 Welcome to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee's 19th meeting of 2019. Before we move on to the first item on the agenda, I remind everyone to either switch off their phones or put them on silent as they may affect the broadcasting system. The first item on the agenda is for the committee to continue its financial scrutiny work. This morning, we will be considering how fiscal measures could be used to improve environmental outcomes and promote positive behaviour change. I am delighted to welcome Jacqueline Cotrell, the senior policy adviser for green budget Europe, Martin Nesbit, the UK director for the Institute for European Environmental Policy, Jenny Hume, the campaign manager for Have You Got the Bottle, Kellan Blackburn, head of policy for a reception valuation of Zero Waste Scotland and Michael Cooke, chief executive officer for Community Resources Network Scotland. I am going to start by asking a question that not all of you might not feel able to answer, but those of you that can, I am interested in your thoughts. We have a situation in Scotland where we do not have all the powers around everything that we can possibly do to improve those outcomes. I want to ask a broad question about whether the Scottish Parliament has the devolved powers that it needs to introduce environmental taxes and charges to support the policy objectives around the portfolio. If anyone wants to go in first, you do not have to press the button. It is all done for you. I think that the fiscal measures are one aspect. One of the things that we do have is powers around things like producer responsibility, and those fiscal measures can be very effective, particularly if we are looking at prevention and trying to get the redesign of materials so that they can be more recycled. From that perspective, there are a range of things that we can do. We should remember that in terms of fiscal measures, usually what you want to do is have a holistic package, so there might not be one measure on its own but a range of things, including behaviour change actions and other action around procurement, for example, which is a big thing that we have control over. We can create a package that focuses on some of the things that we have the competence for. On Callum's point about a holistic package of measures, that is one of the things that we have found in some of the research that we have done on environmental taxes across EU member states is most important in the success of those taxes is being able to demonstrate that your environmental levy or tax is part of a wider package that takes into account social issues, economic issues and so forth. That makes it more challenging to do at a sub-member state level, so you have to kind of knit together that package from the elements which are under your control and you have an element of lack of control in that someone else might then take a subsequent decision on other parts of the tax package which disrupts your overall cohesive package. I think that it is more challenging at a sub-member state level, but it is certainly still possible. Anyone else wants to tackle that? Michael Cook? I support what has been said. We have seen evidence of changes in the past such as the carrier bag, charge and, in the present, with deposit return scheme coming through, where a relatively small, in both those cases, levy can nudge consumer behaviour and send clear signals, which has clear environmental benefits. The thing that we would like to see is not just discourage the negative but encourage the positive and recognise that tax and fiscal measures can only achieve so much, as Callum said. When you take into account the whole of the waste hierarchy, how you are encouraging reuse and repair, for example, at the top end, not just discouraging landfill, then some of those tax powers clearly rest south of the border or indeed in Brussels currently, so it is recognising that VAT or something like that that could do that is a European-wide issue? There is immediately anything that you think, well, if that was rested with the Scottish Government, that is a barrier removed in which they could take real meaningful action in a particular area. You mentioned VAT there. Is there anything else that springs to mind that would make a meaningful difference if, obviously, things have got consequences, but is there any tax that you think, if that was at Scotland level, could be deployed usefully? We obviously do not have a view that is above our pay grade, so to speak, to comment on where the power should rest, but the point that we would make would be that it needs a holistic response, and that requires thinking across fiscal, but also wider, how you achieve the environmental objectives that you want. Stuart McMillan wanted to ask a supplementary to that. I think that we have opened up something quite wide, and I was just looking for a concise view, because this could be an academic dissertation taking four years. Almost all the references to tax here have been about using tax to influence behaviour, but, of course, the primary reason for tax is to raise income, to spend on Government objectives, and I just wonder—and then, of course, with the wider issue of using taxes to raise money for specific purposes. I am almost unique in not thinking that that is a good idea, personally. However, how do we draw the balance? Do we really think that taxes are the best way of influencing behaviour, or should we be looking at legislation? I am looking for a very, very high-level answer so that it is very concise. Does anyone like to—yes? If I may, I think that when we are discussing which instrument might be best, there are certainly cases where regulation might be the better way of achieving an environmental goal, but there are also cases where an environmental tax is the most cost-effective way of achieving a particular environmental goal. If you are targeting a very diffused population, then an increase in price, even if that is quite small, that can really nudge a change in behaviour. That is then the most cost-effective option that is available to the Government. One thing that I would say in the context of taxes being primarily used as a means of raising revenue, in the case of environmental taxes, that is not quite as simple as that, because what we are looking at is at first raising higher amounts of revenue and potentially over time, depending on the structure of the tax, that revenue may fall as behaviour changes. There are ways of combating that by introducing an escalator so that the tax increases over time, for example. However, as a general rule, the focus of an environmental tax in the first instance has to be its environmental purpose and the environmental aim of the tax itself. Given that the parish that the Scottish Government has at its disposal right now, is there anything that strikes you as being a potential that has maybe not been used to its fullest extent that might improve some environmental outcomes? Yes, Jenny? You can be there. If we could advise on one single change to the way that this area is considered, we would say that rather than ministers and NGOs exhaustively going through every individual product or packaging type and proposing charges or bans or levies or deposits or phase-out dates, we think that it would be better to just require full producer responsibility for all products that are put onto the market, and then producers have a responsibility of working out the most cost-effective and efficient way to get those products back. That would put the onus on, for example, a supermarket to have the type of packaging that is easily recyclable, so the onus is put on them. You can look at the example of Norway with deposit return systems, where they introduced an environmental tax and they did not dictate that they had to have a deposit return system, but the drinks producers got together and realised that the most effective way for them to reclaim their bottles and cans was to implement a deposit return system. They had to come up with that on their own, going from the principle that they were responsible for the full cost of reclaiming their products. Any other thoughts on that? Just to reiterate that I think that producer responsibility is those kinds of schemes and those fiscal measures associated with that are definitely where we see the next progression in terms of trying to tackle some of the things like reducing the material in terms of prevention and design. I would agree with Jenny on that. There is more that we can do on that. We can go faster and further on producer responsibility as a way to make some serious changes. The most obvious change that is going to make is a reduction in source. If there is a responsibility on that, they are going to try and eradicate all the unnecessary packaging. It depends on the design of the scheme and this is where I guess I remember complicated because for each particular product you probably need to think really quite in depth about what the design of the scheme would be to give the right incentives to the producers to optimise their material usage and make sure that the recycling at the end of the life is there. The scope of that would be very wide because it would be packaging but it would also be design and through to retail as you are saying. It is a great principle. It needs to be simpler than the current producer responsibility, easier to understand and thinking through the consequences throughout the waste hierarchy that it does not have negative consequences, for example, for second hand goods. We want them