just that's an example what's possible for scotland without thinking about big you know scale in terms of the national picture that could be delivered at local levels across scotland thank you thank you a few other questions on household waste but monica wants to come in and ask a supplementary on a point that's been raised earlier and then i'll come into douglas monica thank you can be right yes listening with interest i just wanted to pick up on the theme of single use items single use nappies clearly contribute a lot of waste and end up in landfill we know that some councils have initiatives locally and a small scale to improve access to reusable nappies i just wondered if colleagues on the panel i suppose best aimed at you ian feel that there's more scope outside the legislation to do more of that locally and to have these schemes that can work with nappie libraries for example or is there potential through this legislation to try and perhaps put more of a duty on local authorities and other partners to to do this in a much more proactive way I mean briefly on that yes there is more we can do on obviously yeah there's a lot of initiatives at a local level they need to be promoted more they need to be more accessible and it goes back to the point about what we call recycling opportunities but reusing opportunities or you know addressing consumption opportunities i guess when you're thinking about reusable nappies that infrastructure that's what we need to start thinking about how can we encourage that infrastructure whether that's through legislation or powers or investment but thinking about the broader health and wellbeing opportunities that these things so this is not just about thinking about environmental benefits thinking about the broader societal benefits that these solutions will offer and certainly you know this conversation to be had with local authorities that this isn't circle economy bill it's not just about bins and boxes it's about how they can broaden out thinking thinking about their procurement operations thinking about their community engagement thinking about their health you know you know in terms of you know preventative health and all that sort of stuff this is a real opportunity so absolutely things like real nappies should be put into that mix okay thank you thanks monica i'm going to come to Douglas your next i think thank you convener and it's just following on from the deputy convener's questions really you know i think David it was yourself it mentioned first of all that 60% of things that could be recycled aren't yet being recycled but to get that number and i think we're being going the wrong way in terms of recycling as well and i guess we don't need to wait for this legislation to come into place before we actually look at some of those things so what things could we be doing now to try and improve our recycling rates i think we need more of the sort of initiatives that we spoke about in the last half hour or so i think we do need a strengthened producer responsibility extended producer responsibility will make a big difference because that's about reducing the amount of waste that's generated in the first place i think that's a major part of it i think some of the additional provisions here will will be as part of it too i do think that there's an element of a stick in terms of low in terms of household waste and people potentially having to pay by weight for what gets disposed of that but that's but again a deposit return scheme will help it's all it's all in the mix and yeah i do think we need more at this point we have plateaued with i would say education is a role to play and public awareness and i think nick mentioned that wider societal education about what we use and just to just as an aside i mean even in terms of our use of water we use more water domestically than any other just about any other country in europe in terms of so there's something about our our psyche in terms of our use of resources that i think across the board could be could be improved and more education and awareness there but i do think more actions needed to to make that difference it has plateaued that overall recycling rate of 43 percent so something else needs to be done and it's different in different areas parts of scotland is as well probably in those more about that or it is but it's not massive i mean overall it's yeah it does very across different council areas and some of that to do with urban rural or the housing type and you know the particular challenges that some parts of scotland has but the consistency discussion and approach will surely help that you know because it will get into some of those conversations that how do we both simplify or you make more consistent the approach to recycling and that will then feed on to kind of more general messages but obviously there is i mean there is investment currently you know that the government is providing 70 million pounds for improving recycling services as we speak you know we're obviously committed quite a bulk of that money already but one of the challenges with that with every respect is it's capital it's money that's going into infrastructure but the very limited amount of money is going into communication which ultimately if you're introducing a new service you obviously need to educate the people about what that new service is but you need to continue that on an ongoing basis and it comes back to even that the 60% figure you know we know that that's just getting communication to people because that's existing infrastructure that's already available that's not anything new that needs to be developed that's just whether that's paper or tins or plastic bottles that could go into the current system so there's something about communication there but i also think you know we do you know it's slightly this probably goes into the question about targets we beat ourselves up slightly