Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Official Report 556KB pdf

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“Sustainable Development: Third Annual Assessment of Progress by the Scottish Government”

As far as the civil service is concerned, we have good relationships with people across the Administration. As you know, since 2007 we have had a proper team in Scotland; before that, we had just one person here. Over the past few years, we have built stronger ties across the civil service, by which we are extremely encouraged.

As far as involvement with ministers is concerned, we will have a review meeting with Mr Swinney early in March. We do not request meetings with ministers that often, because they are extremely busy people, but when we do we always receive a positive response and we have certainly found them very welcoming. Although we seek civil servants' advice and they actively approach us about our work, we do not engage proactively with ministers in that way.

So you would say that it is a two-way dialogue with civil servants, but you have to go asking for meetings with ministers—they do not come knocking on your door.

Other members will ask about climate change legislation, so I will leave that aside just for the moment. In general terms, what progress has the Scottish Government made towards meeting the five challenges that the Sustainable Development Commission set out in its previous report? What are the barriers to more progress?

Will you give us details of that mixed picture on the record?

Have we taken the first steps on the journey towards a sustainable Scotland?

As I said, there are positive trends in outcomes in some areas. What is happening with municipal waste in particular, although perhaps not with waste overall, is a good example of what can be achieved, and greenhouse gas emissions are falling, although they are not doing so nearly fast enough in light of our targets. We need to do a lot more about the intransigent health indicators and outcomes, and there are big issues and challenges to do with the transport aspects of carbon.

That was one conclusion. I return to a point that has already been made. There is a lack of certainty about what sustainable economic growth means and how it tracks through into policy decisions. My recollection of the survey is that it showed that there was a lukewarm view of the Government’s progress against outcomes. We asked quite a large number of questions, and the overall conclusion was that stakeholders and the public more generally are not so engaged in the changes in the mechanics of governance—in the national performance framework and such things. Rather, they are, rightly, more concerned with outcomes. There is concern about the disconnect between the two.

Yes. They cannot see the outcomes, and they are responding to that.

Yes.

I have had informal discussions with people from Scottish Enterprise who are involved in sustainability, to inquire about what is happening in Scottish Enterprise. My understanding—it is not based on a huge amount of detail—is that active consideration is being given to such issues in the enterprise networks. I am not sure exactly what point they have reached and what their outcome will be. The issue is important and we would like to pursue it over the coming year.

We have received no negative feedback, but we have not discussed the issue with the Government. I do not want to pre-empt that discussion.

In their questions, a number of committee members have touched on the issue of transport. You say that you are developing a sustainable transport hierarchy and that a report on that will be published later this year. In a previous year, we heard from you that there was still

“a significant policy gap relating to carbon and transport”.

Has the Scottish Government accepted the sustainable transport hierarchy that you are developing, or is there still a large gap about which you are concerned?

Yes.

The behaviour change strand of the 2009 act will definitely have a role to play. We do not think that the problems in transport policy, especially public attitudes, can be addressed only through transport policy interventions. The public duty and the behaviour change strand of the 2009 act will be a significant opportunity to exert influence in that area.

Yes. The Government and Transport Scotland have engaged, although they are understandably wary, because the issue has proved so intractable in the past. They are worried about whether the action that they are taking will be considered to be not enough. However, they are aware of the problems and they are focused on finding solutions and answers. It is a tricky area, but they are engaged.

So you argue that a reliable methodology is already available—we can do it now, without another year of theoretical work.

I turn to chapter 2.2, which has the headings “Smarter” and “Education for Sustainable Development”. That is the area in which the Scottish Government appears to have made the most progress. Can you explain why it is easier to embed sustainable development principles in the education sector than it is in other sections of society?

You say that sustainable development has been quite well embedded in the curriculum for excellence and so on. How long-lasting will the effects of such an approach be? Will we create a new set of citizens who do not find these kinds of decisions as difficult to make as we do or will the effects not last as long as that?

