 Yn ystod yn cyflau'r cyflau'r cyflau gynnig ac yn fawr y cwm ni'r gwaith o'r 22 yng nghymru yn 2014 o'r Ffynans Cymru o'r Ffynans Cymru. Gwyddo i'r prif o'n mynd i siarad o'r unrhyw sy'n teimlo i'r rhannu cymdeithas deiligau oherwydd mae gennym eu rheiddiad o'r polgwyr o'i gynhyrchu gyda'r Michael MacMahon. Roedd ymlaen yn gyffredig am gweithio i gael am 1 oiaeth yw mynes ym mhob i ddweud o gweithio i gael ar llawer o yr unrhyw, mae'n gwasanaeth ar ôl ar agryl â'r unrhyw. Mae'r gwaith ymlaen y mynes yn gweithio i gael ar y format aelod o'r F !! Am Lloedd Aston yw RSI Pb Scotland, ym Dr Jim Beard, ym Glasgow Caledonian university, Willi Beattie ym Scottish Landfill Communities Fund Forum, Stephen Freeland of Cesa, Mary McCluskey of Community Resources Network Scotland and Jenny Sports of the Scottish Wildlife Trust. The purpose of this session is to inform the committee's consideration of draft subordinate legislation relating to the Landfill Tax Act as contained in the Government's recent consultation. The consultation also included questions and proposals relating to the Scottish Landfill Communities Fund. Obviously today we have a round table format and there are 12 of us and what I really want is a kind of free-flowing discussion on any issues in relation to the Landfill in Scotland Act 2014 and our deliberations of the subordinate legislation but just taking a kick is off I'm just wondering if perhaps Mary McCluskey can perhaps start but before you do just to let people know that I'm not taking people in any kind of order, if people actually want to speak just basically let me know by putting up your hand or something like that and I'll take people in any kind of order so it may be that after Mary speaks people would want to either say something completely different from Mary on a different aspect of this or they may wish to comment on what Mary said or add their own kind of comments and I think the bit will start off Mary because this is probably an issue that a number of people will want to have a view on is the issue of projects within 10 miles of a landfill site or waste transfer station to be elsewhere funding. This is something that there was quite a lot of discussion deliberation on in the committee. Now what you basically have said is that CRNS would like the radius to be applied flexibly with the diminishing level of funding for those on the periphery and you suggest that a 25mm radius would be appropriate, I'm sure we'll get views on that so I wonder if you can just kick us off with that and I'll take people as I see them. You can come in as often as you like incidentally, it's not a bug in turn kind of session, anyone can come in as often or as infrequently as you so wish and John Mason has already said he wants to come in straight away so, but Mary, over to you sir. CRNS is very supportive of the ability for community projects to access funds with the regard to the 10 mile radius what we thought was has been applied flexibly in the past and we'd want that to continue. Our emphasis and focus would be that we would look for funding to be very much directed to those projects in the community who are actively seeking to reduce landfill so indeed in terms of 10 mile radius and in transfer also that the flexibility of that approach would be applied across with an emphasis on making sure that those projects who can demonstrate that they're actually reducing landfill would be given priority in terms of funding and that the flexibility that's previously been applied would continue to be applied and indeed the 25 miles is equally a sort of notional figure because we all know the shape and size of Scotland in terms of its geography and how difficult just putting a dot on the map can actually make it so the focus really was not so much the actual mileage per se, but on the quality and the ability of projects to actually make an actual impact on the environment by reducing landfill and making a keeping resources within its local community. Thank you very much for that, Dick McVean. Yeah, I mean Michael McVan's not here today and I don't know exactly what he would say, I know he's also committed to the idea that it should be the local community that really benefits from this and in my context in Glasgow I just feel 10 miles is enormous. I mean I've got a landfill site at the very edge of my constituency which is also the very edge of the city if you know it, it's at Daldawi near the crematorium and 10 miles covers the whole of Glasgow. Now I don't accept that the whole of Glasgow is suffering because of that landfill site, I would have said it was the local community that was suffering so I just wonder how people think about that. That's why we focused on the impact that the community organisations would make and indeed the criteria to look at what they actually were doing and how they would actually reduce landfill because I accept completely that they're in a city centre environment, 10-mile radius is huge but if you took that out into a rural environment then again you're looking at a much more flexible approach. The flexibility would be both in and without that 10 miles but I think it's the impact of the projects and their ability to actually do something much more positive is what we were really focusing on. Okay, Lloyd to be followed by Jean. I think Mary's follow-up there has covered what I was going to say. I think the key thing is the legislation uses the phrase in the vicinity of and the guidance explains how that should be interpreted and I mean we support the in the vicinity of approach because the principle is that the fund should address disaminities due to landfill and I think the key issue is that the flexibility is about applying different approaches in different circumstances and John Mason's comment about city centre is absolutely true in the central belt the flexibility should be different in a rural area and I think the key thing will be to encourage the government when they produce the guidance of how the role should be applied to explain what form of flexibility should be applied and how it should be applied. The final thing I was going to say is the convener said 10 kilometres from a landfill site or transfer station and we agree with the idea of applying the transfer station and expanding the scheme in that way where there is disaminity from such transfer stations but the regulations as drafted still just refer to landfill sites so there is a need to ensure that the regulations do extend to that new area that's being spoken about. Okay just to just for accuracy it's not kilometres as miles we're talking about we're not moved on to the metric scale on this as yet. Sorry Jean to be followed by Malcolm. Thanks convener. Yes I think there is still a bit of unraveling to do about this because representing a rural area 10 miles of course is nothing in terms of the distance that landfill material will travel and the distance from a landfill site potentially to either a social enterprise or other organisation that's actually working to the kind of remit that we might like to see that reducing landfill material so it seems to me that there's there's two things to be done because when we looked at some of the awards that had been made in the past it wasn't necessarily about reducing landfill but it certainly was about improving the environment for people who live next to a landfill site and I think that's still really relevant but I think that maybe it is an issue that we either take the just don't declare a distance at all and in fact are much clearer in the specifics or the criteria for applying to the fund. Game all comes before by Jamie. I'm still on the Scottish landfill communities fund I was interested in the remark from the Scottish Environmental Services Association who were critical of the proposal to abolish and trust and to split responsibility between the Scottish landfill communities fund and CEPA and I was really interested in to hear more about that I mean it may be that you want to take some more comments about the distance issue but I just thought since we were dealing with this fund we should also look at that particular aspect of it. No I'm happy to be on that as I'm very suspicious. Jamie to be followed by Jenny. Yeah well it's still on the fund issue and can I save my own perspective I think given that we know