absolutely in terms of the recycling rate but again we're measuring tons of material you know we've developed a carbon metric here in scotland which is about measuring the carbon intensity of our waste management operations which i'll actually see that we have made significant changes in that or we've reduced the carbon impact of our waste management system significantly over the last 10 to 15 years and more importantly in the last five years when we've really focused on things like food and plastics which are the big capital intensive items and obviously you people know we released a report earlier this year about textiles so our textiles in the household waste stream is only 4% by weight by carbon it's 34% so that's what we need to be doing i mean you know going back to the climate emergency we need to be tackling the issues of the products the materials on our waste stream that are carbon intensive so that might not shift the recycling rate for scotland unfortunately but we need to really do it and we have been addressing that we've been tackling food waste we've been tackling plastics and we want to tackle textile waste next I guess the problem is though there's still a lot of inconsistency across different parts of of scotland especially on food waste for example some local authorities will collect it others won't i guess that all has an impact on what ends up in the general waste bin yeah so if there's a conversation here about how do we if there are about targets and say these targets these are carbon targets and they're part of your target target emissions reporting so that's something the council's duty very seriously in terms of the reporting so if we could make that link that this is just as much about carbon as it is about delivering a service and hitting recycling rates in terms of tonnes as part of your carbon you might see a lot more councils looking at what's in their bin what's in their waste stream and how can they target that from a carbon point of view and you'd start to see an increase in participation rates and Ian you mentioned lack of facilities as well probably in terms of plastic for example so i presume it at this time all our sort of pet stuff gets shipped to other parts of the UK or elsewhere or so it's just been a lack of investment into that but that that's something that could be done now once again doesn't have to wait for a bill to come forward it doesn't it doesn't it could could happen could happen now it does need co-ordination does need the right level of support for some of those companies to come into scotland or or for scotland businesses to develop that infrastructure here in scotland for that but it does need you know i keep saying that you know we can talk about this in the you know the one job in the eight jobs to get that economic opportunity it needs we need to design it it won't happen by chance you know these are to some extent UK global commodities but we want to see that success for scotland we all need to come round and not just think about the bins and boxes and think about the broader system and how can we create that here in scotland and we might not get it all you know but there are certainly big wins out there that we could and like i say there are there is a significant interest in some of these opportunities okay i'm just going to just make an observation i'm very carefully phrased this but talking rubbish is very interesting and we're getting through a pile of questions but the problem is we're also getting through a pile of time so i'm going to push members and panellists to give succinct answers to very succinct questions and i'll come back to you Douglas then if you've got one last piece of question i had was in terms of labelling do you think i should be more done on that you know because it is obviously there is some labelling just now but it's once again it depends where you are in the country whether you can actually recycle certain things and things like Pringles tubes is always one i used to get absolutely yes yes and i think just coming back to the circular economy strategy this having a statutory footing is going to be really important for many of the questions that you pose there because what the sector needs is the certainty that the country is serious about this and isn't going to change its mind and i think that really helps with that sort of investment in all elements of the infrastructure and all whether it's the processing and the ability you know the facilities nationally to do that or even whether it's the labelling it's just that commitment to the to this and having that in the statutory footing i think will help with a lot of that and then the consistency around the collection and process again it really helps with the labelling thanks Kimi no thank you um monica i'm not sure do you have a question on on this subject moth mute yes i am um no i'm happy to i was going to ask about fly tipping so i can okay um just before just before we go to fly tipping can i ask a very quick question on household waste and 32 authorities 32 different schemes different coloured bins different sized bins um i get confused what i'm supposed to be putting in what bin when i go where certainly will come to Edinburgh i have no idea where which bin replicates my well i don't have recycling bins in my area because the council doesn't do recycling in the remote area i live in so um but i would be confused if i was putting things in a green bin a blue bin a brown bin um i think yellow bins are now out but should we have should we have something simple across all of scotland which means that everyone could understand it and should the council recycle some of their recycling bins to make them one colour so we know what we're talking about in do you want to go on that i know that's a challenge it comes up a lot one we wouldn't advocate you know taking all the bins away and then putting out a brand new