The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has powers to make impartial assessments, put pollution prevention and control regulations in place, and make decisions relating to environmental permits in accordance with those regulations. I know that there have been calls for the Scottish ministers to intervene in the process that is run by SEPA—the PPC process—but they would not normally do so unless there were exceptional circumstances.

The key policy levers that are available to the Scottish ministers to manage capacity are in planning. A review was carried out to which we responded, saying that no further planning permission should be granted for incineration facilities beyond what is already in place.