it's a flexible measure I think the 10 mile radius is actually about right but I thought it was interesting to see that number of witnesses of the Scottish Wildlife Trust welcome waste transfer stations being added as well as landfill sites say they recognise communities in the natural environment around these facilities also suffered disseminated from transport to waste RSPB say something similar eh so do CRNS but the Charter Institution of Waste Management say that there's no evidence for the dissemination of transfer stations so that's obviously a contradiction I'm just wondering if people can talk a little bit more about that and also if I may convener I thought it was interesting that CRS also thought recycling activity should be included and I should declare that very interest for me because from a constituency perspective there's a recycling facility in common old that frankly is essentially a de facto landfill site because the amount of material that is constantly there if you are living next it's probably a moot point that is a recycling facility so if we could we'll get a comment on that a little bit more Evan's that'd be very interested in that. Fall by Stephen. I just wanted to make another point really on the distance issue I agree that well in the past it has always just been guidance rather than a rule and I think it's important that we continue with that just being guidance and there's flexibility there for the distributors of the fund to make a call on whether they feel it's appropriate for that project to know just to give an example of a city centre project we've received funding from the landfill communities fund for saving Scotland's red squirrels in the city of Aberdeen and so the project activity has taken place within 10 miles of a landfill site and it's benefiting the whole of the city of Aberdeen to have a native species conserved within that city so that the residents of the city can enjoy red squirrels returning to the city and they also get the economic benefit from the tourism factor that red squirrels bring so yeah I just really wanted to reiterate that I think we need to keep that flexibility particularly I think for biodiversity projects. Okay and Stephen to be followed by Willie. Before I answer Malcolm's question now we have to be quite clear on the definition of a transfer station I don't think there's any legal definition of what a transfer station is and you find that transfer station operations are quite often bolted on to another plant so we have to be very careful as we if we're looking to apply transfer stations that we know exactly what we're talking about but on the issue of the of entrust we're not saying we're entirely critical of abolishing entrust it's more of a putting down a marker more on everything else the at the moment we've got one body that is registering, administrating and regulating the system and under the current proposals we're splitting that to two bodies a forum and to CEPA so at the moment there's not enough detail in the consultation to have any confidence that it's going to be more efficient system but I think maybe others might be better qualified to actually comment on the specifics of that. Okay well do you want to comment on that specifically or do you want to come in on something else? Okay Willie to be followed by Joan. I want to comment on the 10 mile radius but I want to also comment on that last point if that's okay within the terms of the 10 mile radius working within the Scottish landfill community's fun forum my own organisation have always taken the view that waste it's it causes dishaminity not just at landfill but in its collection processing and transportation and our policy over all these years has been to apply some of our funds to areas where the waste is collected but most of the funds still within the 10 mile radius of the landfill site now that's a voluntary situation but it has worked quite well and seems to have been pretty well received. With respect to the the abolition of entrust entrust costs the UK scheme about 1.5 million pounds at present and that would translate to roughly 150,000 per annum in Scotland which could actually go into projects. Also under the current arrangements entrust have got to regulate not just distributive environmental bodies but environmental bodies so you're talking in excess of 2,000 organisations. The Scottish proposals would be for something like six, seven or maybe eight organisations that are required to be regulated by SIPA. Perhaps most importantly though from our point of view here we are 18 years almost into the scheme and I think it's fair to say that the UK Government doesn't have a very clear picture as to how successful or not the scheme has been and I would hope that through the proposals that have been laid down that from the get-go if you like the information flow in the proposed arrangements would allow the Scottish Government to know on a very very precise nature how well this fund is performing or not in the future. Thank you very much for that. John to be following Mary. Yes it was to come back partly on what Jenny had said. I mean I'm also a fan of Red Squirrels and I'm sure most people in Aberdeen like Red Squirrels but the people suffering from the landfill would you accept? In some cases it's only within 100 metres of a landfill site where you know in some of my constituents across the road is a landfill site. Six o'clock in the morning they've got huge lorries queuing up to get into the landfill site. The dust on the road is just you know dirt and just all the time their windows their cars all covered in it so I mean it is the 10 miles is just would you accept that that's that's kind of huge and while we might want to do things with Red Squirrels some of the money at least needs to go to help the people right at the site. Yeah I know I would definitely agree with that. I think it's important for the community's fund to be able to fund both and that's what it's been doing so far and I think it should continue to we should continue to have that flexibility to fund projects directly you know in the communities that suffer the huge dis amenity as well as the wider community that also suffer from transport issues. Do you think that there could be too much flexibility in a sense because then anything can go? Well I think I think the way that the way it's worked today has worked well. I mean we have the 10 mile guidance some funders have increased that to 25 miles for certain projects for biodiversity projects and pretty much all the funders have kept within those guidelines so I think that's an appropriate degree of flexibility and I would support that continuing. Okay may I see you before my light? I think the discussion around 10 miles 25 miles or whatever notional number that we put on it I think actually skews the debate away from what we really want to do which has impact on those who are disproportionately affected by landfill sites and the transfer of waste to and from. The focus of the response at CRNS gave was really to try and highlight that if we're looking at funding projects we should try and make the funds go to those projects that try and reduce the amount of materials going into landfill so they reduce repair recycling etc and to look at how we actually make better use of the communities around those areas that are affected so a 10 mile or a 25 or whatever flexible radius that we want to apply I think it's on a needs basis so that we make a greater impact on what we actually are trying to do which is ultimately follow a zero waste agenda. I also think that in terms of some of the other comments that were made around things like interest we're strongly in favour that the monies that would be saved by removing that regulation would be put back into community-based projects for the very purpose of impacting positively on the environment and I'd also say that research that we had conducted in France around the polluter pays model showed that in fact if a different approach was taken to how revenue was raised and then redistributed there is a model there that could actually make a great impact on the Scottish environment and how we actually fund community-based projects to reduce and reuse and therefore reduce the amount of landfill and the debate I suppose about the radius then potentially would become