Alister Jack may be about to take another stand against reckless policy-making at Holyrood. According to reports, the Scottish Secretary may deny the Scottish government’s deposit return scheme (DRS) a trading exemption under the UK Internal Market Act (UKIMA). The DRS will see 20p added to every single-use packaged drink sold in Scotland, with consumers able to recoup the money by returning their used bottles and cans to retailers or reverse vending machines.
Any drinks producer that hasn’t signed up to the scheme by midnight tonight risks being unable to sell their products in Scotland. Drinks industry and retail bodies have protested a lack of information from scheme administrator Circularity Scotland and, while a last-minute £22 million has been made available to help small firms cope with the costs, some producers say they could go out of business.
How many more times does the UK government have to save Scotland from its own parliament?
Lorna Slater, the Scottish Greens’ co-leader and minister responsible for the DRS, remains defiant, refusing to delay the deadline. However, without the UKIMA exemption, the scheme could be rendered unworkable given the volume of single-use glass, plastic and metal drinks containers used in Scotland that are produced south of the border. Even if the DRS could somehow survive, failure to secure an exemption would put Scottish producers at a disadvantage to competitors elsewhere in the UK.
UK ministers are reportedly concerned about the inflationary impact on consumers. They aren’t opposed to a DRS in principle: they plan their own scheme for England, Wales and Northern Ireland from 2025. However, they are vexed by the commercial impact of different rules in different parts of the country. The refusal of a trading exemption couldn’t easily be spun as a constitutional row. All three candidates in the SNP leadership election have acknowledged problems with the scheme, with Kate Forbes warning of ‘economic carnage’.
If Alister Jack stymies the scheme, it will be the second time this year that he has intervened to halt a controversial Holyrood policy with implications for the UK as a whole. In January, Jack made a Section 35 order under the Scotland Act to prevent the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill going forward for Royal Assent. The Bill would tear up the current gender laws in Scotland and allow anyone 16 or over to be recognised in law as the opposite sex without medical evidence of gender dysphoria and based on a self-asserted ‘gender identity’.
Jack blocked the Bill after legal advice warned it would change how the law operates UK-wide. He was assailed for attacking devolution and even democracy itself but, barely six weeks later, two of the three SNP leadership candidates say they wouldn’t challenge his Section 35 order in court.
How many more times does the UK government have to save Scotland from its own parliament before we admit devolution isn’t working? Both the DRS and the GRR Bill underscore common themes: firstly, the Scottish government’s addiction to faddish initiatives and being first in the UK to introduce or ban something. Secondly, a Holyrood policy-making process that is ideologically closed and driven by political dogmas rather than evidence or process; and the cross-border implications of devolved policy.
There isn’t much that can be done to fix Scotland’s dismal political culture, which is a natural outgrowth of its dismal political class, but there are remedies of process. First, however, the Westminster political class – for which the word ‘dismal’ is also apt – would have to work up the gumption to pursue them. On this there are few if any grounds for optimism. Devolution, as it was designed and as it has evolved, is a product of equal parts Labour destructiveness and Tory defeatism. Good luck getting the cowboy builders back to strengthen the load-bearing walls they took a sledgehammer to.
A government at all interested in political coherence would accept that too many powers have been devolved, inhibiting Westminster’s ability to set national policy while accommodating jurisdictional differences. A nationwide DRS would be less burdensome on cross-border trade. A nationwide gender recognition regime would prevent a devolved parliament from unilaterally changing the operation of reserved law. These are just some of the many reasons why Westminster should reform devolution. Until ministers are prepared to do so, they should prepare for more of these cross-border policy conflicts and the time and political capital they drain from the business of government.
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