Bottling it
Lorna Slater hints at a delay to the Scottish Government's 'flagship' deposit return scheme.
Ever since they joined the Scottish Government, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater have been pilloried for abandoning their principles.
This is totally unfair. For one, transforming themselves from obscure backbenchers to Ministers of the Crown is an ambitious bit of up-cycling. For another, name me one Green policy they've ditched just to keep their new jobs.
In fact, Slater was up at Holyrood yesterday talking about what she called 'the flagship scheme of this government for reducing litter and waste' — a deposit return scheme (DRS). It would be, she was at pains to point out, the first such project anywhere in the UK. MSPs had legislated for the DRS in 2020 'with the intention of having the scheme operational in 2022'.
There. Can't say fairer than that.
'Unfortunately...'
Uh oh. Surely the Scottish Greens weren't about to renege on their manifesto pledge that 'all packaging and products sold in Scotland must be readily able to be reused, repaired, or recycled'? You know, the manifesto that was published a mere seven months ago.
'As you are all keenly aware, I know,' Slater continued, '2020 was an unprecedented year. The global pandemic and Brexit had a major impact on businesses.'
At this point, Covid and Brexit are to blame for everything except each other. NHS waiting times. Empty supermarket shelves. The fact you haven't heard of anyone on Strictly this year. People are heading out to their local bottle deposit bins, suddenly remembering that we're no longer in the Common Agricultural Policy, and becoming so overwhelmed with grief that they sit down in the street and weep into an empty bottle of pinot noir.
Now, instead of 2022, Slater would say only that the DRS would be 'operational as soon as is practically possible'. A similar fate befell the Greens' manifesto pledge to 'oppose the construction of new incinerators', which has morphed into holding a review into 'the role of incineration in the waste hierarchy in Scotland'. The Greens have kicked so many policies into the long grass they should be fined for littering.
All this was read out as though nothing had changed. Slater rhymed off the actions ministers were taking against ‘problematic' single-use plastics. Had Sellotape's old tweets come to light? Was Styrofoam being cancelled for using the wrong pronouns? 'As with so many other things,' she chirped, ‘the Scottish Government is leading the way with the scheme.'
There is something unnervingly upbeat about Slater. Even mild indications of satisfaction are discouraged in Edinburgh, so you have to work hard at being so chipper all the time. She recalls every enthusiastic HR manager who puts pictures of her cat in the morning email and calls a company-wide meeting after someone uses 'manpower' in a presentation.
The Nationalists' Fergus Ewing was dumped on the backbenches by Nicola Sturgeon in May and there he has grown ruddier of cheek and thinner of patience. The irascible scion of the Ewing dynasty wasn't much of an eco-warrior when he was a minister and out of the Cabinet he has reverted to his right-wing origins. With a glower that could have burned a new hole in the Ozone layer, he pointed out that Circularity Scotland estimated the cost of the DRS at £2,410 million — double the figures ministers had given.
'What are the total costs now? Have they doubled to around £5,000 million?' he demanded. He wanted full costings, and a review, and a 'reappraisal of all other options'.
Part of the theatrics of parliamentary government is the pretence that ministers are all hugely well-informed about every matter they might be questioned on. They crib from the notes prepared for them by civil servants then add their own rhetorical flourishes to sound at once spontaneous and on top of their brief.
Slater offers no such performance. For every answer, she read aloud from her briefing folder. Nothing unusual about that; every minister does it. But not every minister removes the individual page and holds it up before reading every... last... word... without taking her eyes off it. It was like watching a written statement with its own voice.
The minister complained that the UK Government had been slow to respond to her two letters and a request for a meeting. This is outrageous, right enough. If we have to listen to Lorna Slater, Boris Johnson should too.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on November 18, 2021.
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