mute over time or at least should become mute over time. Okay Lloyd. Yeah just further comment on this question of flexibility I mean I do think flexibility in the 10 mile rule is a good thing but I think how that flexibility is applied should be clearly set out in the guidance and I think how that is set out and how that's applied needs to be thought about in the context of the various objects of the schemes the objects that the funding should apply to so Mary's mentioned the recycling one there's the various other amenity ones and the ones we're particularly interested in is object B the biodiversity one and it will be that some objects will have a tendency to be more specifically focused on the immediate community and some objects will have a tendency to be more focused on the general more widespread community that everyone benefits from and I think the way in which the funds are allocated across the objects is one of the issues of how that flexibility can be applied so in terms of applying the flexibility guidance it might be good for the government to include in that some guidance about ensuring that each of the objects gets a good allocation of money or the allocation of money to the different objects is in a sense part of the flexibility I mean we're especially keen on the biodiversity object being maintained because it's one of the few funding schemes that exist where pure biodiversity conservation and improvement is a specific object and you know we're particularly pleased to see that the government has retained that I certainly would welcome further detail from anyone on the issue of the distribution system and whether entrust should continue to have a regulatory role I'd welcome any benefits that people think would arise if you were to remove them from the role but also any potential risk of removing them from the role too and on the Mr Beattie made the comment about I think entrust approximately costs about £150,000 out of the fund if you do remove them there's presumably still some cost in terms of distribution and administration so is the view that it could be done cheaper than the £150,000 by having SIPA or somebody else and if so what what sort of costs are we talking about because presumably it wouldn't it wouldn't be nil so you couldn't spend all of that money on the fund so I just welcome further details on that I think it would be helpful for us as a committee when we have to take a view well I am going to let you come back and then I'm going to ask Jenny if she can comment because in your submission in the Scottish World Life Trust you've made a number of points on this particular issue so willy and then we'll move on to Jenny and then open it up obviously for anyone else who wants to comment on this issue it's proposed that the members of the forum adopt a code of conduct which includes a fully set of audited counts every year as there'll be a limited amount of these organisations the burden on SIPA to regulate those organisations is much less than the current system it is also proposed that there will be a cap of 10% on administration costs that's not the case at the minute it's guidance at the minute and the costs to the distributive environmental bodies who are members of the forum would be met within that 10% cap I think also just to add that I think SIPA have committed to providing a regulatory service on a cost only basis so I think although there's no figures around that I think a substantial saving would be inevitable okay Jen to fall by Jim yeah I would just agree that I think a lot of the roles that entrust are carrying out are actually duplicating what the organisations that distribute and receive the funds already do in any particular project we're providing the same information to the funder and to entrust that actually the same information is held into places and its duplication of effort we're audited on an annual basis by entrust both on a financial level and a governance level which we feel is superfluous really because we already have an audit as you know as the organisation that we are we have a general audit and the governance issues actually entrust should not have any role in I would say anyway it's more a guidance role that that they're giving there so I think as Willie said I think the the functions that the entrust are carrying out can can easily and much more cheaply be carried out under the system that's been proposed in this document yeah I mean I think everyone would accept that landfills are a disability and if you live near Daldau then there are issues and problems in those communities and I think everyone would agree that somehow localising the funding around those communities is the right way to go and largely that's how it's worked over the past you know 10 15 years of funding I've I've had the opportunity to serve on quite a few panels local panels from several environmental bodies who are who are giving out the funding and they've all developed a similar scoring system so if you're within three miles of a landfill you get so many points and so on and so on and as they're diminishing the further you go and if you fall outside of that you obviously it rules you out entirely from submitting an application in some cases but they've all broadly moved towards the the idea of somehow giving more money to the communities that are are very local to the landfills I sit in those panels and quite often there's quite a lot of local authority elected members represented there's people like me who are independent and then there's organisations like scotch weldlock trust them and so on and so you're getting this discussion going on in a balanced view you're seeing local authorities coming to the table under pressure because parks and funding for their areas have been cut dramatically they're pressing for certain things to happen and there's a balancing going on and I think the distributed bodies have done very well to try and work through a scheme that seems to work for communities and when you speak to communities they seem to get it and benefit from it I think there's a danger if in the next round of discussions where you start to be over prescriptive about the rules and regulations you just might suddenly find yeah okay you know it's got to be three miles around Aldau but you may then suddenly find projects that you don't really want emerging and coming forward and the objectives might be constrained and you might find you can't actually spend the money in that community it's a fine balance getting the flexibility around that to work and I think the scheme has done that. I'll make a little point made Jamie about where I no evidence around transfer stations can I just pick that point up and it wasn't how I was saying there's no evidence I think no one is turning around and saying in Mavis valley Mavis bank Mavis valley in Easton Bartonshire which is a transfer station of waste going from there out to Greengears as an example so that's in north Glasgow Easton Bartonshire I mean no one has any evidence to say that all those vehicles are causing a problem there's plenty of evidence to say in Greengears there's a blight there's a community who's sitting right next to landfill so it's clear there but how we actually measure the number of vehicles and so on there's no evidence to say house prices are diminished as a consequence of that exercise activity so I think we're just saying there's no evidence but I do I do agree that if there are vehicles coming in and out there is some disability and therefore we should try and reflect that in the guidance. Okay thank you very much. I'm going to move on maybe Primallog as no one else has said they want to actually make a contribution so when we move on to the issue which we're probably no brainer here it's the issue of the 10% increase in funding for the first three years of operation compared to the current system with the new cap being proposed at 7.48%. Will you have said this is a welcome proposal at a time when the LCF has been effectively reduced in value to accommodate other government UK policies so what's your fuller view on that? Yes I was referring there to the fact that at the last budget the government reduced the diversion percentage for landfill tax credits principally to address another particular policy that they wanted to do and that the concern amongst