Court victory testimony to “A deeply flawed scheme from an arrogant Minister.”
ALBA leader, Alex Salmond, has commented on the success of the independent retailer Abdul Majid’s judicial review against the retail handling fee in the Scottish Government’s Deposit Return Scheme. Mr Majid was backed by the Scottish Grocers Federation.
The ALBA leader said;
“This latest embarrassment shows that the whole deposit return scheme was unsoundly based and lost in its own ridiculous complexity.
“It is a text book example of how to turn a good idea into a total bourach by a combination of bureaucratic ineptitude and Ministerial arrogance.
"The politics of this are clear.
“Firstly, the performance of the Green Party Ministers is a millstone around the neck of Humza Yousaf’s government. In any normal administration, the resignation of the Minister would be automatic in the face of such a court humiliation, particularly when Ms Slater had been warned repeatedly by the industry, that Circularity Scotland was in danger of acting unlawfully. As released minutes from Ministerial meetings demonstrate, alarm bells had been ringing loud and clear for months from the industry about the credibility of the Government proposals. This was a deeply flawed scheme from an arrogant Minister.
“Secondly, the Tory Secretary of State, Alister Jack, is only allowed to throw his weight about because of the policy blunders of the Scottish government. If the Scottish Government is to face down Westminster politically or legally, it must do so on issues where Scotland is united, not where they are presiding over an incompetent, divisive shambles of a scheme.
“Thirdly, Humza Yousaf inherited a policy programme containing many of these poison pills. Instead of crawling away from them one by one, he should be embracing and declaring the need for a substantial change in direction and further unpopular policies like self-identification and jury-less trials should now follow the fishing ban and the deposit return scheme onto the legislative scrap-heap.
In order to win independence, and for the SNP to survive politically, the Scottish Parliament has to be run in a no-nonsense, hyper-efficient manner to build confidence in the case for full self-government. The national movement cannot afford the luxury of entitled, student politics undermining the hard won reputation of the Scottish Parliament for competence. The grown-ups need to be placed back in charge of the Government.”
