Humza Yousaf’s regime is not exactly a government of all the talents. There’s Patrick Harvie, the Zero Carbons minister, whose list of achievements is shorter than his fuse. There’s Shona Robison, resurrected five years after taking Scotland to the top of the European health league for, er, drug deaths. And then there’s the First Minister himself, the reverse Macavity who finds himself at the centre of every scandal. But amid this galaxy of mediocrity, one star shines brighter than the rest: Lorna Slater, the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity.
Slater has managed to distinguish herself in her 21 months in office through her special blend of personal misjudgements and policy errors. Within weeks of taking office the Green co-leader was branded a ‘Hollywood diva’ after demanding she didn’t want to work every day at COP26, with officials being told to arrange no more than ‘two things in a day’ during the Glasgow summit.
She compared critics of Scotland’s controversial self-ID laws to racists and antisemites and made baseless claims about Scexit support. And the £98,000-a-year Slater has also been attacked for hypocrisy over her chosen methods of travel. ‘Limo Lorna’ has made dozens of trips in a chauffeur-driven car from her home near Edinburgh and last week took a private ferry rather than the Scottish Government-owned CalMac service to visit the island of Rum.
Such largesse could perhaps be forgiven if Slater was an effective minister. Yet her singular achievement in office has been the utter shambles of the deposit return scheme (DRS), aimed at increasing the number of single-use drinks bottle and cans that are recycled. Industry figures warn it will impose potentially fatal costs on their business and create a trade barrier between England and Scotland – but the Scottish Government is still pressing ahead.
Before the May 2021 election, Slater said that the scheme ‘needs doing’ but in government, the implementation has proven rather more tricky. It has been delayed multiple times throughout the last two years and was due to start in August 2023 but is now scheduled for launch in March 2024. Now Slater is claiming that it could be axed, unless the UK government gives it an exemption under the internal Markets Act.
What will be the excuse next time Lorna?
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