Diary of a Shopkeeper, 23rd April
‘Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.’
I’m writing this on 23rd April, Shakespeare’s birthday. Maybe that’s why a line from Hamlet keeps running through my mind as I read the latest news from the Scottish parliament. Could it be, as Polonius says of a troupe of strolling players, that our MSPs are, ‘The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral’?
I’m not referring to the police investigation of senior members of the SNP. Only time will tell whether that scandal is a tragedy or just a footnote in history. Whichever way, it won’t impinge greatly on the world of whisky, cheese and wine. Rather, I’m talking about the tragical-comical train-wreck that is the Deposit Recovery Scheme (DRS). I’ve written about it before, and I’m sorry to return to what must be a rather dull topic for most folk. But this week has seen some significant developments.
On Tuesday, our new first minister, Humza Yousaf, announced that the launch of the scheme had been put off till March 2024. Sighs of relief could be heard from every brewery, wine shop, craft distillery, and licensed premises across the country.
DRS was meant to go live in August this year, but with just three months to go, crucial details of its operation were still to be worked out. That’s why five major supermarkets, as well as almost every small and medium sized producer and retailer, had been calling for a pause.
On Thursday, the minister responsible for the scheme, Lorna Slater, announced several significant changes. These included simplifying the application process for exemption from accepting returns, the exclusion from the scheme of small bottles such as whisky miniatures, and a special allowance for any product made or imported in quantities of less than 5,000 bottles per year. This last concession will be helpful for Kirkness & Gorie, as it means we can once again import directly from small wineries in Châteauneuf du Pape and elsewhere. We’d been worried that DRS would make it uneconomical for us to source these wines, as the volumes involved were too small to justify the extra expense required. So, another sigh of relief.
But this doesn’t mean that all the problems associated with DRS have been resolved. Far from it.
The Scottish scheme’s failure to align with similar plans for the rest of the UK – due to go live in 2025 – is still a major concern. Answers to questions in important areas like VAT remain absent, or confusing. Communication of how the scheme works is poor, leading to widespread public misunderstanding. (For instance, DRS is nothing like the old ‘rinse and reuse’ bottle schemes that many of us remember from the 1970s and earlier. It’s far more complicated and expensive than that, for both businesses and consumers.)
Worst of all, even when announcing the few welcome changes, Lorna Slater was unwilling to show a trace of humility and admit any fault on her or the Scottish government’s part. Instead, she blamed the UK government for failing to allow DRS to bypass laws which ensure a level playing-field for businesses across all four nations. The UK government hasn’t said it will block DRS, it just hasn’t said it won’t. Maybe if Lorna Slater had submitted her application in a timely fashion, rather than doing so belatedly, last month, then we might have had an answer from Westminster by now.
Liam McArthur, who has spoken up clearly about small businesses’ DRS concerns, said in Holyrood, ‘The minister’s statement was a remarkable exercise in blame shifting that was both ill-advised and lacking in self-awareness.’
To put it another way, and in the words of Mr Shakespeare, ‘The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.’
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 26th April 2023. A new one appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions