Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Report)
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group II report, what action it will take to meet the challenge of uncontrolled climate change. (S4T-00658)
The Scottish Government is committed to showing leadership on that global challenge through making a decisive move to reduce Scotland’s production of greenhouse gas emissions by 42 per cent by 2020, articulating a progressive case for all nations to heed the evidence presented in the IPCC’s fifth assessment report and to redouble international efforts to contain global surface temperature increases to 2°C.
Last June, our second climate change report on proposals and policies—RPP2—set out an approach to meeting Scotland’s stretching annual statutory emissions reduction targets for the period to 2027. By 2011, Scotland was already more than halfway to meeting our 2020 greenhouse gas emission target. Indeed, only last week, the United Kingdom Committee on Climate Change published its third Scottish progress report, which highlighted the good progress that we are making, with almost a 10 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions between 2010 and 2011. It praised Scotland’s efforts across a number of sectors, including energy. Only last week, it was revealed that, in 2013, 46 per cent of Scotland’s electricity demand was met by renewables.
We are developing Scotland’s first statutory climate change adaptation programme and firmly embedding climate change adaptation through the development of a robust evidence base, including research that has been commissioned from ClimateXChange; through the development of adaptive capacity through supporting Adaptation Scotland to build climate resilience among organisations and communities; and through policy-specific actions, including the announcement last Friday of £38.5 million of funding towards the cost of two major new flood protection schemes, in Brechin and Selkirk, and £0.5 million of additional support for Dumfries and Galloway Council. In the eight years from 2007-08 to 2014-15, we will have provided £326.4 million of capital funding for flood protection, which is more than seven times as much as was paid out under the old prevention grant scheme in the eight years up to 2006-07.
I thank the minister for that detailed answer, which looked at some of the things that we have to do.
Should we play to our strengths in the fight against aggressive climate change? Surely the key is to persuade the UK Government to act with all speed to ensure that clean power from Scotland’s coasts and islands gets appropriate levels of development support and access to the grid to help to decarbonise the Scottish and UK energy markets and thereby combat fuel poverty.
Rob Gibson raises an important issue. Scottish islands renewables represent a massive opportunity for sustainable economic growth in Scotland, with the potential to meet up to 5 per cent of the electricity demand in Great Britain by 2030. They create many opportunities for a very large number of jobs across the Western Isles, Shetland and Orkney in particular.
The Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism, Mr Ewing, met Ed Davey last week to urge the UK Government to give prospective developers certainty on the level and availability of support, which is a key requirement for the development of vital network upgrades. The UK Government has agreed to our proposal for a delivery forum, which will try to ensure that the successful deployment of our island renewables is undertaken and will investigate what can be done to increase certainty for developers. It is vital that those issues are progressed very quickly.
As the minister says, the Scottish Government champions climate justice and recognises that, although we face increasingly severe weather at home, developing countries are at the greatest risk from current and future impacts of climate change. Which Scottish Government policies can ensure that those with the least means at home and abroad can be protected from the growing risks of climate change?
In my initial answer, I mentioned the work that we are doing through Adaptation Scotland, which is vital to ensuring that we build resilience among organisations and communities at a local level. The climate challenge fund was adapted in November 2012 to broaden and deepen it.
We are specifically targeting a greater proportion of our effort at those in the Scottish index of multiple deprivation groupings that are the bottom 15 per cent of the population. We have had some success in providing development grants to enable people to build up a case. It is clear that, in many communities, there is not the capacity to put together a strong bid for funds, such as from the climate challenge fund. Development grants will help those communities to develop good projects that are more likely to succeed and encourage them to take up such offers.
The IPCC report follows the Committee on Climate Change report of last week, which highlighted that, under current plans, it will be difficult to achieve our world-leading emission targets. Given that we have already missed our first two emissions targets, which makes the job ahead much more difficult, does the minister agree with the UK report that the only options that are open to the Scottish Government are to adjust the targets or to find
“additional opportunities to reduce emissions that go beyond current and proposed policies”?