to be more attractive than new because that is still better for the environment in thinking that through. I just had a kind of boring note of caution on this. I very much agree that extended producer responsibility is the right way to go if you can make it work in regulatory terms but it is enormously challenging to design a scheme that is effective. In the sense that we are looking at packaging so far, producer responsibility has focused on the most easily manageable regulatory structure and going beyond that is going to be very challenging. Getting back to Mr Stevenson's question on the purpose of all of this, one of the things that we should be trying to do is introduce a binary decision point into consumers' minds. They make a choice at the point of purchase about whether they need a plastic bag or whether they want to take a disposable cup with their coffee. That is the best way of triggering a behavioural response. It is not really so much about the revenue, it is about getting people to think about their patterns of consumption. It should be quite difficult, though, when you go into a supermarket and all the cucumbers are wrapped in plastic and you have no option but to buy them because there is no alternative to that. Is there a case of more forward thinking that supermarkets need to be offering consumers that choice of not having plastic at source when it probably is not completely necessary? There are only so many choices that a consumer can make. You can opt to bring your own cup, you can opt to not bring your own bag but when it comes to actually buying produce, the apples are percished, there be the apples are percished. One option, particularly using the electronic information that is available to supermarkets, is potentially giving consumers a print-out of the environmental impact of their basket of shopping at the end. They might not actually be able to make that choice at that point, but they will be made more aware of the packaging involved in their basket of shopping, potentially the carbon impact in their basket of shopping and potentially be able to pressure the supermarket for availability of more choices at a later date, but it is challenging. Mark Ruskell. I could just jump back to the bigger picture again. There is a lot of discussion in Scotland, the UK and the US about a Green New Deal and the transformative changes that we need to put in place to tackle climate change. I just wonder if you have a top fiscal approach or a top tool for stimulating a Green New Deal in Scotland and what would that be? I think that if we are really looking at the big potentials in the Scottish context, I read through the spice briefing, which is very interesting to have a look at exactly what Scotland has as potential areas for introducing new taxes. I think that one area where there could be a real raising of revenue with an environmental impact as well is to really look at the oil industry and to look at extraction. A carbon tax, you could argue, there would be distortions, but if you looked at the extraction level, that would be at least worth discussion for a Green New Deal kick-starting mechanism because you can see that that would have an impact on something that, presumably in the medium term, Scotland would like to move away from in terms of its climate policy. You can see that about 95 per cent of oil production or 90 per cent is actually in Scottish waters, so the economic distortions argument could be considerably less in that context if you were looking at taxing extraction of oil. Would you say that you do not have the powers over that in the Scottish panel? I do not believe that that is at UK level. Am I wrong in thinking that? I think that this gets us into the kind of usual territory that is always a sideways way of getting at this because we have control over environmental rules that govern it, so therefore one can withhold environmental consents unless behaviours work in a particular way, even though one does not have the power. That is often how we find that we have to do things. It is why there is no nuclear power in Scotland. We do not have the power to forbid it, but we do provide the consent to build power stations. Do you like those as well? I mean, I am sure that Calum would tell us how they wrestle the system to make it deliver, even though we do not have the power. Just to go back, we touched on something that is very much the headlines of the news. People want to do things, and it is hugely frustrating, as the convener touched on when you go into a supermarket and you want to buy, for example, tomatoes. They come in packages that are plastic and some come in plastic trays or paper trays and then you get loose tomatoes and they are priced differently. The ones within the plastic are priced so much a kilo, and when you go to buy the ones that are priced per individual tomato, so for the consumer it is very difficult to look at the price and compare price with packaging. Last night, I went to buy a ready meal and it came in a foil tray with two plastic sashes inside and a cardboard outside. I want to be able to do it, but it is really difficult to recycle that. It is particularly difficult on Fries and Galloway when the recycling system is so crazy. Where should the emphasis be on consumers making consumer choices, which those examples I gave you make it very difficult for consumers as they do their weekly shop to make those decisions? Should it be on levy, on tax and you are talking about producer responsibility? The conditions are right for people to adopt those changes to register their waste or whatever, so where should the weight be? The weight should be on the responsibility should lie with the producers to make an infrastructure and a shopping situation that is going to allow consumers to make the right choice because I absolutely agree that it is really frustrating if you are trying to do the right thing, but you cannot because the options are not provided for you. I think that DEFRA has just closed their consultation on extended producer responsibility, which was carried out, as you know, across all of the devolved administrations as well. Am I right in thinking that if that does not turn out to be ambitious enough, then Scotland does actually have some powers to go beyond what they suggest with extended producer responsibility, despite it being really complicated? I can answer both questions there. I think that there is a balance, and I think that it is good to point out that there is a balance because it does require the consumer to react and make the right choices. Sometimes those initial choices and enthusiasm can wane over time, but Jenny's point is that producer has to step up. I think that that is where we need to see some ambition and leadership at the highest level on packaging reform, which is the producer responsibility scheme that Jenny was mentioning. There is a risk that the previous or the current packaging producer responsibility scheme that we have at the moment only recovers around 10 to 15 per cent of the costs that are out there that the producer should be paying for. We need to see something that is more ambitious, but we have to realise that it is more than just a producer. The consumer retailer or various others need to be involved, and that is why it is quite complex, but if you get the right solution, it works very well. Claudia Beamish Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Could I go back to you, Jacqueline, and to anyone else who wanted to answer a little more detail on the question using the carbon tax as an example? My understanding is that—and I am not an economist—the tax goes to the state, to the revenue to be distributed as appropriate, and that a levy—if we use the example of the single-use bag levy—goes to other local community groups or environment groups or whatever. Therefore, it is possible—my understanding is—for us as a devolved administration to do those. Let us hope that it is, anyway, because we are doing some of them already. It is really to ask you if you see any opportunity for—you highlighted the oil industry—to have some form of levy rather than tax in order to shift opportunity into sustainable green energy projects and local economy projects. Thank you very much for this question. In terms of a levy and a tax, I am not an expert on the Scottish system, but I think that it is clear that a levy would be possible under current conditions. There is also section 80B, clause 80B, which notes that there is a mechanism to add new devolved taxes of any description via an ordering council. My question would be whether it would not be possible to consider introducing a new tax on exploration. I think that there does seem to be potential there. The discussion of distortions is one that could be met because the oil industry is to 95 per cent in Scottish waters. I think that there is a discussion to be had whether a tax would not be possible. In terms of a levy, that is an interesting idea. If those funds were to be used to invest in renewable energies, that could be a way of avoiding the discussion altogether and raising revenues for a shift towards renewable energy in the Scottish context. Is there anyone else who wants to comment on that? You do not have to. I would again counsel caution about this is a very real challenge for Scotland, this distinction about what it has powers over and what it does not have powers over. The risk is that you end up designing instruments just in order to get around a set of rules and you end up with a suboptimal set of instruments. As I understand it, the