set because that would you know use up to material so i think it is about communication i think if there's a consistency of approach i don't think it really matters what colour the bin bins are i think there has been more innovative suggestions where regardless of the colour of the bin you just put a number on it so it's you know it's one two three everybody's got four bins around scotland or six bins or whatever or one bin then that's that's the number so there's different ways of doing it comes back to the labelling how can you link up the labelling both at a national level and a local level to the infrastructure that we've got we're not able to do that because we you're right we have 32 different systems but that's what the consistency of approach is all about so how can we do that and then use that as a basis to to communicate and engage with citizens across scotland regardless of where they live but i recognising that it's not as much the geographical opportunities that could be different but also housing types and trying to understand that so it's a bit more sophisticated but there's an opportunity for sure for providing a much more consistent and you know and i think it will be different for different areas but that's about communication okay monica fly tipping i think you're on yeah i've hinted that i want to ask about fly tipping i'm keen to hear from from all the panel so don't really have to answer all the questions but um what impact in particular do you think the provisions in the bill will have on fly tipping and is there anything else you'd like to see in the bill in that regard and also keen to hear outside of cyclical economy bill proposals what else is happening to improve enforcement and prevention of fly tipping so maybe start with david on that but keen to hear from nick and Ian if they have anything to add yeah um so i think one area that could be improved is that the requirement to remove materials isn't just on the landowner and i think we could to have that requirement on the fly the fly tipper would be is going to be really helpful um i think there's something about the responsibility for all parts of the of that of that bad process to have accountability so that if businesses or individuals have used an unauthorised illegitimate business to then have it disposed on the countryside i think having some sort of implication potentially some sort of fine or punitive element to those businesses so there's a duty of care from both in terms of individuals and in the business i think that that'll be really helpful yeah i could leave it at that yeah no that's that's helpful um what about nick do you want to add to that thinking about that impact on the environment and perhaps wildlife as well what nothing specific about what needs to be in the bill but obviously just to highlight the impact of fly tipping um on wildlife and it can be locally quite damaging and also um these things are quite sort of cumulative aren't they if people see that there's fly tipping going on and it's acceptable then they're less caring or often less caring for their environment so it it's part of i suppose also empowering local communities to be able to see that that's not acceptable i don't want that damage on the quality of my environment but also on the wildlife and there's nothing more distressing than saying you know a swan or a duck entangled in material that's been fly tipped so that's what i would add thank you okay i think that monica that neatly leads on to jackie's questions uh you've got some questions i believe uh jackie yes i do thank you convener you're reading my mind um it is to follow on from what what monica was saying about household waste um we all we all get oh and i should probably declare my interest uh convener as a former local councillor for Aberdeen city because i'm awake i ask a question um regarding what enforcement challenges this do seep it in local authorities face in relation to waste crimes a whole i know bed touched in the earlier but when we when we talk about fly tipping it's people automatically think it's about households and it's not all about households it's also about businesses and and their fly tipping so i'd like to to ask the panel regarding that um i'm actually adding on would they would they do they think that the power to see a vehicle who has been caught as part of fly tipping be a sufficient deterrent i'm in your hands convener because i can't see the panel about who'd like to answer that when when you ask the question jack they'll look to the opposite direction i don't think anyone no that's not true uh David i think you you were nodding your head yeah in that particular uh the provision that we'd really welcome that that's quite a powerful uh incentive if that's the right word uh that we would welcome yep it's very helpful any and do you want to add anything on that i know okay okay that you've got your answer um have you more questions jackie yes and i'm taking that answer to be a yes please if i if i heard that correctly yeah so two out of the three are nodding and one's looking away yeah how he's nodding that i would i would just like to ask david um if sepa have the resources and skills to make use of the new powers that is proposed in the bill so in terms of there's a lot of development work when it comes to new ways of regulating we talked about some of them earlier there is a there's a considerable amount of sort of implement preparatory work to implement uh something like that um system application systems the it behind all of that does take need it does require investment and we will be working with government to ensure that for whatever new powers and whatever new duties are required that we will be funded uh appropriately for that implementation phase however once these things are up and running as i said before half of our income comes from charges so we would then generate a charging scheme that