everybody was if it can happen once it may happen again so therefore the increase was seen as very welcome particularly because of that point of view and the fact that it would give the scheme some momentum in its early days as a Scottish landfill communities fund. Okay and I want to comment on that particular issue Mary. I'd just like to reiterate I agree with what Willie's just said there are 10% increase would be very welcome but I also think that linking back to what Jenny had said previously in the previous comments I think simplicity and transparency around criteria and reduction of duplication of effort would be very welcome. A lot of small organisations that I represent just do not have the resource to constantly fill in forms or make meetings or get to telephone calls or whatever to continually apply and reapply using the same information over and again to different bodies so an increase in funding and reduction in the administration I think go hand in hand and okay thank you Jenny. Yeah I would agree with that as Mary said I think that's another point really on the interest issue is that the removal of that level of administration will make it easier for smaller community groups to apply for this funding and again community groups that are closer to the actual landfill so that's a welcome thing and again yes of course as a fundraiser I welcome an increase in available funding I think again the important thing on this is that they offsets the fact that under the previous scheme or the current scheme some of the credits that are collected in England are actually distributed up in Scotland so there could possibly be an increase in the funding available under the scheme for projects in Scotland as the transition occurs so yes we definitely welcome this 10% increase. Okay thank you I'm going to move on again actually to Stephen's paper actually which is somewhat different from some of the issues that have been discussed so far. Stephen of course is here representing the Scottish Environmental Services Association CISA which is a sectoral trade association for Scotland's managers of waste and secondary resources and you expressed one or two concerns actually Stephen which I'm going to ask you to expand on for example you've talked about the third rate of tax you've said that we are therefore concerned by references in the current consultation to the potential introduction of a third intermediate rate of tax and you go on to say that this is only likely to introduce an additional layer of complexity to what is generally a well understood system so I'm just wondering if you can talk specifically about that issue and your concerns regarding price variation etc. Yeah at the moment we've got two tax rates a standard and a lower rate and within the consultation there was suggestion that there could be a third rate doesn't say what material and such like but we assume that perhaps they're referring to biostabilised material they've been raised in for a previous constitution so that might be a material which might benefit from a lower rate and the concern is that this might have implications for the the economic case for other types of existing and planned infrastructure so for example if you have a lower rate a lower landfill rate for biostabilised material that was implied after some sort of processing to remove the biodegradable content of that material you would be able to landfill at a cheaper rate so you're incentivising that means of treatment and the main means of treating this material for examples through a mechanical biological treatment process which is basically a means of taking residual waste and removing its biodegradable content to produce a more stabilised material at the back end but these facilities are also producing a ffium rdf or srf and this ffuel can then be used in cement cones or burned to create energy so by incentivising the landfill of this material that these facilities are then going to potentially be configured to produce a biostabilised material for landfill to benefit from a cheaper rate whereas other processes further up the waste hierarchy such as waste energy recovery are going to be impacted so at the moment it's very much guesswork because we don't know what materials are going to be covered by the scope of this lower rate and when it might apply so it's almost as putting on marker that this has to be very very carefully considered otherwise you might be jeopardising other projects okay thank you very much i'm going to let john come back and then i'm going to come back to you john okay well it was i mean there's obviously some technical language in here which i confess i'm not all together familiar with and particularly in paragraph nine you talk about fines i wonder if you just clarify what fines are and the loss of ignition test quite what that means yeah it's a slightly different issue this comes down to the current lower rates of tax for qualified materials and the 2011 qualified materials order lists those inert or inactive wastes which benefit from the lower rate of tax because they've got less environmental harm when you're when you're landfilling and the current proposals within the consultation are fine they duplicate more or less what's in the current UK system we've all got to know over the years the glaring gap is when it comes down to fines and fines are the the small particles the small materials that are the residues from a recycling process after the materials being trundled around in a big screen to separate out the plastics and the paper there's a residual amount of fine dust or fine material that escapes out the at the back end and by looking at this material when it arises the landfill sites when it arrives there it's very hard to ascertain whether that fine material is bi-degradable whether it's come from a bi-degradable sources such as paper or whether it's come from inert material and it's very hard to make that judgment call then then so HMRC at the moment is planning a more scientific approach to testing that material when it arrives on the landfill sites because the problem is that some unscoopless operators might just be passing off as a lower rate of tax when really it should qualify for the higher rates of tax if much of that happens do you reckon? there there's a strong indication that is happening so this scientific process is called loss on ignition which essentially the material goes back to a lab it's far duck essentially and by knowing how much is burnt off from how much you started off with determines whether it's a bi-degradable content or whether it's a largely inert and then this confidence in the landfill operator has complied with his requirements under the under the regime to ensure that that material was taxed at the appropriate rate so that's currently just going on at the moment with the HMRC and our concern was there's no reference in this consultation whatsoever on that aspect and I think that most landfill operators would be looking for this level of confidence and would be quite keen for the Scottish Government to adopt a similar scientific approach to to find that specific issue so I'm not going to come back to that I'm going to let Jim in and then to be followed by Jamie on the on the question of the the tax and the three rates I think the one thing I think I said that previously to this committee that has made a difference and everyone would accept in the industry that it's made a difference and changed our approach to recycling and recovery and so on has been the landfill tax it's the one driver regulatory driver because it's cost so I think I think the important thing is that you're setting a marker down that that is the price and you're providing the operators and those in the industry with certainty on what it's going to cost and I think the danger is that if you do start to slip in different arrangements you affect the economics of the kind of waste infrastructure that might might emerge so that's on that point on the question of fines yes I think what's happened over the summer is the HMRC are consulting on this very issue and trying to and bringing forward a methodology to prevent this organic fines working its way into a landfill and being classified as a net when it isn't a net and the loss on ignition is effectively saying well if you can burn it and