distinction between a levy and a tax is whether the money comes through to government or stays with either the retailer or the industry for recycling. That is not necessarily having the money staying with the industry and giving it choices over where it spends it is not necessarily the best way of spending money, which is essentially public money. The landfill tax, in my experience in England, gave landfill operators an opportunity to do quite a bit of advertising for themselves through local environmental schemes, which in many cases were good, but it was not necessarily the best use of that funding. I recognise the challenge absolutely, but the levy route is not necessarily the best way of designing an effective tax and spending system. Excuse me, thank you convener. Can I just ask to you back to behavioural change, please? How easy do you think it will be to sell to consumers the packaging reforms that you are talking about, which will essentially mean reduction in choice? The packaging is there in most cases to increase shelf life. It is not that anybody in the industry wants to add additional cost, but it is there for a reason. Do you think that reduction in choice that would necessarily flow from what is being suggested will be an easy sell? I will answer that question. The packaging reform, what you might see from the initial ambition that has been set out from DEFRA at the UK level, is that the materials that are used in some of that packaging are either composite materials or materials that are made of a plastic that is difficult to recycle. A lot of the packaging reform will focus on making those materials easier to recycle and making better messages for consumers easier for them to recycle it. I am not sure that choices will reduce. It might be the impact of those choices will be less in the environmental terms because the packaging reform has made some changes to the design or the way things are manufactured. I agree with what Callum said and I think that it will also help to improve the infrastructure to make it easier for people to recycle those items. For example, in Scotland at the moment, 43 per cent of households do not have access to curbside recycling for glass, so the introduction of a deposit return system that includes glass is going to make it a lot easier for people to take their bottles back to be recycled. It will not necessarily reduce choice if customers want to have something that is packaged, but, as Callum said, it will design it in so that it is better and easier to recycle and the infrastructure will improve as well because producers will be putting money into setting up that infrastructure where the burden at the moment falls on to local council taxpayers. I am just asking about green fiscal reform and how would you define it and what are its principles and how should Governments be strategically undertaking green fiscal reform, a blank canvas for you? As an institute, we have done a fair amount of work on environmental tax reform across EU member states. I would say that it is a combination of an attempt to internalise the environmental costs of decisions through the tax system. It is, to some extent, an attempt to ensure that taxes are placed on polluting activities rather than economically productive activities or socially useful activities. It is also an attempt to drive behavioural change. Knitting those three elements together as part of a wider package is essentially what environmental tax reform is about. There are both short-term and long-term elements to that. In the short-term, you are trying to drive behavioural change. In the long-term, you are trying to shift the way your economy works to a more sustainable state with taxes on the polluting activities, hopefully reducing the level of those polluting activities and shifting to a more environmentally sustainable overall tax base. The challenge often for finance ministries in all of this is that, if you are successful in driving behavioural change, you reduce your tax base. In my previous existence, as an environment official in London, I had a lot of conversations with colleagues in Treasury where they would point out to me that they would be very enthusiastic about an environmental tax scheme in terms of securing environmental benefits, but they did not like it at all in terms of the tax base because it meant that your tax base was overall less stable. That is a significant challenge for finance ministries in designing environmental tax reform that works. For me, green fiscal reform would be trying to overcome some inherent problems with the environmental agenda. It is hard to conceptualise. We throw out things like a two degrees rise in temperatures, ice caps melting, and it is a long way away. The timescales are longer than any parliamentary cycle, albeit we are seeing increased urgency around that when welcoming the First Minister's climate emergency. However, how do you take what is largely an abstract concept and make it tangible for the consumer? For the producer, when a lot of the environmental costs are paid a long way away from the point of production, potentially plastic washing up on a beach, the other side of the world that was created here, how do you internalise the cost of that consequence so that the producer who creates the environmental cost has those consequences up front so that a rational market would respond to that by reducing those costs because they are incentivised to do so? As complicated as that is, I think that that is at the heart of it. One half of that is consumer focused and about changing behaviours and helping them to understand that making a good choice here, that I totally agree with what was said before about bringing what is maybe passive reactive behaviours to a conscious point of choice and therefore being nudged to make the right choice because there is a 20p charge on the bottle deposit and the other side is on the producer by improving the behaviours up front that will then flow through the life cycle of that project. I just wanted to go back to Martin on what he has just said and test what he has said. Is what Martin is saying that environmental taxes should actually be replaced by levies and the fruits of those levies should therefore be applied to the environmental problems and not go near the Treasury, thus relieving the Treasury of the instability and the pressure downwards that is properly associated with using levies in that way and that taxes should therefore be on consumption, income and asset disposal rather than on instruments that are designed to change behaviours? In other words, behaviour change should be through levies and income generation for the state should be through taxes. Was that the essence of what you were saying? You asked this in a previous question for a short answer, so the short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is that a levy is also an instrument of generating revenue and applying that revenue to a public purpose. That sort of thing is much more easily managed within government than outsourced to the private sector through mechanisms to ensure that the income avoids the tax and expenditure accounts. Levy, you need a method by which public policy determines how the levy is spent. Notwithstanding Mr Simpson's remark, what opportunities do you see for new taxes? What are levies? I speak to someone from a party that is fundamentally opposed to increasing burdens of taxation. Is there something that is driven towards the idea of levies, at least being of value to the industry, to drive behavioural change? Where do you see possibilities in that regard? Are we thinking here specifically within existing powers? Within the Scottish context, yes, really. And within what we can do in Scotland, from my perspective at the end. To be honest, I am not enough of an expert on what currently exists and what the flexibilities are in Scotland to be able to answer that question, but colleagues on the panel can answer that. I was going to say one area that, obviously, we have mentioned produced responsibility a lot, and that is within the competence of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. Although we choose, in many cases, to be part of a UK wider scheme, because often that is easier to manage, but it is within our competence. We have talked about that, but the other ones that have probably been used quite effectively are at a minimum price. We can look at that in terms of single-use carrier bags, and that has been quite successful. It is a small charge for a carrier bag that has made a significant difference. There are other areas where that could be applied. I know that the expert panel on charges and other measures has recently consulted on whether there should be a similar approach to coffee cups at a minimum price displayed within the charge for coffee. Those are things that are relatively easy—well, not easy, because nothing is easy. It is always complex to look at the research behind those things, but in terms of applying it, it is easier than an actual full tax. It works in areas where you would like the charge to be retained by the retailer or the producer, so that works well. The other area of influence is that we have the plastics tax, which has been proposed at the UK level for plastic packaging. While that is within the UK competence, we should be trying to influence that as much as possible to be as helpful as possible to create recycling markets and to drive the change in design. It would be useful for that, coming back to one of the earlier questions about what you would