New Petitions

Thank you, convener.

I applaud the Public Petitions Committee for the most recent workshop that it held in Dumfries, which was around a couple of months ago. That was an excellent experience that gave local people the opportunity to engage in its whole system and process. I ask the committee to consider rolling out that workshop to our senior schools, because young people are now engaging far more in politics. Members will see from the audience that young people are engaging; there are a lot of young people here. As an elected member of Dumfries and Galloway Council, I would really welcome the committee taking that point on board.

I thank the convener and the committee for considering hearing about the petition on rendering regulations and the differentials in interpretation and governance north and south of the border. Please be assured that this is not about seeking to have standards lowered in Scotland or anywhere else for that matter; it is about the financial burdens in a very competitive market. It is very much about ensuring that the existing legislation is both equitable and sustainable in a set of regulations that now apply for all operators in the United Kingdom and ensuring the security of the Scottish rendering industry for the long-term future.

As a farmer, I recognise the national importance of the rendering industry. I have endured foot-and-mouth on two occasions, and there have been issues with avian flu and anthrax. From a biosecurity perspective, it is very important that we retain the national rendering industry.

That is enough from me. The issue is very complex, and I am very keen that we tease out as much as possible, so I would like to bring in Dr McLeod.

I will set the scene a wee bit about what rendering is and about the regulatory background to the issue that we are bringing to you today.

Rendering is a very important part of the recycling industry in Scotland and England. It supplies tallow for the production of biodiesel and meal for pet-food manufacture. As Andrew Wood has said, it has played an important role in biosecurity over the years—for example, in the BSE and foot-and-mouth crises.

Rendering is a cooking process. Essentially, liquid is driven off and a highly odorous gas is produced as part of the process. It is that vapour that causes rendering to come under environmental scrutiny. Since the mid-2000s, all rendering plants in the UK have been regulated under the PPC—the pollution prevention and control regime—which has been transposed from Europe into Scottish and English law.

To understand our concerns, you need to understand the fundamental philosophy of PPC and how it was transposed in England compared with Scotland. At its core, PPC requires for environmental issues to be addressed in an integrated way across all media: soil, air and water. It requires an installation to use the best available techniques, or BAT, to achieve that.

Europe provided guidance on BAT for different processes in the form of BAT reference documents, but it was left up to member states to decide how to implement that guidance in their own permits. For rendering, the implementation has been different over the years in Scotland compared with England. In Scotland, we have a single regulator, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, which regulates all rendering plants. In England, a rendering plant is usually regulated by the local authority. Except for an accident of geography, each site will have a different regulator. You can argue that Scottish regulation is a lot more consistent.

In Scotland, a rendering plant does not comprise a particularly complex process on the spectrum of SEPA’s regulatory responsibilities, whereas in England a rendering plant is often a local authority’s most complex plant compared with much simpler set-ups such as petrol stations and dry cleaners.

SEPA applies a risk-based approach to its definition of the best available techniques, whereas in England local authorities use guidance from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the form of the rendering sector guidance note, a document to which SEPA gives cognisance but which it has not adopted as guidance.

In our experience, those things mean that PPC permits in Scotland are more robust than their English counterparts, the compliance bar is higher, and regulator scrutiny is more detailed. Because of the way in which BAT is applied, there are circumstances in which a compliant English plant would not be compliant in Scotland.

Those differences mean that compliance costs more in Scotland. We have produced a document that highlights some of those costs, including a significant difference in permit scheme charges between SEPA and the English local authorities. That document formed the basis of the petition.

We are concerned that a nationwide industry should be treated so differently in England compared with Scotland, but we believe that recent changes in environmental legislation provide an opportunity to narrow the gap. Those changes are in the European industrial emissions directive, which has recently been transposed into English and Scottish law.

The European BAT reference documents are an important part of that. They provide guidance on the best available techniques, and they will be reviewed for each sector. They will be updated and summarised into a set of conclusions and emission limits, which member states must use as a basis for setting and revising permit conditions.

Work in the rendering sector is in the early stages and is expected to be completed by 2018. We would like the Scottish Government to ensure that, at the end of the process, SEPA and DEFRA, which will provide guidance to local authorities, agree on the same definition of BAT for the rendering industry in the UK, and that the same emission limit values apply in England and Scotland, thus levelling the currently unlevel playing field.

The local renderer is Dundas Chemical Company. We have an operation here in Dumfries and one in Motherwell, near Glasgow.

10:30

There is one other site—in Kintore, near Aberdeen—which is not operational at the moment.

