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The final point about glass is that it provides a level playing field so that all drinks producers can be involved in the scheme. If the producers that primarily use glass are removed, there is a bias or tilt in the market for businesses that primarily use cans or plastic bottles. Applying the scheme to all materials that are used for drinks containers makes for a fairer playing field.

In my previous answer, I went into some detail about how removing glass from deposit return schemes reduces the environmental and littering benefits. As David McPhee said, we know from the UK Government’s own analysis that including glass in the scheme would increase its environmental and economic benefits by 64 per cent, which is a substantial increase.

It is also, of course, normal to include glass in deposit return schemes. Of the 51 territories and countries that are operating deposit return schemes, 45 include glass. I think it was WWF that asked on what planet does a bottle return scheme not include glass bottles? It is a commonsense inclusion.

My officials might have something to add on the technical details about the benefits of including glass.

There are two elements that I would like to include in response to that question. One is that I have a meeting arranged tomorrow with the UK Minister for Environmental Quality and Resilience, Rebecca Pow, to have exactly that discussion about how the UK would like to work with us going forward. Our scheme in Scotland is well advanced. We have passed our regulations and amended them in line with industry, including the amendments that are being considered by the committee today. We know that we have a coherent scheme on the books that is workable by industry and we have been a significant way down the path towards delivering it.

The question for the UK is what interoperability looks like to it. Does it look like the UK Government going away and inventing something entirely different that it imposes on us, or will it take on board the learning that we have done in Scotland, the many years of work that we have done with industry and the expertise that Circularity Scotland Ltd has developed? CSL has within it not only the expertise on how the policies are to be implemented, but the industry connections, and it was well on the way to delivering the information technology systems and infrastructure that are needed.

The matter is with the UK Government and our discussions are to understand how to carry it forward. However, I have a substantial question about how we work with the UK Government, given that we no longer have the common frameworks. The common frameworks are the tool by which we work with the UK Government, but those have, in effect, been smashed up by its 11th-hour intervention. Euan Page is our expert on the frameworks. Perhaps he can add some detail on how we might move forward, given that we do not have the common frameworks any more.

The common frameworks exist as published documents about how we are supposed to work together, but because they have not been followed, it is not clear to me how we move forward. As we have said many times in the chamber and as we have published online, the Scottish Government followed the common framework process all the way through, but that did not result in the exclusion from the internal market act that we needed in order to launch our scheme.

It is not clear to me how we move forward, if that common frameworks process can be disregarded without proportionate analysis and impact assessment by the UK Government at a very late stage, after years of working together. It is unclear to me how we progress, but I will discuss the matter with Minister Pow tomorrow and I also intend to raise it at our intergovernmental meeting in September, to understand how the UK Government intends to work with us going forward, if it does not intend to adhere to those common frameworks.

I know Julie James very well. We meet monthly and have met on other occasions as well. I know that Julie would like glass to be included in the scheme. That is the ambition for Wales, as it is for Scotland. My understanding is that the 2020 act will also be a problem for Wales, but the problem has not come to the fore yet because Wales has not passed its regulations. Wales might be forced to pass regulations that are different from those that it would like to pass or, if it were to pass regulations that include glass, it might be forced by the 2020 act—as we are—to revisit that before the scheme’s launch date. Of course, none of us knows what the political situation might be by 2025.

When an—

I do not recognise the term “liability”. We have had substantial investment in the scheme—

Sorry. I will come to you in a second, David.

Scotland’s regulations for a deposit return with a 20p deposit were passed in advance of the internal market act, cover a fully devolved matter, and were passed on the basis of work and research on the right deposit level for our scheme.

I will pass over to David McPhee.

The member will recall that, before the legislation was passed, a business and regulatory impact assessment was done to assess the economic impact. That work was fully documented at the time.

The Scottish scheme, as set out in the regulations that the Scottish Parliament passed back in 2020, is very much in line with schemes around the world. Nothing here is a surprise. What we are doing is exactly along the lines of what has been done in other countries.

I will address the position of producers and retailers separately. On the producer side, the intention is to be fair to all producers, but it is absolutely a proportionate scheme. Producer fees are charged for each individual container. Therefore, the scheme will be inherently proportionate to the size of the business. A small business such as a craft brewery will pay significantly less than a larger producer will pay.

The additional cash flow measures that Circularity Scotland announced two weeks ago—maybe it was three weeks ago—benefit all producers but, proportionally, they benefit small producers more. When we passed the regulations, we passed a scheme that is similar to schemes in other countries. As I discussed in an earlier answer, it will be up to businesses themselves to manage the push and pull between the producers who pay in and the retailers who take the fees.