it disappears then it's organic and it's not in there so that that's that's that's it's simplest and I guess all all we're saying in their response to Scottish government through our through our consultation submission is you know we want to try and mirror what England and Wales are doing at the present so let's let's reflect that let's not at this stage try and deviate too much so we think you should take on board this issue of the fines and you know follow what HMRC are doing okay Jamie it's a slightly different issue that was raised in Stephen's paper convener and it's the issue of tax exemption for site remediation where either seap or a local authority have to to clear up something that should have gone to landfill they're obviously exempt from tax liability and Stephen's paper says however this should not simply provide a convenient alternative exhausting all possible avenues to recovering tax from the illegal or insolvent operator in the first instance and I noticed that well these people kind of makes the same point although you say this would be probably unlikely but you know how serious a concern is this? Well by and large we we support that measure as a welcome deduction but it was more again just to to point down the marker place on the marker there that don't take the easy option by just disposing of the stuff without having to worry about the tax it is very hard to if it's in legal operation for example it's very hard to certain in some cases recover that tax from the operator but by and large we do support that measure okay John thanks it was a separate point Mr Freeland in your report a paragraph 2 you talk about waste tourism and I mean this has been raised before that if tax rates are different or there was different bands or all that area then waste starts moving around scotland england or whatever are you aware if there have been any studies done as to you know how much how sensitive it is you know if rates were one percent different would that be just ignored or is there any kind of rule of thumb on that area? I'm not aware of any published studies there was a report that accompanied the the act in the boom done by Zero with Scotland but I think Neil looked at it in terms of there being a UK rate and no Scottish rate and it didn't quite address the sensitivities around this slightly closer rate between the two regimes but my broad understanding is it's around about the £10 mark is enough to get the material to to move to another area around UK but the the waste tourism I think has been described by a lot of people probably in previous meetings as well but when it comes down to this dewatering issue in the in the consultation which I'm not sure whether we'll come on to later on this really okay this highlights the waiters and so we'll wait till unless you want me to talk about it now they let Jim in actually and I'm going to ask you about dewatering at RSPB you've also mentioned that particular issue but I'll let Jim in yeah the one the one thing that happens is that waste moves and indeed we you know it should be no surprise that waste actually moves from the UK over to continental Europe where it's processed so if we can move those distances it can certainly move down across into England so it's a sensitive issue that I don't know of any studies that have been done on it but I do know waste does move and therefore it's likely to find its way to these cheaper outlets okay I'm going to move on to dewatering again on your own paper Stephen indeed watering in St Pagar 13 I quote, sees us strongly urge the Scottish Government to refrain from moving the existing provision which enables water to be discounted from taxable disposals they cannot impact this proposal on Scottish businesses should be carefully considered and you go on to St Pagar 14 that while the number of affected businesses relatively small the financial implications on such companies would be severe so again I wanted to expand on that and Lloyd you've also commented on that so I'd like you to come in after Stephen that's okay Stephen there's a provision within the current UK tax regime that allows you to add water to waste uh whether that be as part of the the production process or to assist in its transport so dampening it down to void at all blowing up the back of the truck because it's making its way down the road but I can only imagine that the the incentive behind this is to try and incentivise dewatering of the waste at points of production but to me it it just really can't work too well when there will be cheaper disposal options down south where the presumably the the existing watering provision discount remains in place so for example if there's a a customer who might benefit from a 50 discount on the the tax rate on his waste material if that was to be removed and that's also 40 pounds additional tax which you'll be accountable for in the Scottish regime you can transport that material down south anywhere down south for under 40 pounds a ton so until unless the whole of UK was adopted the same regime that's the only way you're going to incentivise dewatering if there's two different systems and it will as Jim said earlier on the waste will move to the cheapest option so that means the material will end up landfolds in england which means the Scottish Government will lose us out on its its revenue um Scottish businesses will be at a competitive disadvantage to the UK counterparts the waste industry will lose us out as well and obviously less funding to the to the um the community's fund okay alloy to fall by Jim yeah thank you come in i mean i think we recognise there are pros and cons of this and the the consultation paper sets out that you know the issue of um excess water being allowed into landfill or or you know if the dewatering discount is not there will will that encourage excess water to be allowed into landfill causing leach aim pollution problems that's one side of it but the other side of it is this issue of waste tourism that's just been described and i think on balance from our understanding uh that the ban on liquid waste and other things and the other mechanisms that you can use to control the pollution issues versus the the waste tourism type problem and the waste tourism problem not only generates more transport potentially and so on but it also takes resources out of the Scottish landfill community's fund for communities and projects um i think on balance we felt that keeping the same regime as down south at this stage would be the best thing to do in the short term and think about it again later possibly but at this stage i think a big change would be potentially disruptive chill isn't sure about this because this was something that kind of emerged in the most recent consultation is it because it's complex to work out i don't know i looked at the hmrc guidance on it and they're quite they're quite specific about what counts and what doesn't count we're not talking about waste where the liquid can flow out of the waste so it's elite shade and so on you know you can have quite a solid cake and still have quite a bit of moisture content in it so i wasn't quite sure i was trying to trying to look at and i'm thinking well actually it's not the operators issue this is actually an industrial issue it's it's industry supplying the landfill operate with a waste that makes it easy for them to manage the process so it's going to be an implication on businesses that are that are applying this i'm thinking well why why do we want to ban landfill well liquid waste are not allowed in landfill that's fine what i was looking for in in the consultation was a sense of the scale i had no feel for how many businesses were claiming this this arrangement therefore i couldn't work out how much water was there for getting into a landfill if it was to attempt to try and prevent a liquid getting into landfill then you think well hang on you know it rains in landfill so we're up against it there so i think i just wanted to see and certainly the CRWM response was was let's see what the scale of the problem is before we actually do away with this this allowance that was that was our view okay jenny it's actually taking our conversation back a little bit so i don't know if others want to comment on some happy to come in later but no okay it's just i noticed i raised earlier