ask for. It would be useful for that if it was broader than just plastics and it looked at other packaging or even plastics outside the packaging's fear, but that is particularly within the UK competence. Obviously, devolved nations are contributing into that. We agree that the tax should be looking at all materials rather than just plastic, and that should include biodegradable and compostable items, because they can be unexpectedly problematic if we do not have the infrastructure or the information for people to know how to do the right thing with them. They also take up a lot of land use to grow the resources that we need to make them, so we are not really moving away from the single-use problem when we replace coffee cups with compostable items. I really wanted to say that you can also look at applying the deposit mechanism to other items as well as bottles and cans. For example, in Germany, there is a system called the ReCup programme. I think that it is in Cologne that 2,400 different outlets have signed up to it, and people pay a one-year-old deposit to get a reusable coffee cup. You can get it from one cafe, use it and then take it back to another cafe that is participating. They have had really a lot of interest from it in a short space of time, and I would be happy to find some information about that to send to you in writing later. Obviously, to shape future policy, we need to look back to see how other levies and taxes have worked and learned the lessons from them. Is there any specific lessons that can be learned from the Scottish landfill tax and the carrier bag levy that we need to recognise moving forward with new levies or taxes? From a perspective of looking at success, the landfill tax has been very successful as a push mechanism to get material out of landfill. Looking back over the past 10 years in Scotland, it has really helped to drive—it has been part of the package that has really helped to drive increased recycling rates getting us up into the mid-40s. Obviously, anything to do with recycling in the circular economy has also a big impact on climate change, so it has really helped to contribute to that. I think that going back to what Martin said earlier, one of the challenges with the environmental taxes is the fact that you are trying to change behaviour, and then the revenue declines. With the landfill tax, we had an escalator that was in there from the start. Businesses and the industry knew what it was, and they could predict over the years what the price would be. That has allowed the revenue to be more stable, but at the same time it has allowed business to prepare and increased incentive over time. It could be that there are other examples where we would apply that kind of thinking, because it has proved successful in terms of the landfill tax—using an escalator and giving some certainty to the future price of the tax. I agree with that. Both those initiatives that you mentioned have been successful overall, and we have seen positive effect on the ground from them. I think that one lesson to learn in terms of fine-tuning such initiatives going forward is to think through the possible knock-on implications further up the waste hierarchy. An obvious example is that the landfill tax is there to discourage landfill. The worst thing that you can do with things is to bury them back in the ground, but we do not want to see negative consequences up the waste hierarchy. One small example that has been seen with the landfill tax is that, as the cost of putting things into landfill goes up, the Charity Retail Association has done some research that shows that about 30 per cent of charity shops in Scotland are charged for their waste. When they are saving about 99 per cent of books from landfill, about 92 per cent of media, about 95 per cent of textiles, they are taking household waste and diverting a huge amount of that from going to landfill, but there is a small proportion that they cannot divert. With that, if they are being charged for that waste, that can have a consequence of actually discouraging them from taking a donation. They have to think twice about taking that donation. The landfill tax is definitely a good thing, but we would want there to be absolute clarity in how such things are worded to ensure that reuse or repair of these higher value waste hierarchy activities are consistently encouraged. That is potentially one side effect of a levy over a tax, just to digress into that, is that if there is some middle ground between attacks where the Government has complete control on how they spend it and a levy with carry bags of voluntary arrangement that retailers give that to good causes and many do. If there could be some influence over it, we would encourage that environmental levies are encouraged, supported, required, depending on the level of to go into environmental benefits, because we then believe that you would have a compounding effect as well as changing the consumer behaviour and the producer behaviour, that money invested could make a significant difference. That was very much for an agreement that the taxes and the levies that we have have returned positive policy outcomes. Has the use of the revenue that those have generated have been maximised? We have the landfill community fund and the voluntary arrangements for the carrier bags. How can we maximise that revenue? Maybe some of the other panel could answer that. Are we maximising the revenue that we get from the schemes at the moment? Is there more that can be done, rather than going into voluntary charitable organisations or whatever? Are you maximising the impact of the revenue? I again, with apologies, I am not an expert on what happens in Scotland, but one mechanism that you could use for that, which might simplify things from the businesses point of view, is arguably a slightly crude way of getting around the levy distinction, but you could set up a mechanism at government level into which the levy collectors, so the businesses could contribute to their funding. That enables you to channel and direct that towards projects of genuine public priority, rather than just projects that look good in PR terms from the point of view of the levy collectors. One of the concerns that I have on levy mechanisms is that you are introducing quite a lot of complexity for the businesses collecting the levy and then having to distribute it, which is not really part of their core business. If they can then pass that back to government voluntarily, it might be a more effective mechanism from their point of view. When we are talking about the performance of environmental taxes or charges, for those operating at a UK level, is there an argument that for further environmental taxes and levies to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Government? Is there any examples at a UK level? Is there any case when it comes to the performance of that tax, or the levy, that there should be more devolved from the UK down to the Scottish Government? I suppose that we are looking at the deposit returns or the carrier bags or whatever. I am just going to say that, in terms of the carrier bag minimum charge, deposit return and other producer responsibility schemes, they are devolved. As I understand it, we do have the powers to do that. Sometimes, though, we look at something like packaging, which in a UK context is very complex across the UK, so it makes sense in that case to try and work within the UK scheme. I think that the challenges where the ambitions of Scottish ministers are not the same as the ambitions of the UK ministers, so that can be a challenge if the scheme is not as ambitious as we would like to see in Scotland. However, the one that I mentioned before in relation to the proposed plastics tax is one where it would be really nice to see an ambitious scheme there that is a bit more than the proposals are at the moment, to go faster and further, if you like, but that is not an area that we currently have confidence in. We can influence it. I think that it would make more sense for the devolved institutions to have a proper free hand here, unless a particular measure has a demonstrable negative impact on the rest of the UK. It would mean that you had an easier option between taxes and levies, and therefore they were able to apply the most appropriate one, and not just the one that was easiest in terms of powers. I would just add that, as a kind of sunny-minded optimist on this, I like to imagine the possibility of virtuous competition between the different parts of the UK in the level of ambition that they set for environmental taxes and levies, and the use to which those revenues can be put. To some extent that has very much operated with the plastic bag levy, which was, of course, first introduced in Ireland, and then demonstrated its effectiveness and was taken up more broadly. Jenny and Calum, you have already mentioned the expert panel on environmental charges and your involvement in that. I am not sure whether any of the other panel has been involved in that group either. Do you have any more thoughts on the remit of that group on what you expect to come out of it? One thing that we would love to see is to have an NGO representative on that group, because, from what I understand, there are academics and some experts from industry, and there is somebody from the climate 2050 group, but it would also be a really valuable contribution to add somebody from an environmental NGO. More broadly, we would love to see a top-down approach that is driven by the principle of full producer