14:30  

Moving on, I appreciate that the recommendations for Government in the “Healthier” chapter of your report focus on a number of different issues including fuel poverty, energy efficiency, active travel and environmental education and action. Is there an understanding across Government that these policy areas are all crucial in delivering better health in Scotland?

There has been some movement in that respect. Our appraisal of the Government’s new policy statements and strategies since it came to power suggests that they are more integrated than they were before. However, as I said earlier, there is still so much more to do. Given the need for an integrated approach and the scale of the health challenges facing Scotland, we have to be more active in making such links and in linking local, regional and national action across the country.

I have not looked at those plans in detail. However, after looking at the options set out in a couple of draft city region plans—not, I should add, as part of any scientific appraisal—I cannot see how they will deliver the 42 per cent carbon cut or, indeed, many of the other sustainable development outcomes that we seek.

There is certainly a time lag in this respect. Although, as I have said, the current national planning framework is much better than it was, the challenge for local authorities and central Government is to move the process on quickly and reconcile the two levels of planning.

It has to be. Again, I would not pretend that that will be easy given the history of planning and house building in Scotland over the past 20 years, but we have targets that we must meet. The other message on planning is that a sustainable approach delivers much better communities—communities that people want to live in, that are healthier, less stressful and more socially inclusive and where people can work near where they live. Both local and national Government must aspire to that goal.

The problem that we have always suffered from is that we have lots of great pilot initiatives, such as the work on sustainable communities, but translating those into uniformity on the ground takes a hell of a long time, if it happens at all. We really need to see that happen—and quickly.

How are you engaging with the public bodies that are identified in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 to ensure that they are equipped to help reach Scotland’s climate change targets?

We had a meeting with the Government yesterday about the public duty and we will, we hope, have some engagement in the consultation exercise on that duty—how it is framed and how the views of all the different important parts of the public sector feed into the process. That is how we are directly engaged.

Before Christmas, at the Government’s request, we convened a discussion involving various public bodies, including the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. In fact, the process goes back further than that. Quite a long time ago, we had a discussion with the Scottish Government, COSLA and others on the desired approach to the public duty in what was to become the 2009 act. Our engagement was in working out what would be a realistic public duty, which was, we hope, fed into the parliamentary process. The duty is now a Government responsibility, and we are contributing to the process as much as we can as a small public body—clearly, lots of other organisations have a role to play, too.

Do the public have to see that there is something in it for them?

What is your opinion of the Scottish Government’s performance on greenhouse gas emissions from its estate and transport, which rose in 2007-08? How does the Government’s performance compare with the record of United Kingdom Government departments?

You said that you have a more active role in appraising the performance of other Administrations. Are you saying that you aspire to do more in relation to the Scottish Government’s responsibilities?

Yes. We are in discussion with the Scottish Government on that. There is a role for audit and scrutiny in driving performance generally, and such scrutiny would contribute to better performance by the Government in future.

You would like to be more police officer than policy person.

You have said that the Scottish Government should develop a framework for

“Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate”.

Will you say more about that?

Run that by me again.

I would not frame it in quite those terms, but the discussions have been very positive. There is a recognition that performance has not been good in some areas of the estate. For example, the Government has got involved in the Carbon Trust scheme—a carbon management scheme—and is trying to turn some things around. Nothing has been agreed yet, but the Government appears to be interested in developing a wider, more robust framework for appraising the process. If we could help with that, we would be happy to, as it is important.

Over the past few years we have prepared reports on various aspects of energy. At the UK level, we have done reports on the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets and on nuclear power. As you say, we are preparing a statement on coal. We have done a report on wind, too. I agree on the points about demand reduction and about developing an energy infrastructure that is sustainable in the wider sense and which includes small-scale, community-level contributions—which we actively support.

We are just about to finalise our work programme for 2010-11 and it is likely to contain further work on demand reduction and other issues at a UK level.

When the current Scottish Administration was formed, one of its stated intentions was to create an energy policy for Scotland, albeit that the regulation of energy is a reserved matter. There are important decisions for Scottish ministers that impact on the sustainability of the energy system. Has a sustainable energy policy for Scotland emerged, or are we still some way off that?