Given that, is the minister confident that we will meet the 2012 emissions target?
I am confident that we are on track to achieve our 2020 target. The Committee on Climate Change has stressed that the underlying performance of the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government and Scottish society in achieving our 2020 target is to be praised. Indeed, it pointed out that we are doing a lot more than the UK Government is.
I will read out one quote from the committee’s report, which is very important. On the 2011 target, the report says:
“It is important to note that the difference between estimated emissions and the target is less than the impact of the inventory revision. It can therefore be argued that the target was missed mainly because of the inventory revision.”
As I am sure that Claire Baker is well aware, there are statistical changes in how the inventory is calculated and that has had an impact on 2011. To be fair, that would not have made a difference in 2010 and we would have missed the target anyway. However, we need to have a mature debate—I think that we can have such a mature discussion—about how we calculate the figures and get clarity on what we are doing, where policy is making a difference and, in the absence of policy, where trends would be moving in any case.
I agree with the Committee on Climate Change that we need to step up our efforts not only in the UK and Scotland but globally, because the targets are challenging and we must work together to achieve them.
The minister acknowledges that we are yet to meet a single annual climate target, and yet the Scottish assessment report to which he referred demonstrates that international aviation and shipping is the one sector that is most conspicuously failing to make a contribution to reducing our emissions. In light of that, why has it been 18 months since the First Minister agreed in the chamber to conduct a carbon assessment of the Government’s flagship policy of cutting or scrapping air passenger duty? When will that happen? Why do we have to wait so long?
I am aware that Mr Harvie does not agree with the APD proposals. I am prepared to send him the figure that I have seen, which is an internal assessment based on the UK’s figures of the estimated impact of APD. I think that the impact of antisocial behaviourolishing air passenger duty in Scotland would be 0.05 megatonnes, but I will check that figure before confirming that in writing to Mr Harvie.
As we include international aviation and shipping in our targets, if either sector grows its emissions we as a society have to take it on the chin that we must bring down emissions elsewhere. We have to live within our 42 per cent target. We must also bear it in mind that we do not have sectoral targets in RPP2, as I am sure that Mr Harvie knows, so if one area goes up the rest of the economy must bear the burden. Therefore, we have to take a conscious decision as a society that, if air traffic grows, the rest of the economy must absorb that.
Nursing Vacancies (ISD Scotland Report)
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the report by ISD Scotland into nursing vacancies. (S4T-00657)
It is vital that we have the right number of staff in the right place at the right time to deliver the best possible patient care. Individual national health service boards are responsible for planning for NHS Scotland’s workforce in accordance with that aim. ISD Scotland reports NHS workforce statistics quarterly. The most recent statistics, which are for the period ending 31 December 2013, were published on 25 February 2014 by ISD Scotland and show the nursing vacancy rate running at 2.5 per cent. That is a relatively low vacancy rate, which allows NHS boards positive and flexible opportunities to help develop new roles and skill sets for NHS Scotland’s nursing workforce.
I probably should not be surprised by the cabinet secretary’s attempt to minimise the extent of the problem. I am sure that he will be aware of the Auditor General for Scotland’s link between increasing vacancy rates and the Government’s problems in meeting its waiting time targets.
I remind the cabinet secretary of a comment that the Royal College of Nursing made in 2010:
“we’re determined that Government and health boards understand that they cannot continue to cut the numbers of nurses being trained, year on year.”
In 2012, it said:
“the RCN will not be in a position of agreeing to a cut in student nurse numbers now, which in three to four years time will mean that there are not enough professionally qualified nurses to provide safe quality care for patients.”
In 2007, the number of nurses in training was 3,362; last year, the number was 2,713. Does the cabinet secretary accept responsibility for the vacancy rate increase and does he accept that that is directly linked to the numbers in training?
