Meeting of the Parliament 26 June 2024
I am very proud that the bill will be passed today. It has been a long time in the making. Covid delayed the introduction of a bill on the circular economy in the previous session of Parliament, so it is welcome to see the bill before us today. The bill is a product of positive cross-party work across the chamber. In many ways, it has shown Holyrood working at its best.
I join other members in paying tribute to my Green colleague Lorna Slater. I am pleased that she took the opportunity to speak in the debate. She successfully led the bill’s development through all the stakeholder negotiation and drafting, and she secured a positive recommendation from the committee at stage 1. I thank her and the bill team for their work.
I also thank the new minister, Gillian Martin, who picked up the bill at incredibly short notice in somewhat bizarre circumstances. She kept the spirit of co-operative working very much alive throughout stages 2 and 3.
Last night, amendments from every party in the chamber were agreed to and included in the bill. I thank the environmental non-governmental organisations for inspiring many of the amendments and for their positive discussions with MSP colleagues. Who knows? Perhaps if everyone who supported the amendments had actually voted last night, more might have been agreed to in the bill.
Throughout the bill’s passage, the Government has made it clear that the bill will set a framework for action on the circular economy. It is a framework bill, and there was an on-going debate in the committee about what would appropriately be put in the bill and what would appropriately come afterwards. The key element—co-design—is really important.
The elephant in the room is, of course, the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020. We will see how the incoming Westminster Government will treat that act in relation to Scotland’s ability to take action and develop statutory instruments on the back of the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill.
Some members have said that the bill is primarily focused on household recycling—Sarah Boyack mentioned that there is, perhaps, a sense of disappointment about that—but I do not think that it is, although household recycling is an important element of it. We have to recognise that levels of household recycling have plateaued in Scotland in recent years, so it is important that the bill equips councils to take the next big step in investing in recycling.