SNP must keep thinking big despite deposit return scheme mess

Nostalgia is a misleading sentiment. Today, Scotland’s planned new deposit return scheme has become a seething hot controversy.

Midnight on Tuesday was the deadline for businesses to sign up, but with two SNP leadership candidates saying they’ll pause the scheme, firms don’t know what they are signing up for.

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Businesses are exasperated by a lack of clear information from the Scottish Government, confused about their obligations, worry about the impact on their cashflow and fear the extra costs the scheme will incur for them, at a time when they are struggling with unprecedented high energy, commodity and wage costs.

And we still don’t know if the UK Government will grant an exemption for the scheme from the UK Internal Market Act, so that bottles and cans from elsewhere in the UK are subject to the same rules.

Ministers say the scheme will increase the recycling rate of things like beer bottles, but we’re not sure what impact it will have on Scotland’s flourishing kerbside recycling culture.

All in all, to paraphrase a certain lager advert, it’s probably not the best deposit return scheme in the world.

Still, we’re told that more than 95 per cent of businesses had registered by the deadline yesterday, responsible between them for two billion recyclable drinks containers. So not quite the shambles some had predicted – not at this stage, anyway.

Three points arise from all this. Firstly, this is a cautionary tale, a case study for future public administration students in how not to develop and implement a bright idea. Businesses object that there has been minimal consultation and little sign of sympathy from the Scottish Government, one leader in the food sector recently telling me ministers had a “very blinkered approach, pushing this through regardless”.

Some form of delay to implementation is required and a grace period for small businesses now looks inevitable.

Secondly, pushing ahead blindly with policies that are badly managed fuels resentment and resentment is dangerous. That’s especially true at a time when there are political forces at work intent on undermining efforts to meet net zero targets.

It must be said that the deposit return scheme stramash has so far been strikingly free of such retrograde voices. No one involved is arguing that the deposit return scheme should be dumped; quite the reverse. Business leaders have been at pains to stress their commitment to a scheme in principle, they just want a better managed scheme on a more realistic timetable.

Sustainability is after all a core part of the brand for many Scottish drinks brands targeted at young climate-conscious consumers. There is a strong, long-standing commitment across the food and drink sector to make net zero happen, many companies having made great strides already. Trumpeting your sustainability makes good business sense.

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Even so in politics, the sharks are circling. Right-wing politicians who thrive on division, see government policies on net zero as a so-called wedge issue. They’re not getting very far, but there’s no need to give them ammunition. The answer is not to double down on flawed schemes without compromise but to listen, take stock and improve the scheme so that everyone supports it. That would be the best rejoinder to the net-zero naysayers.

Which brings us to the most important point: that the SNP needs to hold its nerve and continue to champion ambitious policies such as this one. It might be difficult; that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

It’s only now that the dust is settling after Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation announcement and we can see what is at stake for the SNP, for the independence movement and for Scotland.

The SNP for years has embodied an almost boundless self-belief on behalf of Scotland, as part of its bid to make nationalism appealing to a wider audience. Ambition has defined the SNP’s leadership, particularly under Nicola Sturgeon.

And yet ambition is what has so far been missing from the SNP’s leadership debate. There, the dominant theme has been of retreat and retrenchment. It would be a tragic moment if this became a turning point, where too-hard-too-costly replaced aim-high-aim-far as the Scottish Government’s guiding dictum.

The change in tone we are seeing is partly because the field is dominated by two candidates who could be broadly be called traditionalist, pitched against a progressive, but also reflects nervousness about a series of Scottish Government failures. It’s no’ my mess, has been the clear message from the candidates – all of them former or serving ministers – as they’ve scrambled to distance themselves from controversies like the deposit return scheme.

A change in tone can be attributed to the broadly traditionalist candidates Kate Forbes and Ash Regan against the more progressive Humza Yousaf (Image: Newsquest)

And as noted before in this column, Ms Sturgeon has a record of poor delivery second only to Hermes, falling short on targets on the attainment gap, climate change, NHS waiting lists and housebuilding.

There comes a point, naturally, when a government misses so many targets that you have to ask whether it’s worth having them in the first place.

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But the only sensible answer is that of course it’s worth it, as targets are a means to hold governments to account. The Scottish Conservatives recently did just that at Holyrood over ministers’ (lack of) progress on housebuilding. Targets are valuable even if they get you only three quarters of the way there.

How much easier it would be for the Scottish Government to set less stringent targets in the first place. How much easier it would be to defend an unambitious record and avoid challenging policy commitments.

If that’s the way we’re going, reining in ambition, then Scotland, its parliament and its ruling party will be diminished. A cautious managerial First Minister who can’t espouse a galvanising vision of a better Scotland or demonstrate impatience to achieve it, may find themselves presiding over a declining SNP.