We are increasing the number of nurses in training. Since 2007, we have both reduced the vacancy rate and, at the same time, substantially reduced waiting times and lists. The vacancy rate that we inherited in 2007 was 3.5 per cent, which equates to more than 2,000 posts. Today, the vacancy rate is 2.5 per cent, which is equivalent to 1,500 posts. That is a reduction both in the rate and in the number of vacancies, against a background of an increase of 1,500 in the total number of nurses in the system. By any standard, we are doing far, far better than our predecessors—which would not be difficult.
I remind the cabinet secretary of the figures that his department produced. In 2007, 3,362 nurses were in training; the number had fallen to 3,060 by 2010-11 and it fell to 2,430 in 2012-13. The fact that the cabinet secretary slightly increased the number—by 4 per cent—last year and slightly increased it this year does not make up for the fact that the number fell year on year. It takes three years to train a nurse. Does the cabinet secretary accept that the current problem is caused by his lack of recruitment?
I think that the member has the wrong numbers. I have figures for student nurses and midwives, and the latest statistics from ISD show that 10,189 are in training. That is higher than the number in any year of the previous Administration and represents a 6.6 per cent increase in student intake in academic year 2013-14, which builds on a 4 per cent increase in the year before. The underlying figures on which the member is basing his proposition must be deeply flawed.
Will the cabinet secretary say what the Scottish Government is doing to ensure that NHS Scotland is an attractive place to work for nurses?
We are doing a range of things. For example, we have given nurses the pay award that the independent NHS pay review body recommended. Therefore, from May this year the average nurse in Scotland will be £238 a year better off than his or her counterpart south of the border.
Down south there is a two-year agreement, but in Scotland we have kept to the promise to review pay rates independently again next year. We have also provided for the guaranteed year after graduation, and we are increasing student numbers and the number of nurses. We are doing everything that we can do to make nursing a worthwhile profession in Scotland, to increase the numbers and to ensure that nurses in Scotland are properly treated and their awards properly negotiated.
When nursing awards have been independently reported on, we have implemented the recommendations. There has not been a word of criticism from the Labour benches about the Tory refusal, south of the border, to implement pay increases for nurses.
We are concerned here about Scotland, not England; our services in Scotland are radically different.
How can the cabinet secretary justify his grand-old-Duke-of-York approach to workforce planning? He cut the nursing student intake in two successive years and then increased it. Some 180 new midwifery students were being recruited; the cabinet secretary cut the number to 100 and it is now back up to 160. He cut 2,500 nursing posts, but the cut is now back down to 500 posts. He leads us up the hill and then leads us back down it.
Will the cabinet secretary do the same thing with health visitors? He will need 175 new health visitors for his family nurse partnership programme, which we entirely support, and the RCN estimates that he will need 450 for the named person programme. However, he is allowing a recruitment programme to continue at health board level that is not adequate even to replace those who are retiring, as we learned from our freedom of information request.
I am amazed that a member of the better together campaign does not care about nurses south of the border. I certainly care about nurses south of the border and about the fact that they will be £238 a year worse off than they would have been had the recommendation of the independent pay review body been implemented.
The member referred to the grand old Duke of York, who marched 10,000 men up the hill. I have 10,000 student trainee nurses who are marching into the national health service—a record unsurpassed by any previous Administration.
As the member knows, we have the innovative nursing workforce planning tool to ensure that we have the right number of nurses, with the right skill set, in the right place at the right time. That is why we have 1,500 more nurses in the national health service than there were when we came to power. The national health service is safe in our hands. It certainly would not be safe in Andy Burnham’s hands.
Will the cabinet secretary give us figures for regional variation in Scotland? Is there a problem in Grampian? Does he have plans to deal with any deficiency?
There are 304 vacancies in Grampian today, although the number of nurses there has substantially increased, as elsewhere. If the member would like a regional comparison, I am happy to send him the information.