When facing a meat plant, it is not possible to negotiate price. It is not possible to use that as any kind of leverage. They are interested in the best price. The prices are similar; there is no difference.

Not particularly. It will depend entirely on logistical costs, and legislation will not have an effect on that.

It is important to understand, in relation to our petition, that we are talking about the meat rendering industry. There are another two sectors, which are the rendering of fish and the rendering of poultry. Those are not included in the dialogue today.

As Dr McLeod highlighted, there is a change coming in legislation. At this point, we as an industry in Scotland feel that we are disadvantaged compared with English operators. It is difficult to achieve a level playing field mid-legislation, but because a change is coming there is an opportunity to do something about it. We would like to use the resources of the Scottish Government to influence those coming discussions, which will principally be between SEPA, DEFRA and European legislators.

The European Parliament.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

They are the same in principle, but that is not the case in practice.

At the end of the day, a lot comes down to the regulator and the resources that are available to the regulator. SEPA regulates all industry in Scotland from an environmental perspective. It provides consistency and a level of expertise that you would not get in the environmental health department of a local authority.

I steered away earlier from some of the detail of what happens, but I will give you some of it now. The Environment Agency, as SEPA’s counterpart in England, will regulate those industries that are perceived to have the biggest cross-media impact. In Scotland, there are part A and part B processes for rendering. In England, there is a part A1 process and a part A2 process, which together equate to our part A process, and there is a part B process.

All part B processes—affecting things such as petrol stations and dry cleaners—come under local authority regulation, as do A2 processes. In England, rendering sits under local authority regulation as an A2 process. Although rendering has a cross-media impact, that impact is perceived to be less than that of some of its counterpart industries in the A group, so it sits under local authority regulation—and local authorities tend not to have the same resources.

The whole application process in Scotland is based on the risk process for an individual plant, whereas in England a permit is based more or less on the sector guidance note that DEFRA has produced.

The issue of how the regulations are interpreted in other member states is not so significant for the UK rendering industry. Our primary problem is the way in which the same piece of legislation at European level is interpreted down through the member states—the interpretation in UK terms.

As Dr McLeod highlighted, there is a BREF—or BAT reference—note, which is effectively the guidance for interpreting the regulation. SEPA interprets the regulation at a higher level than do the local authorities in England, which use DEFRA guidance notes instead. SEPA is aware of DEFRA’s guidance notes, but it does not use them in any form of legislative control for Scottish rendering plants.

There are real differences, which come down to operational costs for monitoring emissions and acceptance levels, as legal action can potentially be taken in the Scottish context that would not be taken in the same way in England. Therefore, it is possible for operators to draw material out of Scotland for processing because it is easier to process that material in England than in Scotland. That is the issue for the Scottish rendering industry. If it continues, Scotland will effectively be disadvantaged, and the plant will move south of the border because it is easier for material to be processed there.

At present, I am still awaiting a response from Alyn Smith; it is my fault for not continuing the communication as I should have done. I will seek a follow-up response from him.

We would like from the committee—as was mentioned earlier—an open working partnership so that we can give you the information. An awful lot of work has been taking place behind the scenes, and I feel that the committee should get an overview of it. That would be extremely helpful, especially given what is currently taking place, with legislation changing as we speak.

Yes.

I apologise if I have confused things, but I will try to answer your point.

The issue with the European Union is that over the next two to three years there is going to be a change in how the legislation is updated. We are living with a current set of circumstances from the European Union and the current interpretation, which is to the disadvantage of Scotland. The intention behind our petition is to seek help during the review of the legislation, which is going to happen over the next three years, so that the Scottish Government’s influence can be brought to bear through SEPA in Scotland and DEFRA in the UK to bring everything back on to a level playing field.

Does that explanation help?

On the first point, our current concern that we would like to see addressed in the future is that the legislation is interpreted differently in Scotland compared with England. However, we do not have an issue regarding SEPA’s interpretation.

We do not have a concern about SEPA’s interpretation because we believe that SEPA is not interpreting the legislation in a way that it should not. Our problem is the interpretation that the English authorities have of the same piece of legislation, which is an advantage to our competitors and creates an uneven playing field.

That is our current concern. It is difficult to know how to resolve that problem under normal circumstances, but because of the change in legislation that is coming about over the next period of time, we would like to have the assistance of the Scottish Government to be able to ensure that, when the BREF notes are set for the industry going forward, it is done on a uniform basis across the whole United Kingdom.

Does that explanation help?

Yes, certainly.