Scottish ministers have failed in their demand for the UK Government to change its tune on glass bottles being included in the deposit return scheme (DRS) – and are now facing an embarrassing further delay to align with Westminster’s own proposals.

The Scottish Government reacted with anger after UK ministers insisted that glass was taken out of the DRS as a condition of granting an exclusion to the post-Brexit internal market act.

Humza Yousaf set a deadline of Monday for the UK Government to change its tune – but SNP and Greens ministers had no leverage.

In the same way that demands for a second referendum, or anything else for that matter, are met with deathly silence from Whitehall, the DRS has been no different.

The tough war of words from the Scottish Government has spectacularly backfired – with Lorna Slater having the unenviable task of announcing the DRS will be pushed back from the March 2024 go-live date to October 2025, the same timeline planned for England.

Read more: Deposit Return Scheme delayed until October 2025 at the earliest

The decision to further delay the DRS is likely to have stung Ms Slater, given that in February she told MSPs that any further hold-ups would wreck her “credibility” and add further misery to businesses.

This is the fourth delay announced to the Scottish DRS, which will now not come into force for at least five years after MSPs approved the legislation to do so. These regulations will also have to be formally revised.

As businesses and opposition MSPs have called for since the initial proposals were drawn up, Scotland looks set to get its DRS as part of a UK-wide policy.

The First Minister has insisted the 2025 launch, which will “align with a UK scheme”, is a result of the UK Government’s “deliberate efforts to undermine devolution”.

Read more: Lorna Slater is playing the scapegoat for SNP's return scheme mess

He added that Tory ministers in London have “sought to deliberately sabotage” the DRS to “override the will of the Scottish Parliament”.

The DRS is a policy devolved to Holyrood and the UK Government demanding glass be excluded is arguably an example of the Tory Government overstepping the mark and interfering with the Scottish Parliament’s legislation, with business concerns cited as one reason for the demand.

As late as March 2022, the scheme for England was proposed to include glass bottles, while in January this year, the UK Government acknowledged Wales’s DRS would include glass.

But the Scottish Government setting a new launch date of 2025, when the scheme for England is due to launch, is a curious date – given that on Monday, Mr Yousaf said that timescale “is for the birds”.

He added: “We don’t know whether the UK-wide scheme is going to happen.

“The (UK) Government hasn’t pushed ahead with the appropriate regulations, let alone the scheme provider.”

It is also strange that the scheme has been delayed for another 19 months due to the glass decision when the chief executive of Circularity Scotland, the company set up to administer the DRS, insisted on Monday that the scheme could “absolutely” go ahead if glass was left out.

In her statement to Holyrood, Ms Slater warned that “businesses have invested millions of pounds in the infrastructure to handle glass”.

Read more: Timeline: How the Scottish deposit return scheme stand-off unfolded

But Scottish ministers have essentially admitted defeat that glass will not form part of any DRS, including north of the Border.

Ms Slater was insistent that “Scotland will have a deposit return scheme”, ending unfounded speculation that the scheme would be scrapped.

But she warned that “it will come later than need be” and “it will be more limited than it should be”.

Given the vast issues that have faced the Scottish Government in trying to rollout the scheme over the last three years, this will surely come as no surprise.