the issue that was in the CRS paper about the 10 mile radius and recycling activity being included in the hint here any response and given i've got a constituency interest in this although it's a bit of a moot point because we probably fall within the 10 mile radius anyway but i think it's still send a positive message i would like to hear a bit more detail as to why it's here and it's things that recycling activity should be included as well as transfer stations one else would ask to speak on dewatering so i'm quite happy to go back to that particular issue mary and then willie ultimately CRS is a view is that the landfill tax and the funds available to communities should reduce because the amount of landfill over time should reduce therefore we we see it as a diminishing fund hopefully and that might take us some time to get to that position but that is where we would be what we argue in our paper overall is that in fact we need a different approach and what we're really talking about just now is the end result where we get to the point where something has to actually go to landfill and what we argue quite strongly in our paper is that in fact we should be attacking it from the very start of the process so that we prevent it going to landfill which is why we include recycling and reuse and repair in our context in the paper so that ultimately over time what you have is better use of resources resources being reused instead of going to landfill at all so that may take us a very long time to get to that position but ultimately if you are using resources properly and reusing them recycling and repair recycle and reuse then the amount of landfill should diminish over time so ultimately the landfill tax would diminish over time when we refer to the model the levy system in France where they've implemented a system albeit for furniture in France but the model itself could be applied to any particular manufactured good where the levy for any product which is sold furniture in France manufactured or otherwise so if it's imported if it's made in France or whatever they levy a tax effectively on that to prevent landfill accumulating they do it in two different methods one for domestic furniture and one for industrial furniture so in effect they've taken the step that they are trying to reduce landfill ultimately from the start so from an end to end delivery system if you like so consequently we would strongly advocate that recycling and reuse and repair organisations were focused very much on any funds that came out of any landfill fund that's available but equally we would be looking to see a much longer strategic approach to reducing landfill ultimately overall okay molly our policy whereby over the years we had taken account for waste facilities as well as landfill you know where waste is collected process transported and that would certainly include recycling facilities the larger ones and i've visited quite a few are not very pleasant places to be around and you're absolutely right there at least temporary landfill sites to a certain extent because the materials lying there for a long period of time before it's processed in some cases so i think that we would try to adopt a fair reasonable and equitable approach to applying some of the funding to facilities such as those but still going back to the bulk of the funds going towards the landfill the sites of where landfill sites are the communities around landfill sites continuing this theme of recycling and reuse i mean i noticed in a couple of the reports professor baird said a project supported by community groups should not distort the principal recycling and reuse markets that are serviced by private sector or local authorities and uh Lloyd Austin said the fund should not fund projects that are a responsibility of local authorities or zero waste scotland i mean i'm just wondering there how we tie the two together because i mean clearly local authorities are not recycling and or even giving residents the opportunity to recycle a whole range of things so i mean is it not good if we can boost other groups to go in and do what the local authorities are not doing even if the local authorities should be doing it for example i've had food recycling it's just stopped in Glasgow they say it was a pilot disappointing you know can't get no garden waste recycling no glass recycling so i mean if somebody could do that would that would that not be good Lloyd to be followed by Jamie yeah i i think this really depends on how you view the responsibilities of a local authority or or a government agency or somebody in the public sector as opposed to a community or a local charity or an NGO of some description or whatever if the if the landfill community's fund is for the latter group of people and parliament has given a statutory responsibility on the former group to do something should they not do that rather than uh the uh the the the uh the third sector pick up that responsibility um you know i think in a way that the third sector should be adding value to what the statutory sector do rather than you know if the if if they are in a sense forced to pick up the things that local authorities and others can't do because of lack of funding or whatever then that means the added value that they would otherwise be able to bring isn't given does that make sense although it still is added value in one sense isn't it well if if if parliament has placed a statutory responsibility on a local authority or a or an agency and there is resource for the third sector to do something else then those two things are happen if the public agency or the local authority doesn't do what parliament has asked it to do and the third sector picks up that responsibility then you only get one of the two tasks done okay jamey two followed by mary yeah i have to say i think i'm misinterpreted the the point that was made in the the paper so i think what mary was saying there is he thinks that the fund should allow to to fund recycling activity which i have to say i'm quite relaxed but i think mr beaty's response was one i was more interesting because i'm talking about those who suffer clearly people suffer disability living next to a landfill site i suppose the point i'm making i think he is excited because people can also suffer disability living next door to particularly larger recycling facilities and i was very pleased to hear that the flexibility is used to allow such sites to be including the scope of the scheme but i suppose biggest question should there be an explicit inclusion of such facilities in any guidance or any secondary legislation that's taken forward and given that mr beaty made the point i suppose i'm throwing that question to him primarily but if others comment could comment as well i'll let you respond well before that mary yeah it's there's never been a since 2002 i think it was never been any sort of targeting of the landfill community's fund so therefore it's evolved but the looking at the percentages of what's been funded and where it's been funded i think it's fair to say there's been a reasonable and fair distribution of funds across various areas including those that are disadvantaged but without outwith a 10 mile radius so it'd be very difficult i think to target that and say you've got to spend so much of the fund and within the 10 mile radius then you'd start to get into 15 20 25 and when you get into the highlands and islands i mean waste can travel quite a distance before it reaches a landfill site that wasn't my point so much i suppose i was making the point that we're saying it's within a 10 mile radius of our landfill site should we also be seeing it's within the 10 mile radius and it owes guide obviously only guidance and the flexibility but should we be also including facilities of the type i'm talking about it actually just says landfill sites or waste transfer stations i think at the minute the way it's drafted and we would support of that description of a waste transfer station was perhaps clarified because a recycling centre is a waste transfer station because some of the waste ends up going to landfill anyway if you take one step back from the landfill itself where a public community site has engaged with community groups and members of CRNS and enabled them to have sealed containers on site for the collection