As we acknowledge in our report, there has been a lot of progress on renewables, and there is interest in the Government on the next frontier in renewables—marine power and so on. We welcome much of that. There has been some action on demand reduction and energy conservation, but a lot more needs to be done on that front. That should be the focus of energy policy.

There is no particular incoherence in what is being done, although more needs to be done in certain areas, and there are big questions ahead for our generation and infrastructure requirements.

Thank you very much for your time and for answering our questions.

14:49 Meeting suspended.  

14:55 On resuming—  

I will set the report in context: it is our second annual report on the current Administration. The next report, which will be published in December this year, will be an overall appraisal of sustainability performance across the lifetime of the Administration. In other words, the report is the second in a three-stage process of appraisal.

I will run through the five challenges in turn.

The first was to introduce a challenging framework for action on climate change. Obviously, the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 was passed with cross-party involvement and we very much welcome that. We also welcome the targets under the act. As we outline in our report, the challenge now will be to ensure that we deliver on them, especially in key areas of the economy—transport being the obvious one—where there are particular challenges.

Another challenge was to address fuel poverty. We support the energy assistance package, which lends a greater coherence to the overall approach. The problem is that a gulf exists between the resources allocated—although I appreciate that we are in very difficult financial times—and the resources that everyone accepts would be required both to address fuel poverty within the Government's timescales and to cut the carbon emissions from our housing stock.

Infrastructure was another challenge. There is a lot of focus still on large infrastructure, much of which does not seem to be particularly compatible with achieving a 42 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2020. We think that the national planning framework is reasonably well aligned with sustainability principles, but there is a disconnect between that and the cumulative effect of planning decisions on the ground. In most local authority areas, the sorts of developments that are still being approved are not compatible with the sorts of targets that the Government has set or with wider health targets—I am referring not just to climate change.

Procurement in the public sector was another challenge. The Government has produced a sustainable procurement action plan, which we very much welcome, but there is still a concern that the wider public sector will not necessarily develop challenging plans to integrate sustainability into procurement. We plan to review that over the next year.

The fifth challenge—the big one—was on the sustainability of the economy generally. There is evidence that the Government is seeking to engage in discussion on that. Our economics commissioner, Tim Jackson, who prepared our "Prosperity without growth?" report, spoke to Government officials last week and engaged in debate on that. Clearly, it is a major challenge to alter our economy from its current course, but the issue certainly needs to be explored further by Government.

We now have the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, which meets our challenge that the Government should put in place ambitious and challenging legislation to tackle climate change. The Government and the Parliament collectively have achieved that. However, a major challenge will be to move to policies that deliver on the aspirations of the act. I am not sure that, taken as a totality, individual decisions that have been made so far can be reconciled with those aspirations. Clearly, it will take some time to move forward on that issue, which also involves other players such as local authorities.

The problem in relation to fuel poverty is not the aspirations in the framework, but the resources that have been allocated to it.

As far as the wider economic issues go, we are seeing the first steps towards looking at clean technology and encouraging marine energy through some of the green new deal or green growth-type arguments. The bigger question about whether a growth-based economy is sustainable in the long term is a discussion that is not really taking place within Government.

Is the concept of sustainable economic growth still open to the same questions? Is the meaning of the phrase still not clear, even though an explanation has been sought for several years in a row?

It is a general phrase. We can ask 10 economists what “sustainable economic growth” means and get 11 answers. Note the question mark in the title of the report "Prosperity without growth?" by our economics commissioner, Tim Jackson, in which he explores how growth-based economics has not delivered the social or environmental outcomes that we seek. The report was intended to start a debate about whether a growth-based approach is the best way forward and what the alternatives are. Tim Jackson is following up on that work and will report in the next year or so with more positive suggestions for a way forward.

All Governments face a degree of inertia. The attitude is, “This is how we’ve always done things,” so people continue to do things in the same way or edge forward with small, incremental changes. The challenge of climate change is such that we need much more than small, incremental changes; we need substantive changes very quickly. That is part of the problem.

