Regulatory Review Group minutes: February 2025

Attendees and apologies

• Professor Russel Griggs OBE, Chairman 
• Fiona Richardson, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities
• Susan Love, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants 
• Ewan MacDonald-Russell, Scottish Retail Consortium
• Craig Brown, Society of Chief Officers of Environmental Health in Scotland (Substitute)
• Christopher Bell, Trading Scotland/SCOTTS (Substitute)
• Tracey Reilly, Consumer Scotland (Substitute) 
• Neal Rafferty, Scottish Government (Substitute)
• Robbie McGregor, British Standards Institute
• Scott Steedman, British Standards Institute
• Suzi Daley, United Kingdom Accreditation Service
• Richard Collin,  United Kingdom Accreditation Service
• Lynsay Ross, Scottish Government
• David McPhee, Scottish Government
• Craig Robertson, Scottish Government 
• Alex Kidd, Scottish Government (Secretariat) 
• Shivani Kirpal, Scottish Government (Secretariat)
• Euan Reid, Scottish Government (Secretariat) 

Apologies

• David MacKenzie, Trading Standards 
• Douglas White, Consumer Scotland
• Brian Lawrie, Society of Chief Officers of Environmental Health in Scotland
• James Fowlie, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities 
• Wendy McCutcheon, Scottish Government

Items and actions

Welcome, Introductions and Approval of Minutes

Professor Russel Griggs OBE welcomed and thanked attendees for participating in this in-person Regulatory Review Group (RRG) meeting. Minutes from the previous meeting (28 November 2024) were agreed. 

Correspondence 

Three response letters to the RRG from the Deputy First Minister, Mr McLennan, and Ms Martin were acknowledged and discussed by the RRG. The Chair is set to have further discussions with the Deputy First Minister later in the year. 

Presentation from BSI/UKAS

British Standards Institute (BSI) and United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) gave a joint presentation on their work. 

Both BSI and UKAS encourage Governments to explore the use of standards in place of or alongside regulations. Alternatives to regulation include self-regulation, whereby a company chooses to improve itself by enacting its own regulations/standards, earned recognition, co-regulation and prescriptive regulation, which allow for a more blended approach where companies will use standards and conformity assessments depending on the level of risk. 

A facilitated discussion then took place where the following key points were raised: 

• standards would alleviate some of the resourcing issues as it would allow regulators to focus on enforcing existing legislation 
•  standards would perhaps allow for legislation to become less prescriptive and more adaptive for change in the future 
• how to use standards to drive good behaviour but also root out the ‘bad actors.’ 
• the need to differentiate between regulation and standards as these are often used interchangeably
• the level of assurance which helps define the way in which the system is set up, from mandatory to self-regulation

Deposit and Return Scheme

We have been approved to discuss the Deposit and Return Scheme (DRS).

The DRS team delivered a detailed presentation on the amendments.

A facilitated discussion then took place where some of the following key points were made:

• this is a big thing to get right and while a 4 nation approach would have been better, business will need assurance from government that this is going ahead
• it must be acknowledged that for business this is going to be costly and for the purchase of the correct Reverse Vending Machines (RVM) the spec and rules need to be ironed out
• the delay of the Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) publication is not good practice

Resourcing letter

Members to take letter away and write thoughts to Secretariat. 

Progress Monitoring Report

The Secretariat gave updates on the latest policy areas that came to the RRG. 

Next steps/AOB

The next meeting will take place in person in March 2025.