would enable that cost recovery of that work from to from implementation onwards okay thank you one last question convener and i think i'll direct it to ian if you don't mind but anybody else could come in it's just to ask what other work is being done to tackle waste crime and do you think that the bill could be strengthened any further to support that work so i guess the zero is gone we're not directly involved in that obviously we work with partners particularly seaper and the rural economy thinking about you know behavioural change and aspects of that and engagement with communities who are blighted by issues of of fly tipping but again much broader you know a successful implementation of a circular economy you would expect to close out those types of opportunity because basically fly tipping is illegal as it is uh is actually leakage out of the circular economy it's tough so if you create a much more circular system for the particular materials that are being fly tipped so that would be the first point you create a different framework for the the security of those resources which if we do it right as i said if we design this right we'll actually limit the opportunity for criminals to be involved in that in the moment it's in the terms of the linear economy it's not saying easy for them but there are opportunities for them to to make money out of that to some extent so i would say the shift of circular economy i'm not going to say it's going to end the criminality but it's certainly a successful deployment at nationally but particularly at local level uh in terms of managing resources in a much more sustainable economically and socially aware and transparent operation will surely help us to make it harder for criminals uh to to be involved and also you know for householders possibly uh not to be persuaded to do the wrong thing because there'll be much more integrated of citizens individual citizens into a system which is both locally based and nationally based and globally based for for you know the reasons that we've talked about so and that thing that's where we come uh you know because the you know there are opportunities around that well it's white goods whether it's you know household waste uh even some of the commercial waste that's dumped as well there's real opportunities in the circular economy to to close that loop for a better word right jackie have you got further questions the deputy convener wants to come in with a brief follow-up and then i'm gonna go to douglas thank you those are really important points i think about flight up in my constituency most of it is sofas and mattresses and some of that is criminal and that people are bringing those resources those materials and dumping them in in certain areas but some of it is just people putting those out in the street because either they can't afford or they are unaware or they don't have the the motivation to to take it to an appropriate facility so i think those are points we'll make but i just wanted to come back to the issue of the the challenge of organized crime within the waste management sector and i just wondered if sepa you had anything to add mr harley about that as a wider challenge again as i said earlier i appreciate the sensitivity so if you'd prefer to fall up in writing obviously that would be understandable but i do think it's an important wider consideration briefly david yeah as i said 10 years ago we set up a new unit to tackle this it's really really important work for us we put a significant amount of resources with a significant progress taken bad acres out of the graham out of the game prosecutions are in progress we work very very closely with the police because i'm just associated with organized crime it will continue to be as we move forward in this more circular economy world it's really important that you have strong enforcement around the those unintended consequences or those trying to take advantage of the of the system so it continues to be really important thank you and douglas i'm going to allow you one question i'm sorry i'm going to be really mean that's okay um we've been hearing from businesses and they've got real concerns about the burden of the report in that they'll have to comply with once this legislation came into come into place do you have a view on the amount of reporting that some businesses are going to have to do post legislation not so much of you on the amount but i do think as regulators and players in this i think if we have the systems which you know that there's a lot of there's a lot of technology development and potentially AI that could help us with this i do think if we have sophisticated systems we could reduce that burden and also make it easier for the regulator for ourselves to understand where the flows are going in the right way and where potentially they're going in the wrong way in terms of illegal activity select so i think the investment in good systems is going to be really important yeah no i do hear that a lot but for organisation we work directly with a lot of businesses and you know once they start to measure the waste and the resources and stuff like that they then you know can take action and we've got lots of evidence that we actually businesses are saving money on the back of it yes you know implementing those systems particularly around food waste and that's someone that's mentioned specifically you know the businesses yes it takes some different challenges at the beginning perhaps for infrastructure or equipment and even training but actually over the piece they will make savings and i think you know so there's the kind of longer picture here about how can they report internally and externally and it comes back to that transparency in terms of them engaging with consumers but also business to businesses in terms of supply chain there's much more of that being asked by people in supply chain but also it