of reusable materials all sorts of things would aggregates bicycles furniture all sorts of the electrical goods etc that can be repaired and reused and then recycled back into their local community you'll see a reduction in landfill in those ways we have a difficulty in engaging with local authorities to enable us to do that and enable access to the sites for ease of access and reduced cost to the community groups to do that and also there's a scale issue some of them are too small to be able to do on their own so they need to be able to do it as a almost as a in a geographic kind of cluster so we would welcome the opportunity to to engage with local authorities in that way on a much wider basis so that we actually reduce what actually eventually goes to the landfill there are certain materials that we know go to landfill which shouldn't be going and sometimes they are taken for instance good quality wooden furniture is often taken then pulked and then made into very poor quality furniture and put back in at a high cost I have to say to people in the community and often our members are serving those on the lowest incomes and in great difficulty and there's a deprivation and a cycle of poverty which is almost engendered if we're not got access to good quality reuse and or repaired furniture or other materials so local authorities amnistocites and engaging in some kind of tripartite arrangements with local communities and private sector organisations to transport waste would be very welcome to us and would be something that we would push for okay thank you Stephen to be followed by Jim yeah the discussions moved on slightly from when I'd initially raised my hand and it was on the issue of the sort of competition fair competition that you'd alluded to maybe five minutes ago there's clearly a role for the third sector and community groups in Scotland's zero waste agenda performing vital services the issue is to make sure is I notice in the in the regulations is in addition to the objectives of the community's fund it can fund the third sector recycling initiatives that's been a as a new feature compared to the to the existing regime all we call for is a level playing field for all operators whether they're a third sector private sector operating in the recycling market and just by quick way of example if you've got a local authority he's put out a tender for inviting bids for a glass recycling service as you said maybe you know some of them are pulling different services so they put out a tender for a glass collection clearly if you've got a private sector and the third sector perfectly entitled to to bid for that contract it's maybe slightly unfair if that third sector group had received x thousands of pounds through the fund and in that case we have to put forward the more competitive bids so all we're looking for is a level playing field and the regulations and the guidance will have to be looked at to ensure that happens okay you recommend a supplementary measure I'm fine if they both want to do it if nobody wants to do it would you accept that as an incentive to the third sector or somebody would be useful well if nobody wants to do it I'm not sure why a third sector to be more inclined over the private sector to well okay so but an incentive would be acceptable then what sort of incentive well if nobody wants to pick up my glass we need to give somebody an incentive to do it if nobody's able to pick up my glass we suggest that for whatever reason there's not a market conditions allowing that service to be delivered sorry Jim maybe you want to come in specifically let's just chat a bit to come in here on this point yeah well two points I actually don't think when we're talking about trying to reduce and repair and and reduce what's going to landfill that the market necessarily should actually dictate that and I do agree that there should be some incentive for somebody to pick up the rubbish and the glass or whatever else is is seen to be less useful than something else I also think that the third sector is often not able to tender on an equal playing field because they don't have the resources of a whole team of people who write professional tender bits to go over that in the scrutiny and the detail that the private sector would be able to to you know allocate that type of resource to so we're actually disincentive to apply for some of these tenders because even when we do even when we do put things together very well the amount of time and effort to do so is actually really a distraction from other other types of activities so I would personally very much strongly lobby for an incentive for the third sector to be able to engage on a level playing field to do that very thing okay Jim be very patient to fall by gene who's also been very patient I suspect in reality these two circles don't actually overlap that much I think the key is that there has to be a market there regardless of who's in it or else we're just doing it and it's not supported and it's therefore maybe not the thing we should be doing I think the community sector no question fulfill a valuable role particularly even in the education and engaging communities around I don't mean just education I mean the fact that the types of projects engage well when you're up in a rural community in the highlands that's when you find actually there's no private sector presence and therefore the community groups excel and do well I think where you find a certain materials like furniture like reuse promoting all of that the private sector is not really interested in that and therefore in reality it's the role and that's where the community sector can step in there's a strong social agenda that they bring as well where you see great work going on employability and so on and welfare back to work so there's a huge role for them and it's a welcome opportunity to stick this objective into it but I think where you see a direct competition we've got to be a little bit careful because if we're subsidising supporting organisations that are competing with each other you're distorting the market and that's not the right way to go okay thank you gene to be far by willy thank you I I'm sitting here just thinking about the ambition of the the Scottish Government the Scottish Parliament towards zero waste and logic seems to be saying to me that if we believe I mean I think we're recycling something like 40 I might be completely wrong about that just now but if that's the case and we have ambition to get to 90 or 100 percent then it's it follows as night the day that the landfill delivery trucks are going to reduce to landfill sites I'm going to increase to transfer waste transfer sites or indeed recycling facilities so somewhere that needs to be reflected surely in our ambition in this in this legislation and I I come back to the thing that they and where I don't deny that the communities who are living next to the the landfill site but surely the incentives must all be heavily placed on recycling and and stopping the stuff getting to a landfill site in the first place and how do we go about doing that and I don't feel at the moment that there's that emphasis in what we've in what we're suggesting or even in our consultation document that is matching up with with the ambition of zero waste okay lolly I think we've got to remember this is a relatively small fund it really can't be all things to all people now if if you take the example of the come look and doon valley gift furniture scheme who I know quite well they will come and take away anything but the wallpaper from your house that's their sort of snappy catchphrase and I think it's that level of project that we're talking about here I think that's what this fund was good at in the past and can be good at again because this this object is being brought in there rather than talking about commercial a glass collection or things like that and it's it's promoting that bottom-up process engaging communities to do something for themselves and that will ultimately benefit the national waste plan because anything that educates people better towards better practices has got to be a good thing yeah I just wanted to comment on gene's sort of big picture question there and I think you're absolutely right that the government in common with all countries across the EU are