Hungry Scots have been left outraged after the Scottish National Party and Green Party proposed a “fish and chip tax”.
Folk living north of the border could be forced to chip into recycling costs when buying their favourite takeaway as part of Scottish Green Party MSP Lorna Slater’s circular economy bill which passed its first hurdle at Holyrood.
The bill will also see homeowners fined if they put their rubbish in the wrong bins, even if they live in a block of flats.
It comes as Slater aims to address littering and fly-tipping while pushing for more recycling across the country by creating legal targets to increase reuse and recycling rates by setting charges and restrictions for some single-use items and introducing penalties for littering.
But critics have battered the plans branding them as “concerning” and “deliberately vague”, urging the SNP and Greens to get back to the drawing board and add substantial information to it.
But despite worries, it was backed unanimously by MSPs at Holyrood.
A “latte levy” will also punish coffee drinkers who fail to use their own cups, adding 20p on to the bill.
Scottish Tory MSP Graham Simpson, said he was concerned businesses would be fined for having “too much stock” and labelled it an “unsold goods tax”.
He argued that the bill in its current state would “give the government sweeping powers to do some pretty shocking things, all with little parliamentary oversight”.
Simpson said: “I have very real concerns about the sweeping powers that the government wants to reward itself on charges for single-use items, this could be a container you might get at a takeaway, a fish and chip tax.
“What about the proposed bin tax, should you have the wrong items in there, I could see responsible people putting out their bins only for someone else to come along and put something else in them, and they are hit with a fine. What do we do about people living in flats with communal bins, if they have the wrong items in the bin do they get all fined? We don’t know as it doesn’t say in this bill.
“Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the bill is the section around restrictions on the disposal of unsold goods. I don’t know of any business which would want to deliberately have unsold goods lying around, it doesn’t make economic sense.
“This whole section is incredibly vague, but we could have a situation where small and large businesses are being fined simply for having excess stock. That’s like to lead to a cross-border trading stop just to avoid Lorna Slater’s unsold goods tax.”
Another Tory SNP, Maurice Golden, says the bill “will not deliver the change Scotland needs to meet our environmental targets” and said businesses had raised concerns with him over the “lack of detail” around the single-use drinks container charge, with “consumers facing an additional coffee-cup tax in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis”.
Slater confirmed she would no longer be fining local authorities for failing to hit centralised recycling targets, which was welcomed by MSPs.
She said: “Building a more circular economy is an environmental imperative, but it is also an economic opportunity for Scotland to open up new markets, improve self-sufficiency and provide local employment.”