comes back to the for us in the circle economy because back to the question about where these opportunities for material reuse repurposing reprocessing we need to try we need to understand that you know so we're having that information at a macro level whether that's through sectors specifically you know to gauge where the materials are where they're flowing where can we access them and actually create some of those circle economy opportunities but more importantly if there are consistent or sorry common themes or common waste streams within particular sectors or particular locations how can we harness them for economic benefit so that reporting element absolutely helps individual businesses we can show evidence of that but it also helps shape it will accelerate to some extent the opportunities that we can have at a kind of more macro level or certainly a sub regional level i guess the concern is that there is no detail is yet but that's fine thank you you are going to leave it there that that was quite a long answer and i'm sorry i'm really up against the clock and i reiterate there are some things that committee members want to ask today which we've been unable to ask just because of the time restrictions and there are some questions on targets and target settings which i would like to well the clocks will follow up in writing to ask if you have views on it because we should have got to them but we haven't due to my poor time management but thank you very much the three of you for giving evidence today to the committee i am briefly going to suspend the meeting for literally two minutes i want you back here committee members at 12 10 to do the next part but to allow the witnesses to leave thank you very much i'll suspend the meeting thank you and welcome back our next item of business is consideration of two type one consent notifications for firstly the persistent organic pollutants amendment number two regulations 2023 and the public service obligations in transport regulations 2023 these are two proposed UK statutory instruments where the UK government is seeking the Scottish government's consent to legislate in an area of devolved confidence competence we are notified of these on the 6 and 8 of september respectively it's the committee's role to decide whether it agrees with the Scottish government's proposals to consent to the UK government making these regulations within the devolved competence and the manner and in the manner that the UK government has indicated to the Scottish government if members are content for consent to be given for the UKSIs the committee will write to the Scottish government accordingly in writing to the Scottish government on both UKSIs we have the option to pose questions highlight issues or to ask to be kept up to date on the relevant developments if the committee is not content with the proposals it may make recommendations outlined in the clouds notes for these instruments firstly i'm going to ask members views on the persistent organic pollutants UKSI does anyone have any comments but okay there are no comments so i now need to move to the substantive question on this item is is the committee content that the provision set out in the notification should be made in the proposed UK statutory instrument are you content with it you are okay so we'll write to the Scottish government to that effect now invite members to views on the public services obligation in transport UKSI does any member have any comments on this mark i see your hand us up yeah thanks convener my only point on this regulation is that this committee has not had adequate notice adequate time to consider this so i don't i don't object to what's being put forward here today at all but i am concerned about that 28 day rule being continually broken and i would just see your guidance as to what we can do to urge governments to ensure that this committee is treated with respect and we've got enough time to consider anything that comes before us we can we can just of course write back and say that which i think is a valid point i'll just make a draw your attention mark to the fact that we are notified on the 8th of september regarding this instrument it is just a function in some respects i would have liked to have seen it come up earlier within the committee than the third of october but it is a function just of how busy we are so i'm very delighted and i think we should write back as a committee to say that we would like to be considered to get earlier notifications so we can consider this more fully is the committee agreed that we should write as part of our submission on this to make that point i'm sort of looking at nods so if we do that are you i want to moot a substantive question is that are you happy within the provision within the notification should be sorry are you happy that the provision set out in the notifications should be made in the proposed UK statutory instrument if the answer is yes which it appears to be then we will write to the Scottish government to that effect but we will include within that a request that we be given further time to examine these items move on to the next agenda item which is the consideration of two negative instruments the parking attendants wearing of uniforms north airshire council regulations 2023 and the road traffic permitted parking area and special parking area north airshire council designation order the instruments are laid under the negative procedure which means their provisions will come into force unless the parliament agrees to a motion to annul them no motions to annul have been lodged do members have any comments on either of these instruments no so can i invite the committee to agree that it doesn't want to make any recommendations in relation to this these instruments are we agreed we are agreed that concludes therefore the public part of the meeting and therefore so we'll go into private session