Another issue is the silo mentality in Government. The Government tried to address that by reforming how the Cabinet and civil service work. Proper cross-departmental, cross-portfolio working might be working better in some areas than it is in others.

Another challenge is that a large percentage of the public still support many policies, for example in transport, that do not conform to the aspiration to cut carbon emissions by 42 per cent. There is a real job to do of engagement and discussion with the wider public on alternatives that will deliver the same outcomes but not necessarily in the conventional ways that are currently being explored.

Do we also need a process of engagement with the wider political landscape and all the organisations that try to influence policy? In my generous moments I might concede that it would be difficult for Government unilaterally to do some of the things that you call for. Do we need the kind of process that led to consensus on the intent of the climate change legislation?

Yes. I think that that is the logical next step from the 2009 act. The 2009 act poses significant challenges to our current ways of doing things. It will lead to outcomes that are better for everyone concerned and there will be wins all around, but it will also involve decisions that are not politically popular in the current climate. There was a lot of positive cross-party working around the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill and it would be great if that continued and wider civic society was engaged positively in establishing a new consensus on the way forward.

As I said in response to Mr Harvie, in each assessment we review the recommendations that we made in the previous one and report against them on what the Government has done and on what the commission said that it would do. You will see from the third assessment that the Government has responded to a number of our recommendations, although certainly not to all of them. There is a mixed picture.

14:15

In the section of your report that deals with the “Wealthier and Fairer” objective, you say that all capital expenditure and investment that is supported by the economic recovery plan and the Scottish investment bank should be based on the principles of sustainable development. Can you provide the committee with more details of your discussions with the Government on that issue and indicate whether it is minded to implement your recommendation?

So it is too early for you to comment on the issue.

You mention the work that you think should be done with VisitScotland, for example, on sustainable tourism. Is that matter at too early a stage for you to comment on it in detail? There is still a lot of work to be done on it, but you have raised it as a key issue for the coming year.

We are in the process of drafting the report and hope that it will be published before the summer. We have engaged with the Scottish Government on the hierarchy, and it has been open to discussion about the suggestion, in which it is interested. The main issue is that the hierarchy is problematic in terms of public acceptability, because demand reduction is at the top. The Government accepts the principle of a sustainable transport hierarchy but has some difficulties with it and wants our advice on how it can best and most acceptably be taken on board.

We have not had direct engagement on either of those projects. Generally, our comments are directed towards the broad thrust of policy, rather than individual schemes.

Have you sought engagement and been refused, or is it just not an issue? As one organisation you can cover only so much, so is that where you have to limit what you do?

We are a small team. The position paper on sustainable transport, on which Sasha Trifkovic is leading, is a critique of current policy. That is the level at which we would like to work. We want to focus on framing future Government transport strategy. As I said, individual schemes will make it more difficult for Government to meet carbon targets, but we would rather focus on the general principles, and issues such as the hierarchy of transport, which Sasha Trifkovic mentioned.

Have the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland in particular been fully engaged with and supportive of that project. Are you getting the information that you require to carry out the analysis?

We will be happy to do so.

As happens with money, we want carbon to be costed on a whole-life basis and not just for the construction.

It probably cannot be done perfectly. Evidence might still be required here and there, but it would definitely be possible to get an estimate.

That echoes the theme in your report of the need for a more holistic approach. What more can the SDC do to assist that kind of cerebral activity around the issue? You have recommended that we need

“further progress on integrating health with wider policy especially in relation to transport/active travel”

but that will clearly need support. Can you offer that?

Local authorities will tell you that they believe in sustainable development principles, have signed various charters and so on. What practical support can you provide to help them to move forward in this matter?

Is it an attainable goal for principles from the Scottish sustainable communities initiative to be standard practice in all planning decisions?

The engagement is a Government process. The Government is developing a public duty as required by the 2009 act. Consultation is coming out on that, and we are helping to advise the Government on the consultation process and methods.