responsibility rather than going item by item. I think that it would be able to make more bigger change happen quicker. The panel recently had stakeholder events at the beginning of May, which Jenny and I attended. We were looking at a package of measures around coffee cups. In that package, we were looking at whether a minimum charge, based on separating out the cost of the coffee cup from the coffee, would be one option. We were looking at reuse schemes, which Jenny already mentioned, operating in other countries, and whether that would help to change behaviour to a more reuse coffee cup rather than a disposable one. There were a range of measures that the panel were consulting on and were looking for input. The role of the panel is to recommend to the Scottish Government ministers their thoughts. I am sure that they will be working on that soon, based on the output from those events. The next thing that they are looking at is to look at the range of plastic items under the single use plastics directive that the EU has brought forward. There are a range of materials in there from things such as straws, plastic cutlery and various other plastic products that the EU has targeted either for a ban or for some serious reduction measures. It includes things like fishing nets, for example. My understanding is that the panel is looking at that next. That is the kind of thing that we would expect them to be making recommendations on after our disposable coffee cups. It is taking a lead partly from the directive. Are there any other expert working groups at UK or international level that are feeding into the agenda of how we deal with plastic waste? There is also the UK plastics pact. There is a group that is driven by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's initial work on the impact of plastics globally. There is a wrap in England that has been a facilitator of setting up the pact, which is looking at a range of things—objectives around plastics—reducing their impact overall, increasing the recyclability, removing non-recyclable plastics from the supply chain, etc. That work is under way, so there is a group that is oriented around that. There is also a lot of expertise amongst environmental NGOs, and I was part of a group who responded as a UK-wide link, so it included the Scottish Environment Link but also the link organisations from England and Wales. They have written really in-depth informative responses to the consultations that came out from DEFRA recently. It makes for really helpful reading. There is a lot of information in there. If I may, I would just like to second that point. I think that it would be really important for the expert panel to also include civil society voices, because there is a lot of work in Scotland that is being overlooked because there is not that representation on the panel. Can I just throw in something a bit tangential, but environmental and the less—I mean, we are talking about—and this refers to a programme that I heard on radio 4 last night when I was driving through—about the need to maintain infrastructure. At the moment, we are talking about reduce, recycle and reuse, but maintain is not part of that at the moment. Could I just have your views on that, our critical infrastructure, which, if it is not maintained in an engineering way, often deteriorates to the point of needing to replace it? In terms of behavioural changes, there needs to be perhaps an enhanced view towards maintaining what we have. Something that any of you would like to comment on, it just suddenly seemed to me like a very important thing that we hadn't actually thought of focusing, dare one say, on coffee cups and plastic bottles, rightly so, but there are also other things that we should be focusing on in terms of behavioural change. To keep with the Rs, the three Rs, repair is the fourth R, and that's the best thing you can do, something is to repair it and keep it in use, not replace it with something new that's got all the carbon footprint with that. The right to repair, I mean, not on the critical infrastructure side, although that's clearly important, but just for consumer products and having repair built into design so that repairability, it's easy to, you know, if your complex thing breaks to get the one little piece you need to keep it going for another five years. So, you know, there's a lot of good initiatives coming out of Scandinavia, for example, in relation to right to repair and making that the mainstream activity you don't repair as the last resort is the first thing that you do and is the environmentally responsible thing to do. At the moment it's quite difficult, isn't it, Liz? You talked about, like, say, charity shops of certain items that they can't take, you know, anything to do with electrical items, they can't be passed on and anything like that that breaks down the first thing people do is actually just, you know, a lot of the components are sealed, for example, you can't get into them, you need special tools, whatever. So, what do you see happening that could change that kind of culture from that point of view? With a very small example, but just highlight a great example in my own town of Stirling that transitions Stirling, run a repair cafe, you can take anything in and they'll work with you to fix it and if you've not got the time to attend it, they'll, for a very small hourly charge, will try and fix it for you. So, you know, tool libraries are springing up in the main cities and are offering those opportunities to do repair and I think that's part of the way forward. I mean, I think Mr Scott was principally thinking about kind of large-scale infrastructure. It wasn't necessarily designed for maintenance and that's what became a problem. And I think, you know, this morning we've been very focused on product and the consumer level but I think the environmental tax picture is also relevant to the big infrastructure choices and I think, you know, long-term planning for infrastructure in particular to ensure that infrastructure is resilience to the impacts of climate change is obviously a very important priority for governments across the EU, but you can also drive some of the right investment decisions by providing long-term clarity about carbon prices, about environmental taxes more generally, thereby giving industry clarity on what sorts of investment in infrastructure will be sustainable in the long-term and what sorts of investment will not be. And that element of removing uncertainty through your long-term tax system is one of the most important ways in which you can drive a private sector response to the sorts of investment that you need in decarbonising the economy. So, I think it is, it's a very relevant question for environmental taxation but perhaps slightly outside the producer responsibility product and consumer level we've been looking at this morning. But perhaps there will be space for that wider picture within the circular economy and zero waste bill, which has been promised for this parliamentary session and, you know, hopefully that will go beyond what we've been focusing on this morning and look at the bigger picture as well to address it holistically. Yes. I suppose on two sides I would agree with Martin about on the big infrastructure. We certainly need to get the carbon price right, and that's a question. We do have a process for that, but I suppose the question is, are we getting that right now with knowing what we know now? But that will certainly influence a lot of our investment decisions on big infrastructure and enhance the opportunities for repair and maintenance over other options. But I think getting back to the more consumer level, the two things that could really change the repair ability is one, what we do with public procurement, because we can actually request things through public procurement and make a big influence on the market. We spend billions every year and we should be using that to optimise repair and maintenance and reuse. The other thing is in the design of what we've already talked about producer responsibility schemes. If they're applied to durable items like electronics, there should be some criteria in those schemes that incentivise repair and maintenance and the design of that within the producer's manufacturing process. I agree with everything that's been said here. Just to build on that, in particular about what Martin said about creating long-term stability and policy and encouraging private investment. One thing that we haven't really discussed this morning in depth is the definition of environmental fiscal reform, which goes further than just talking about taxes but also looking at expenditure, subsidies that are in existence within a Government's budget and looking at the tax exemptions and tax reductions. There's a great deal of potential to raise additional revenues, to free up revenues that at the moment are incentivising environmentally undesirable behaviours in the UK or in the Scottish context as well. Those are the kinds of revenues that can also be used to cover infrastructure repairs that we deem necessary within the economy. We haven't discussed the amount of money that flows into North Sea oil exploration. That's subsidies from UK level, but they are all factors to be taken into account when we are screening for environmental tax policies to be thinking about what the Government is spending on as well, what are the incentives that the Government has inadvertently put in place or put in place for a different reason. Over time, that purpose has simply been lost. What