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That matter is between CSL and its producers.

It is not a figure that I have. It is an internal figure for CSL and it is working with its members.

The UK Government has had the opportunity to raise concerns at any time in the past three years, since our regulation was passed. I meet my counterparts at DEFRA monthly, when we discuss exactly those matters, and that level of detail has never been raised.

As I have already said, as recently as January, the UK Government was restating its position that the scope for deposit return schemes was a matter for the devolved nations. At no time before January, since the regulations were laid, did the UK raise any concerns about the details of Scotland’s scheme, although we all had an agreement that we would work together to make sure that the schemes were interoperable.

Of course, it is to everybody’s advantage to ensure that those schemes work well together. However, there is a big difference between ensuring that schemes work well together and being told that you have to comply with something that does not exist yet or even that you have to comply with something that has been created in Westminster and then imposed on us—in a devolved area.

In March, the gateway review identified that the lack of a decision on an IMA exclusion was a significant blocker to progress, as was the lack of a ruling by trading standards on shelf-edge labelling. Now, of course, as we have seen, the IMA exclusion risk that was identified has materialised, so we are working on the next steps.

Before recess is the intention. In the past three weeks, as Monica Lennon will recognise, there have been substantial changes to the scope of the scheme, so, in order to be able to respond to that gateway review in the context of the work that we are currently doing to take things forward and the situation in which we find ourselves—we made the announcements only last week—we are updating our response to that review and we will publish that response before the recess.

The Scottish Government takes many types of advice, and it has received legal advice on matters relating to DRS on an on-going basis, as appropriate. The member will appreciate that what has happened during the past two weeks happened very quickly and that there was a very short time from when that letter was received and reaffirmed on 5 June, to when I made the announcement to the Parliament. However, within that time, the First Minister and I met with businesses to understand how they felt that we should react to the development.

That is an interesting question. The UK Government has not done any analysis or impact assessment of its decision to grant a partial exclusion. The UK Government asked the Scottish Government to provide additional impact assessments over and above what is required by the common frameworks. In the interest of supporting our DRS, we provided all the additional documentation and analysis that were requested. What came back to us was the partial temporary exclusion, with no analysis of the impact of that and no understanding of the justification or proportionality.

Nothing has been explained to us by the UK Government, so I genuinely do not know its intentions. I do not know whether the UK Government intends—as I would advise it to do—to take on board the years of work that we and Circularity Scotland have done with industry to put together a workable scheme, or whether it intends to develop something entirely independently and then impose that on the devolved nations.

Absolutely. There are three areas in particular that mean that the decision to delay beyond 1 March was necessary. The first is the matter of the deposit. Scotland’s deposit return scheme was based on a deposit of 20p. One of the conditions placed on us by the partial and temporary exclusion from the internal market act 2020 is that the deposit level must align with the UK, but the UK Government has not introduced its regulations yet, so we do not know whether it will set its deposit at 10p, 25p or 30p. A deposit return scheme in which we do not know the level of the deposit is clearly undeliverable.

Another matter is the sizing of containers that are within scope. For example, in Scotland’s scheme, the change in container size that the committee is considering today will change the minimum container size to 100ml. However, we know that other parts of the UK, such as Northern Ireland, are considering a minimum size of 150ml. If we do not know what materials are included in the scheme, how can we programme reverse vending machines to accept the materials, and how can we tell businesses that they have to charge a deposit on those materials? That is completely unknown. How can we implement a deposit return scheme if we do not know to which materials a deposit might apply?

The final issue, which is critical and means that the March 2024 launch is impossible, is around labelling requirements. The Scottish deposit return scheme does not include, through legislation, any requirements on labelling, barcoding et cetera, because those matters are not devolved. However, the UK scheme might include that, as the UK Government has powers in those areas. From speaking with businesses and working with them over many years, I know that, particularly for small businesses, they need at least a year to update their labelling and so on, because of the timeline for getting designs ordered and produced. That means that, if the UK Government included regulations on labelling, as it says that it might, and that was to happen, say, in autumn this year, that would in no way give businesses time to get their labelling right before a 1 March 2024 launch.

Those are the three concrete reasons why it is absolutely impossible for us to launch with the conditions imposed as they are.

We do not believe that any action that we have been required to take gives rise to any obligation for us to pay compensation.

As the member will well know, glass is one of the three main materials used to make single-use drinks containers and it accounts for more than a quarter of all containers that were to be included in our deposit return scheme launching in March.

To put that into context, the Scottish deposit return scheme would include up to 600 million glass bottles, which is about the number that reach the Scottish market every year. Our strategic environmental impact assessment addendum, which was published in December 2021, shows that returning glass will account for 1.3 megatonnes of carbon dioxide savings over 25 years, which is almost 32 per cent of the total carbon savings of the scheme. Without glass in the scheme, we would lose one of its substantial benefits, which is the reduction of our carbon emissions. Our route to net zero is, of course, to reduce those emissions to net zero and removing glass from the scheme makes that much more challenging for us to reach. Glass is also one of our most problematic litter materials. Broken glass in our streets and parks and so on causes a health and safety hazard for children, pets and anyone who has to handle it to clean it up.