You have highlighted behaviour change as a key delivery mechanism for the requirements of the 2009 act. What should an engagement strategy contain, and how should it work in practice?

I envisage our reports as a contribution to the overall scrutiny of Government—that is the intention. We can identify good performance, areas of concern and good practice that we think the Scottish Government would do well to adopt. There are different facets to what we do, but scrutiny is part of the process.

Yes. As I said, we have been in discussion with the Scottish Government on that. There are two aspects of what we do in Whitehall, one of which is SOGE—there are different pronunciations of the acronym, but the Government prefers something that sounds better than “soggy”—

Sustainable operations on the Government estate—SOGE. The SOGE framework in Whitehall involves environmental targets—the Scottish Government has equivalent targets. There are many mandated mechanisms, for example to ensure that the Building Research Establishment environmental assessment method—BREEAM—is included in what the Government does. There is also the procurement aspect. The Scottish Government does environmental reporting, but we want the framework to be broadened, in the first instance to include something equivalent to mandated mechanisms and to include wider work on procurement. In future the Government could also develop better corporate citizenship in relation to how it manages its estate in the context of economic and social performance—such an approach would go beyond the environmental aspects.

The second aspect of what we do in Whitehall is the sustainable development in Government—SDIG—process, which is the appraisal of performance under SOGE.

We are interested in both aspects and we undertake both functions for the UK Government and the Welsh Assembly Government. We are discussing with the Scottish Government whether it would be appropriate to develop a similar approach here.

I have a few additional questions on energy. The “Climate Change and Energy” section of your report touches on energy efficiency and a renewable heat action plan, and mentions the forthcoming position paper on coal, which might say something further about carbon capture and storage and whether we should be approving new coal-fired power stations before CCS is available. The position paper might also say something about the expansion of opencast extraction and its social, health and community impact.

However, there is less on the wider issues of energy generation and the Scottish Government’s role in determining questions around grid infrastructure and use of the planning system in relation to wind power. There are also issues around the balance between large and small renewable generation, decentralised energy and community ownership, which would have additional benefits for social justice, community empowerment and economic considerations, as it would help to cushion people against rising energy prices. Is there scope for the SDC to address more of those questions?

There are no final questions for the panel. Do you wish to say anything that has not come up in our questions?

No—that is fine.

Yes, although I would not frame it in quite that way. I appreciate that ministers are very busy people, with whom many other people seek meetings. When we have sought meetings with them, we have always found them responsive.

How does the commission measure its success in supporting the creation of a sustainable economy, society and ecological base?

Item 2 on the agenda is an evidence session with the Sustainable Development Commission Scotland. I welcome Phil Matthews, senior policy adviser, and Sasha Trifkovic, policy officer.

Members have a number of questions about the commission's third assessment report, but before we begin them, I offer the witnesses the chance to make some brief opening remarks.

In a previous evidence session, the commission told us that, as an independent adviser to Government,

“We have good access to cabinet secretaries, so we can provide information to Cabinet when we need to do so.”—[Official Report, Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee, 5 May 2009; c 1708.]

I want to explore that a little further. Is the commission fully engaged in the policy and decision-making process on an on-going basis, or is its opinion sought by the Government on an ad hoc basis?

As members will know, our assessment reports are our core task every year, although we are also engaged in all sorts of other work. In our assessment reports, we provide a series of recommendations and we outline what we intend to do over the coming year. In the appendix to an assessment report, we review whether we have done what we said last year that we would do, and whether the recommendations that we made to the Government last year have been implemented. Our reports are in the public domain, so it should be open to others to see whether we achieved those aims.

We are, however, just one of many bodies involved in such discussions, so it is hard to identify and track how our engagement has led to changes in the performance of Government policy. As part of our work on planning this year, we had very positive direct engagement on the revised Scottish planning policies and we feel that the text on sustainable development in the new draft SPPs is directly linked to some of our discussions with the officials involved.

Would it be fair to say that each of those five challenges could be set with the same emphasis this year as when the commission published last year's report?