is that spending and how can we reform that to better drive the economy onto a more sustainable path and to drive investment as well onto a more sustainable path? That's an important thing to consider in this context. What potential is there to turn culture to more providing services rather than buying goods? For example, this building here has tens of thousands of light bulbs, so rather than the Scottish Parliament buys lots of light bulbs, it buys a service in its light and they contract with the company to provide light. Is there a potential to incentivise consumers to do that with washing machines or tumble dryers or whatever? For example, John was talking about the cost of maintaining and repairing. I've got a tumble dryer that's £140. There's a little component that costs about £50 that needs to be replaced. I'm going to buy a new tumble dryer because I don't know how much the service engineer is going to charge me for a call-out in a rural area and so on. Those are the things that consumers have to take into consideration. Is there a potential for services to be sold rather than goods? I buy a cloth dryer service from a company and I don't actually own the tumble dryer. I don't want to buy my own car, but I need to get from ATB, so I buy a service that gets me from ATB. Is that something that could be thought about in the future? Have you thought about a washing line? Oh yes, it's very much in use at the moment. I was just going to say that Zero Scotland has a lot of experience in that we have a programme where we support businesses to make a change to their business model where they move from selling assets to transformationally going to something that's more circular, which is a lease or a rental model. There are quite a lot of challenges. It's not right for everything, but it certainly can work more in the digital age when we've got better access to information, but there are some challenges around liabilities, how assets appear in company balance sheets and how their cash flow works and insurance. It's a case-by-case and there's some pioneering work. There are companies in Scotland that rent LED lighting and provide that service, but from the Parliament's position, they have to adapt to that change and it might mean that they have a different contractual arrangement, they have to have different expertise in their staff or whatever. It is certainly the way to go, sometimes called servitisation, but it's pioneering in different areas at different speeds, depending on how easy it is for that area to move to more of a leasing or rental approach. It's one of those areas where you want to see innovation in the private sector and the creation of these schemes. It's quite difficult to direct that in a top-down way from a Government perspective. What you can do is when those schemes and when those services become apparent, you can make sure that you're addressing all of the handicaps that might be in their way or the little regulatory challenges that might be in their way. There are some cases where you can adapt your levies and charges to encourage those schemes. For example, the congestion charge in London is not applied to car share systems. That is one mechanism that drives down the cost of those systems for consumers. Also, the fact that you can't park a car in London anyway is quite an important incentive. It's one way of ensuring that that scheme can be encouraged and given an additional boost once it's on the ground and once it's been set up by the private sector. Thank you, convener. We've listened to quite a few of you who have highlighted new action already. Can I focus our minds further on that? I'd like you, as a panel, to explore with us the priority areas for action where there are the best opportunities for environmental fiscal reform. While we're doing this, we've talked about infrastructure and new infrastructure. We haven't talked about the implication for those working in present industries, which, of course, is very important and how that shift can be supported through a just transition. That would be useful. If we could start with the circular economy and waste, and we have touched on some of this, but plastics, textiles and very demanding problem waste streams. I'll just highlight something very quickly in relation. It's not textiles, but it's more furniture. I was looking—I won't say which site it was, but it's one of the sites where you can buy used furniture. I was thinking, why are all those wonderful corner sofas that are only three or four years old being sold by people? It's great to be able to buy them. It's great they're not being dumped in landfill or whatever, but it looks great to me, and one might say that there's a small stain on an arm of it or something. How do we—in addressing this, it's partly about the tax and levies, but also partly about our behaviour as consumers. I put myself in that as well. I face challenges. If we could think about the circular economy and those areas first, and then we move on to the broader climate change mitigation issues. I just have one very quick comment, which is I'm not actually sure what's happening in terms of training people and do we have modern apprenticeships that are really encouraging people to learn repair skills? It feels to me like we're maybe losing a generation of people who have these repair skills. If we could really teach our young people these skills, that would help with the repair economy. It could also help to breathe life into some of Scotland's more rural areas where people are moving away from. That's all I have to say on that. Yes, Michael. One message, which I think a few of the panel have hinted at, I would make, is broadening out the discussion beyond plastic. There are lots of hard-to-recycle materials—matresses, tyres, bike tyres, carpets—these are all things that there is no good option to recycle in Scotland or any option at all. I think that the other point would just be around thinking more holistically around what we're trying to achieve and making sure that, if something's broken, it can get fixed. If you are getting rid of a sofa, it can be reused. These are all better things than landfill. How do we make sure that they are happening as the first choice and how that gets more mainstreamed? Echoing what Callum said, public procurement has a role to play in that. It is more complicated and it does take time, but if reuse is not an option in the public procurement, why would the individual do it? There's an initiative that we've been doing for the last two years, which is a reuse consortium. It's a national contract with Scotland Excel to provide reuse furniture to local authorities. Fife and Aberdeen City and Renfrewshire, as local authorities, are buying reuse furniture, so that lovely sofa that you saw in that shop is an option for local authorities to buy on a national contract. We would love to see more initiatives like that in public procurement buying reuse. That's how behaviour will change. One thing that's very important if we're thinking about how to realise a circular economy is thinking about how to enable repair to take place. Part of that is that labour probably needs to become at the bottom end of the income scale to become cheaper, so it's more feasible for employment to fill this gap as well. Green Budget Europe, for example, did a study on developing a robot for circular economy in the context of Finland. We looked at the kind of taxes that could be implemented that would start to drive that change on the part of industry, things like carbon taxes, fossil fuel subsidy reform, electricity taxes as well, and using a proportion of those revenues to reduce labour costs at the bottom end of the labour scale, so that you create as well more possibilities for repair to be part of the economy. As we all know, it's very expensive to get something repaired. It's cheaper to go out and buy a new sofa on many occasions. Thinking about how to reduce the labour cost is also an important element within the circular economy. Could I move our discussion to climate change mitigation, including any views on how the Scottish Government should use powers of a departure tax, assuming issues are resolved enabling the tax to be devolved? In relation to natural resources, peat and food chain supplies, forestry and pesticides—I was going to say even pesticides, but only because we don't seem to be talking about a tax. We're looking more at a ban, but if we think about taxes at this point. Any comments or any of that from the panel? I've put it all together just in case people want to comment on some of it, not other bits, and you don't have to comment on all of it. I was just going to make the point that a lot of the measures around circular economy, so the things that we've already been discussing about procurement, producer responsibility, landfill tax, etc. All those things have a very big impact on carbon, so in effect they are addressing the carbon issue, although they are not effectively a form of a carbon tax, but all those measures are really driving towards a circular economy, and the circular economy and material use in our economy is one of the biggest elements of our emissions. I'm making the point that those things would make a significant contribution to the climate change agenda. On the question of the air departure tax, at least one lesson that we see from that, if the rate does diverge from the air passenger duty, I think that there's very important equity considerations that have not really been taken sufficiently into account. We can see that it really is the