Independence (Currency Union)
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on reported comments by a United Kingdom Government minister that an independent Scotland could have a currency union with the rest of the UK. (S4T-00661)
The fiscal commission working group set out the clear economic case for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom to retain sterling in a formal currency union. The admission from a UK Government minister
“at the heart of the pro-union campaign”
that
“Of course there would be a currency union”
in the event of a yes vote demolishes one of the key arguments that the campaign against independence has made.
A recent YouGov poll showed that the Scottish people do not believe Osborne, Alexander and Balls on the currency. Does this recent admission not demonstrate that people are right not to believe them? It is now abundantly clear that a currency union is in the interests of not only an independent Scotland but the rest of the UK.
Mr Hepburn makes a fair point of analysis. Opinion polls have clearly indicated that people in Scotland do not believe the bluff that we have heard from United Kingdom Government ministers and their allies in the Labour Party. What further demolishes that argument is the revelation at the weekend that the private chit-chat in the UK Government is that
“Of course there would be a currency union”.
That helps to make it absolutely clear for people in Scotland that the UK ministers who tried to scaremonger on the question have been found seriously wanting in how they set out their arguments to the people of Scotland.
Does the cabinet secretary agree that the contrast between what is said in public and what UK ministers know to be the case in private shows a welcome acknowledgement of reality by the UK Government—[Interruption.]
Order. Let us hear Mr Hepburn.
Does the cabinet secretary agree that UK ministers should stop bluffing and instead be open to negotiation with the Scottish Government?
I hope that Mr Swinney caught that; I did not.
Mr Hepburn makes a helpful suggestion—that the UK Government should embark on sensible negotiation rather than the foghorn diplomacy that we have heard from it in recent weeks and months on the subject.
There is not a lot about an unnamed source offering to deal with the Scottish Government for a price that the Scottish Government has claimed it is unwilling to pay that gives us more certainty about currency arrangements in the event of Scotland leaving the UK. Will Mr Swinney remind us why the Scottish National Party believes passionately that interest rates and spending limits being set in London without any Scottish representation there represents a good deal for Scotland? Why does one unnamed source in London give Mr Swinney such confidence when many named sources in the yes campaign are arguing as strongly against a eurozone-style currency union as anyone in the UK Government is?
Nobody on the yes side of the argument who speaks on the Scottish Government’s behalf is making a eurozone type of proposal. We put forward a currency union that is in the interests of Scotland as an independent country and the rest of the United Kingdom. If Mr Smith wants to be reminded of the arguments for that, they are that, if UK ministers refused a currency union, they would have to inflict on businesses south of the border £500 million of transaction costs and they would not have the benefit of the contribution to the balance of payments of Scottish oil and gas or the proceeds of Scotland’s key industries, which contribute to sterling’s strength.
The fiscal commission set out strong and robust arguments for establishing a currency union as part of the arrangements in the aftermath of a yes vote. The admission at the weekend from influential sources in the UK Government indicates exactly why that position will prevail after a yes vote in the referendum.
Does the cabinet secretary agree with everything that the unnamed minister said in the article in The Guardian?
I do not—for the simple reason that I came into politics with the objective of getting Trident and nuclear missiles out of Scottish waters. I have every intention of ensuring that that is exactly what happens with a yes vote in the referendum.
One of the reasons why a currency union would be bad for both Scotland and the rest of the UK is the uncertainty about its duration, which international markets would exploit. The white paper says that the currency might change after a period. Indeed, the Scottish Government indicated in February that it had received advice on the duration of a currency union from the fiscal commission. What was that advice?
The advice that we received is the advice that is contained in the fiscal commission’s report. I do not think that there has been any secrecy about that. That is the comprehensive advice that we have received on the question of the proposed currency union.
I return to what I said to Drew Smith. The reason why there should be a currency union after independence is that it makes sense and is in the economic interests of both Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom that we enable it to prevail. I understand why Mr McArthur is not very happy about the situation. It must have been an awfully unpleasant weekend in Aberdeen while all this was brewing. Once the Liberals settle down after their difficult weekend, they will realise that a currency union is in the interests of both Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom and will support the Government’s position.
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