What are the barriers to more progress? Why has there not been more creative thinking about the long term? Why has there not been policy change on the transport decisions that you criticised in your report? Why has greater priority not been given to cutting emissions in the housing and energy sectors and so on? Why have things not moved forward, when it seems so clear that questions need to be answered?

In December, the Sustainable Development Commission Scotland published its third annual assessment of progress by the Scottish Government. Is there evidence that the Scottish Government has considered and acted upon the previous two assessments?

I am trying to think of specific examples. There are fundamental points about the economy and areas in which we have pushed for change. Those are possibly the bigger and more difficult issues and there has been less acceptance of our recommendations on them. There has been more acceptance of specific actions that we thought that the Government could take on health and the development of better internal performance, for example. There is a mixed picture. The report is broad and covers many areas.

The commission reports that many of the key indicators of a sustainable society are moving in the wrong direction and that, although the Scottish Government’s aspirations and framework for action are going in the right direction, that is not yet mirrored by action. That is basically what you have said. Given that there is no significantly positive trend in any one of the indicators that are reflected in the assessment, where are we on the journey towards a sustainable Scotland?

I am not sure that there is no significantly positive trend in any of the indicators—we are moving quite fast on renewable energy, for example, and on elements of waste management—but the picture is mixed.

We always focus on outcomes for society. Our recommendations are aimed at policy changes that will, we hope, achieve those outcomes. That is the next step down.

There are major areas of concern with respect to outcomes—the two biggest are health and transport, which we have already touched on. There are still huge challenges in health in tackling obesity, smoking, drinking and wider divisions in healthy living between more affluent and poorer communities in Scotland. There are big and difficult challenges for the Government that will require joined-up thinking. Action on health is not just about action by the national health service; it is also about action on housing, planning and diets. We would like to see a further move towards integrated policy making. That is the only way in which we will start to turn around our negative outcomes and trends.

Basically, you are up against the inertia of Government.

Your assessment report draws on a stakeholder survey that was carried out to gauge opinion on sustainable development progress. One of the commission’s conclusions is that respondents were concerned that the Scottish Government was focusing too heavily on economic growth to the detriment of social and environmental factors.

What were the main conclusions of the stakeholder survey?

We have had no direct discussions with the Government on the issue. As I said, we will meet Mr Swinney in early March; that will be our opportunity to raise the issue. Our engagement to date, since the report was published in December, has been largely with civil servants and has not addressed the specific issue that you raise.

Does the same apply to another part of the section, in which you say that businesses in receipt of support from the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise or Highlands and Islands Enterprise should have a carbon reduction plan? Will that issue be raised in the same meeting with Mr Swinney, or have you had initial discussions on it with the cabinet secretary, Scottish Enterprise or Highlands and Islands Enterprise?

It seems that the Government is not closed to the recommendation, as you have received no negative feedback yet.

The assessment report is both backward looking and forward looking. We review the previous year. A lot is happening, but we identify the key developments with which we would like to engage and seek to do that in the year following the report’s publication. We have not yet had a conversation about the issue that you raise.

Earlier we talked about the need for cross-party and civic Scotland involvement in pushing the rest of society towards difficult decisions. How is that progressing? Is the political system living up to the legislation that we passed? Is civic Scotland still engaged? How can we best deliver such decisions, now that we have delivered the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009?

Phil Matthews: Are you asking specifically about transport?

Have you been asked for advice on, or are you involved in, any of the major construction projects that will be happening soon, such as the Aberdeen bypass and the new Forth crossing?

Will you write to the committee when that report is completed, so that we can review it?

I have a supplementary question on transport. Your assessment report mentions the carbon assessment of the Scottish budget, which was conducted for the first time in relation to the budget that the Parliament has just agreed. Have you expressed a view on the Government’s decision to treat transport emissions as those arising only from the construction of infrastructure and not from its use? Is that a fair representation of the carbon impact of transport spending decisions?