richest income, the wealthiest income desiles that use flights the most, so you're giving an advantage and a tax benefit, in essence, to the richest 20 per cent of the population in Scotland, which I think is something that can be carried on to other areas. I think that it's very important also when we're implementing environmental taxes to look at not only the climate change impact, which I think is relatively clear if the tax is reduced, but also to be thinking about the equity impacts. I think that's a very important aspect of this tax, which perhaps has not been taken sufficiently into account in the proposed reform of the air departure tax. Part of my brain is telling me that the air departure tax is a controversial issue and I shouldn't touch it, and the rest of my brain is telling me that it's a controversial issue and I should touch it. I'm going to go with the fun part, which is that air taxation tends to be characterised by serious political timidity across developed economies. I think that it's largely because it has an impact on people who have political agency and a political voice and can influence decision makers more easily. There are very serious issues, obviously, for isolated communities, which depend on air travel or where air travel is the cheapest and simplest choice for those travelling long distances, and that's clearly a very important issue for Scotland to address. One of the things that was one of the drivers of the Gilets jaunes protests in France on the introduction of carbon pricing for the kind of transport that poorer people tended to use was that they could see that similar mechanisms were not being applied to air transport and to air travel, the kind of transport that richer people use. There's a very significant social equity challenge here, and it's easy for think tanks to say this, but I would love to see political decision makers being bolder on this issue and saying, there are significant carbon costs to flying. Those carbon costs need to be addressed in the same way that we are addressing carbon costs throughout the rest of the economy and arguably need to be addressed more as a priority because the people tending to pay those costs will tend to be wealthier. Claudia, can I bring in Stuart Noe? I'm really keen to know if there's anything about the other issues I've raised, particularly on peat and those areas. There are examples of levies on peat extraction and taxes on pesticide use and fertiliser use, and I can send details of that to the clerks if that's helpful. Maybe just on aviation, it's unique, I think. It's the only mode of transport that gets its fuel tax-free, apart from the small petrol-driven aircraft that service our Northern Isles and Western Isles, who do have to pay tax, curiously enough. We have also some things that we can do ourselves. The Parliament wanted to take away my perfectly functioning laptop PC and give me a new one, which I refused to allow them to do, so it's now seven years old, and when it runs out of steam, I will replace windows with Unix, which I carry on my key ring for anybody who needs it for their old PC, and I have a 20-year-old PC that I'm still using. We cannot do that. I want to talk about taxes and levies a bit, but just make the observation. Calum made one or two points about who's balance sheet assets appear on. The introduction of IFRS to replace FRRS 17 stand for accounting—I'm not an accountant—did create contingent assets so that you now get things that will appear sometimes on two balance sheets, which is interesting, but they no longer disappear as they used to under FRRS 17. Finally, the UK tax clause is the most complex in the world with 32,000 pages, and it was a quarter of that only 20 years ago. If we don't do something about that, we're really just going to keep finding corners to hide in for environmental polluting. Quite a lot of what I might have asked has been covered, so I won't, but there are a couple of things. Cost of administration and revenue potential is something that treasuries generally will look at. Of the available options that we've got in this policy area, is there evidence that we're being driven by that, or are we being driven by environmental considerations? There will be some environmental taxes that, in effect, deliver no financial benefit because the cost of collecting is similar to the cost of taking them away. Can we be doing better there so that there is more incentive to develop environmental taxes, levies or charges? Anyone in the panel would like to— I'll venture an answer. From my experience and just the responsibility schemes that I see, I think that it's very much about trying to, from what we've seen so far, it's very much about changing the way materials are either manufactured, how they're collected for recycling or re-use, so I think that the environmental focus is the prime focus in there, but I've got no experience of the other taxes, so I can't really comment on them. I've just come in very quickly on the question of administration costs. I think that one thing that policy makers can try to do is design a tax in a way that means that it links to existing collection mechanisms. If there's already a tax collection mechanism in place, then the environmental tax can be added on to that, and then the administration costs are very, very small. Of course, that isn't always possible, but in many cases that's how environmental taxes have been implemented in the past. I've got one small bit before I conclude. We've referred earlier to a hypothecation, which is essentially raising a tax that will then, because it's raised, be spent in a particular area. Is that something that helps public acceptability of new taxes, taking John Scott's view that people who introduce new taxes are rarely popular? Is hypothecation a good thing to use because it makes acceptability greater? The short answer is that it can indeed help considerably with public acceptability. It depends very much so on the environmental tax. If that's going to raise a large amount of revenue, hypothecation is not going to be the most desirable way of using that revenue. It's better, then, to bring large amounts of revenue into the general budget and then make decisions based on the Government's fiscal priority policies for that year. However, in terms of acceptance, using a proportion of revenues in that way can be a helpful means while giving the Government the freedom to use the rest of the revenues as it sees fit. Just a very quick addition. That needs to be based on, as far as possible, a stakeholder discussion about what is the best way of using that revenue. If you can demonstrate that political process, it can be a significant help to acceptance. Can I go back to the waste issues and the amount of residual waste that we have in Scotland? We're making good progress on deposit return scheme now and some good progress on recycling rates as well, but there's still this amount of residual waste, particularly single-use plastic items and other very hard to recycle, hard to treat residual waste streams that are still there. A particular concern that you mentioned about low-income communities, a particular number of communities in my region who are low-income, is the growth of incineration and the growth of proposed incinerators around Scotland. We're seeing a lot of speculative applications coming in from developers that doesn't seem to be a sense of how much incineration we may need in Scotland, particularly given the ban on food waste going to landfill and some of the pressures there. COSR have raised a number of concerns about the capacity that we have to deal with the residual waste in Scotland, even though we're going to have schemes like DRS and everything else kicking in. What are your thoughts on incineration? We took some evidence in an earlier session where we understand that there's some work looking at incineration tax going on at the UK level. It's something that the Scottish Government is not looking into at this point, but is there an issue here that the more that we move towards banning landfill and taxing landfill, the more inevitably we get to a point where incineration will look like an easy option that could lock in incineration for a long period of time. I think that that is a concern that we've seen in northern European countries with large incineration capacity, where it's harder to recycle because of that capacity that's already sitting there in terms of infrastructure. I suppose that what we don't want to fall into the trap of is having an incineration energy from waste infrastructure that is too big, that is oversized and would prevent further recycling. I think that what the landfill tax is very much a kind of push measure, it's trying to push material out of landfill. I suppose that what we're looking at now is saying that the answer is to live further up the waste hierarchy and trying to prevent those materials from getting into landfill or in a different waste at the end of their life requires some interventions at the top of the waste hierarchy, so that might be, for example, banning the item or bringing in something that's produced a responsibility around that item that means that it goes into recycling infrastructure. I think that that's where probably the measures are actually moving now rather than sitting in that relying on pushing things out of one particular treatment technology. I think that Martin Nesbit was wanting to come here. No, sorry, I was just happy to be thinking about that. Can I just get a view on incineration tax? Is it something that's