committed to reducing landfill and ultimately to zero I think that is in a sense that was the purpose of introducing the landfill tax in the first place it provides a disincentive to land use and I think I saw I think it was Jim commented earlier it's over the last 15 20 years it has changed the behaviour of the industry quite significantly and I think that's one of the reasons it's a good scheme what we're debating here is what happens to the resource that is effectively part of that that goes into the landfill communities fund and I think even as recipients of some of that fund we recognise that if the government achieves its overall big picture objective the amount and landfill does reduce nearly to zero the amount that can be taken out of the tax as a credit to the fund will inevitably reduce to zero as well the issue is whilst it's reducing how do we spend it wisest in a wisest possible way but I think you have to look at that debate within the context of the wider government policy on on zero waste the way in which local authorities and other regulators and and deliverers of services operate I think this is this is only part of the answer and I think if you look back to the sort of zero waste policies generally it has seen as only part of the answer I don't think we can solve it all through this but we have to use this resource whilst it exists in the best possible way okay Jenny echo willy's point about the scale of the fund and just said I agree that it's really not appropriate for this fund to be funding large scale recycling schemes and it's much more appropriate for the bottom-up community projects just just due to the size of the fund we've been talking now for no more than an hour there's no one who's asked to speak at the moment and I'm just wondering if there are any burning topics any of the witnesses feel we should still discuss and then what I'm going to do after you get a minute or two to reflect on that is just ask each of our witnesses if we don't have any further topics I'm going to be asking each of our witnesses to make a final point that they make waves to wait to committee and so Malcolm you seem to have something else you wish to cover I was slightly intrigued by the Chartered Institute of Waste Management about the exemption for local authorities and SIPA and there's just a little comment at the end about what an unintended consequence of no tax being applied might mean less effort being directed to tackling flight I mean I don't know what is the extent that was regarded as a serious possibility but it was just interesting to reflect on what could be the unintended consequences of that exemption yes I think the wording in the consultation talked about where the owner of the waste couldn't be found and therefore tax applied it was a bit unfair for SIPA then to arrange for that to be disposed of and then pick up the landfill tax and I think I think we took that not just to illegal disposal in terms of an illegal landfill or an illegal activity but also fly tipping so therefore you know my council comes along picks up waste okay so they can't find the owner and I think Stephen made the point earlier that we want to make sure that they chase the perpetrators of that or the owner of the waste or whatever they pursue that so we just wanted to make sure that now you know this might suggest that that SIPA or local authorities wouldn't have to pay the tax there will be maybe less of an incentive to tackle waste crime and waste crime is a serious issue so it might be just a small unintended consequence that was all that that it was just a point just to be made that was all okay right then I'm going to go around the table then and ask each of our witnesses if there's any further comment they wish to make on any of the issues that we've actually discussed today I'm going to leave you to the end Mary because you kicked us off so anyone else wish to see anything um don't know rush at once Lloyd this is small and trivial really but at the end of our submission and in our evidence to government we we have suggested a few small tweaks of wording for the regulation in regulations in a couple of places and I'd just say that that has been due to our experience of working with distributive environment bodies and entrust and HMRC in the past and we think that those particular bits of wording such as income means rather than income includes and and so forth that those are just suggestions that try to iron out glitches and problems we've had in a past that would prevent those glitches and problems arising and I commend them to government in thinking about how to finalise the regulation okay thank you very much for that Jenny just a related point really I would agree that you know it's important that the that the guidance is clear and I think it's also point important from the point of view of applicants to the fund at the moment it's it's a bit of a maze really to work your way through which is fine you know if you're a seasoned fundraiser but for community groups it's more difficult and I think it would be welcomed for this scheme to have a clear central point that community groups and bodies can go to to get information about the fund with us a website administered by the landfill communities forum is a possible way of doing it that there's a central information point really for for community groups okay steen have you get any further comments you want to make on any issues that are of concern to see sir no I suppose just in closing that broadly welcome the proposals as they are and they're pleased that they're primarily or more or less in line with the existing regime which is the certainty that we're looking for there are a number of tweaks here and there such as a de-watching which I think kind of goes against the grain of maintaining consistency and certainty across both regimes and I think it'd be nice to know that she'll tax rate sooner rather than later okay welly you get anything else you might seem a very minor point lost in the the consultation document but the we've said that the regulation that says that the regulator could impose such conditions as it sees fit should be reworded to say reasonably sees fit because it caused as we say in scotland quite astu sheffan that that was really that was introduced not that long ago and it means that the minute the regulator can say you need to do that how often the words reasonable reasonably and reasonable necessary discuss at this committee in various contexts and various pieces of legislation jim nothing to add other than I have to say I've kind of reflected quite a few times on Jamie Hepburn's comments at the last time because you threw one at me which was what's the implication if this tax is reducing I'm not talking about the community's fund but the overall tax I hadn't thought about that you know if it gets devolved and we're we're on a hundred million pounds downward reducing the budget so I've reflected on what you said and and unless scotland had those additional tax-raising powers we're actually losing that fund over time and I kind of reflected on that several times over the past six months Jamie let me say that trying to get the obi art to do exactly the same actually in projections I cannot remember asking him yes your brain has always been a well-wined machine hasn't Jamie and I said Mary you'd be the last person among your witnesses to thank you I would reiterate what's been said I would seek simplicity in anything that comes out in terms of application processes for the fund and I would seek that the emphasis is strongly on community based groups where they do recycle reduce under repair and on the longer term aspect that Professor Beard just mentioned I'd refer you back to the paper that I wrote on the French levy system which would be an adequate replacement for any diminishing fund in the landfill tax oh well that sounds you should maybe make sure we have a copy of that then um that's intrigued myself and at least did it if no one else anyway um well thank you very much for that I'd like to thank all our witnesses for what was a very lively and involved discussion this morning um we agreed earlier on that we would take the next items in private so I'm therefore going to close the public session to allow our witnesses and their official report to leave and call short recess