The same method is used for the carbon appraisal of the strategic transport projects review. The majority of carbon emissions come from the use of new roads, rather than their construction. I saw a presentation about the new Forth crossing, at which it was clear that efforts have been made to minimise the carbon that is involved in the construction, which is welcome. However, the overall long-term impact of the road must be the focus.

There are a variety of reasons. Young people are fairly receptive to the ideas and the agenda. Education is a closed and defined community, so it is easy to target and engage. The people are located in one place—in schools or universities. That is why community learning is the most problematic, because it does not happen in one place. For historical reasons and because of the attributes of education, it has been slightly easier to make progress.

We will have to wait and see. As we say in the report, we want the implementation of curriculum for excellence to be adequately resourced, and the Scottish Government must emphasise its proper embedding in Scotland’s schools to ensure that it carries through into further and higher education. However, although education is important, ultimately it is by no means the only source of society’s values.

The sustainable transport paper that we are developing considers exactly those issues. Although we are now examining the carbon as well as the economic impacts of transport, we have not yet appraised the wider health benefits of active travel. The Government’s transport carbon assessment, for example, is looking at the cost effectiveness of various measures. Of course, on that scale, walking comes at one end and cycling at the other but once we factor in wider sustainability objectives around health, for example, both modes become very desirable. We would very much like to create more understanding in that respect.

I was interested to note in the “Safer and Stronger” chapter your comment that

“planning decisions are not always delivering sustainable and low carbon communities.”

Such decisions are based on local plans, and it takes a long time to turn them around. As a result, a lag might well have developed. Will the new suite of plans from local authorities stop that move away from sustainable development and turn things back in that direction?

As a small team, our focus is very much on the Scottish Government which, with the concordat, has a particular relationship with local authorities. However, other bodies such as the sustainable Scotland network already work on sustainability issues with local government. Although our attention is focused on national Government, the debate is so important that we are interested in engaging with local authorities on that general approach.

So you are getting ready for the engagement, but it has not actually started yet.

So there is going to be consultation about engaging on the public duty.

Developing the public duty is not our responsibility; it is in the gift of the Government, as required by the 2009 act. Our role is to encourage a process that is inclusive and effective in developing a duty that mandates local authorities and other public bodies to deliver much lower carbon outcomes.

I do not quite understand your question. I am not sure what role we would take other than to advise Government on something that it is required to do.

So you would not do any hands-on engagement but instead advise the Government on elements of that engagement.

Again, we have had some initial discussions on that. To me, behaviour change has many different facets. Too often, Government can approach behaviour change with the idea that, if it gives the public a lot of information, the public will think that something is a good idea and change their behaviour because of it. There is nothing wrong with that—it is part of the process—but there has to be more than that.

There has to be much more active engagement both in specific projects, such as alternatives to new road projects, and more generally. There have to be fiscal incentives, education at every level, engagement with communities and things such as the climate challenge fund. The challenge is to develop a coherent approach, which helps to build up wider public support, so that support for lower-carbon communities becomes a consensus position.

I will not pretend that every decision that the Government must make on climate change will have positive outcomes for everyone. However, as I said in response to an earlier question, more sustainable communities are better all round for people. The heart of the message must be positive, although people must also recognise that difficult issues must be explored, for example to do with how we do things fairly, how we include people and how we make people feel that their voice is being listened to. It is a complex issue, which has many different strands.

Emissions from Scottish Government buildings and transport went up in 2007-08, which is the most recent year for which there are figures. That is not good. The Government is meant to be leading by example and it must do that by cutting its own carbon emissions.

The data are such that a comparison with other Administrations’ performance is problematic. However, there are aspects of the Whitehall estate in relation to which we have a more active role in appraising performance. Some Government departments down south are doing better than the Scottish Government is doing; some are doing less well.

We are keen to develop the framework within which the Scottish Government develops its approach, to make it more robust and open to scrutiny. Yesterday I had a discussion with Scottish Government officials about whether the commission can adopt a role that is similar to our role as an auditor of Government in Whitehall and the Welsh Assembly Government.

How has the Scottish Government reacted to your aspiration to have more power?

14:45