been put to it? Is it something that's been put to it and just interested to know if it's a panel thing? That's a good idea, or not, it might not be. Can I come to Claudia Beamish, because Claudia, you wanted to pick on something else before I go. I want to give enough time to Angus MacDonald to ask the questions that he wants to ask, so Claudia, could you ask your question, please? Yes, particularly for Jenny, I was going to ask about the lessons that have been learnt during the design of the deposit return scheme and how these can be built on to progress the circular economy and produce responsibility. More widely, I'd like to ask the panel very briefly, please, the opportunities to use tax or levies to mitigate exported environmental impacts, for example international impacts on food, forestry or other products. Thank you. I think that one of the key lessons that we've learned is that there is a huge amount of public support for a deposit return system. We've seen that since we launched our campaign back in 2015, and it's grown as we've learned more about the proposals from the Scottish Government. I think that that shows us that members of the public are keen to do something and they welcome these ambitious proposals. Anything on the externalities of products? I just say on that, I think it's a particular issue when you look at the environmental impacts of food products. There is a risk that policy makers try to address the environmental impacts from agriculture by placing additional restrictions or regulatory burdens on producers domestically. In some cases that might actually be the right approach, but what you risk doing is increasing the price of domestic production, encouraging imports from other economies, particularly economies that may be at risk of deforestation. In the food sector, there are strong arguments in favour of instruments that are focused specifically on consumption rather than production, but then you need to address the social equity challenges of the fact that food makes up a significantly greater proportion of the household budgets of poorer households. It's a very important question. Progressively, economies are going to have to start addressing the agriculture and land use sector in tackling climate change. There are some really challenging social consumption and cultural challenges to that, which need to be addressed sooner or later. Thank you, convener. We've looked at what's possible and what's not possible in this country, and Jenny mentioned and gave a good example of the recyclable cup scheme in Cologne. I actually saw a similar system in Copenhagen in December with reverse vending machines, so it's certainly possible and out there. Turning to the fiscal approaches, are there any examples of fiscal approaches in other countries that have been implemented or are being developed to further sustainable development that you're aware of? Exactly. Very, very many countries in the OECD have implemented environmental taxes on almost any product that you care to mention or to think about in the context of climate change or sustainable development. We can send through papers afterwards that provide examples from OECD countries that would fulfil that knowledge gap there. There are a number of examples in our splendid IEP report, Capacity Building for Environmental Tax Reform, which I will send through to the committee, looking at air pollution charges, pay-as-you-throw schemes, particularly in Belgium and the Netherlands. Charges on agricultural inputs, which cause water quality issues, particularly pesticides and fertilisers, and I could roll off a long list, but I think that the best thing to do is for us to communicate that report to you. It provides lots of detailed case studies and attempts to draw some of the general messages from what has worked and what hasn't worked. There is also lots of work that Green Budget Europe has done in the same field, looking at similar examples. There is much to learn from there. Increasingly, what we would like to see is parts of the UK continuing to demonstrate that they can lead on environmental tax reform and create the sorts of examples that other economies follow. If you could send those documents on, we will read them with interest. Before we round up, is there anything that the panel would like to highlight that they haven't had a chance to do in this area with our questioning? We don't always manage to cover absolutely everything. Is there anything that you particularly want us to know about? I would just say that, on balance, an incineration tax is a good idea to ensure that you are internalising the full environmental impacts of all waste management activities. Just coming back to one of the questions that was asked earlier about employment, I think that one of the things is, no matter what the fiscal measure or the package of measures that we are putting in place here around the circular economy and climate changes, is to try and make sure that the employment opportunities and the infrastructure are in Scotland. One of the things that Zero Waste Scotland is doing is working in partnership with the Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland, Education Scotland, etc., on what we need to do in terms of training and skills for a more circular economy. That work has started and we need to recognise that there will be some skills that we need to adapt to to make the most of those benefits and infrastructure. Just a detailed point around the imminent roll-out of DRS. I am hugely supportive of that initiative. I am delighted to see that the plan that was published by the Scottish Government recently includes the possibility of individuals donating their deposit to charity. We think that there would be real benefits in take-up and that compound effect of the environmental benefits if it was encouraged for that to be an environmental charity, a local charity, so that people can see that instead of littering that bottle, that bottle is actually supporting a local community environmental project. One thing that I did not really touch on very much was talking about road transport and ways that congestion, for example, which is one of the largest causes of external costs from the transport sector, can be tackled by fiscal policies. So thinking about congestion, charging and road tolls, certainly something going forward for the committee to pick up on, but I think that it was something that we did not really discuss here today, so, for future reference. Well, thank you very much. I want to thank you all very much for your time today. I am going to suspend this meeting briefly to allow you to leave. The next item of the agenda is for the committee to consider legislative consent, my memorandum relating to the wild animals and circuses number 2 bill, which is a UK parliament bill. Do any members have any comments on the LCM? Just a tiny comment. I very much welcome this. My tiny comment relates to that although we had no travelling circuses in Scotland, my constituency had been a home of many wild animals overwintering, and the change in the regulations that are proposed here in particular would finally close off that particular abuse of wild animals, so overall I very much welcome this. Thank you, convener, just very briefly. I hope that we will be reflecting as a committee and I hope that the Scottish Government will be considering, which I think that they have made commitments to future issues around animal welfare and static circuses and other ways that we need to look at properly protecting wild animals in the future. Thank you, convener. I will echo the comments that Stuart made with regards to the concerns that some of us had when the bill went through this committee that there may be still potential for certain types of wild animals to be kept and performed elsewhere, so that closes that loophole, so I welcome this. We agreed that no further action is required and we are content with the LCM as it stands. I will report on that basis. Is the committee content to delegate the final sign-off in the LCM report to myself? Thank you very much. The next item in our agenda today is to consider whether the Environment, EU Exit, Miscellaneous, Amendment Scotland regulations 2019 and the Environmental Assessment, EU Exit, Scotland Amendment regulations 2019 have been laid under the correct procedure. Both instruments have been laid under the negative procedure. Any comments on that? We are all content. We are all content for the instruments to be considered under the negative procedure. If you are content, we will set the instruments that will be considered as the next agenda item. We will turn to that now. The fourth item in the agenda is to consider those negative instruments. I will have to read them out again. I will, just to be in the safe side. Environment, EU Exit, Miscellaneous, Amendment Scotland regulations 2019 and the Environmental Assessment, EU Exit, Scotland Amendment regulations 2019. Are there any comments and relations to either of those instruments? There aren't. We don't want to make any recommendations in relation to those instruments. I agree on that. That concludes the committee's business and public today. At its next meeting on 11 June, the committee will take evidence as part of its marine inquiry. The committee will look at the current state of Scotland's marine environment and examine opportunities to protect and enhance marine biodiversity in Scotland. We will now move on to private session and ask that the public gallery be cleared as the public part of this meeting is now closed.