Chamber and committees

Yes. I think that the phrase that I used in my opening remarks was that it was scheduled for elimination, but I will let Dan Merckel give us a brief update on that in the context of perfluorinated and polyfluorinated substances, or PFAS.

I might come to my colleague Phil Raines to say something about the monitoring report and the comparison with the CCC report.

I welcome the CCC’s guidance throughout, including the paper that it published in December last year on our progress on mitigation. I published my response to that last week when I made the statement on emissions reduction for 2021. We accepted 98 of the 99 recommendations, the last one being entirely reserved and not in our gift.

Things have moved on somewhat between the CCC’s report in December and where we are now. We have done a number of things; for example, my colleague Mairi Gougeon has made progress on the vision for agriculture, the decarbonisation of food production and the move to regenerative farming. That means that we have moved on from where we were when the CCC first published its report.

In our policy prospectus, we have upped our commitment to peatland restoration in the near term. We are also taking forward work on the route map to reduce car kilometres by 20 per cent.

I accept what the CCC said in December but, when we compare that with where we are now, we can see that there has been movement in what the Government has taken forward. Does Phil Raines want to add anything?

Dan Merckel might want to say something about the interaction with the UK Government and the MOD. What makes answering that difficult is that we are limited in the information that we can give regarding the specific use of the chemical. It is for a defence-critical capability. It is small and critical and the chemical is used and disposed of by professionals, so it pertains to that specific use, the exact details of which we are not liable to share.

The other critical point is that the current scientific research suggests that only that substance provides the high level of protection that is required for that unique capability, which is why that exemption is required in that instance. There might be nothing to add on the MOD aspect.

That is the plan, yes.

Absolutely. We share Environmental Standards Scotland’s concerns about it all. ESS has put it better than I could.

Yes, that last point is critical. The team believed that the approach that was taken, which was to consult deeply right at the beginning of the process, was the right way to do things so that we would be at the drawing board and could bring people to it with us. However, I absolutely accept that many people, in particular those who felt that they would be impacted by the proposals, did not feel that that was the right approach for them.

You mentioned the meetings. We had around 20 meetings prior to the publication of the plans, and we also held around 20 meetings during the consultation period in order to ensure that people could be taken through and could take part in the process, because that was really important to me.

Since the consultation closed, Mairi Gougeon and I have been meeting with stakeholders. She met with stakeholders in Shetland; I had a meeting with fisherpeople in Troon and with the Community of Arran Seabed Trust in Arran. I have met with Western Isles Council and with the Communities Inshore Fisheries Alliance, and I have plans over the summer to visit the Uists and—I hope—Orkney, although those are not yet finalised.

I think that it is confirmed—I do not want to pre-empt any decision of the Parliamentary Bureau—that I am due to give a statement this week on next steps on the protected marine areas. That being the case, I would not want to pre-empt any of what I say, but I note that I will be reflecting a little bit on some of the early consultation responses and giving my view on where we go from here on exactly the point that you mentioned: meaningful engagement.

Of course. The extent to which we are not meeting our Government targets is a concern for me wherever it occurs. However, I have great confidence in the forestry industry. I flag up that it is not in my portfolio any more, so I am freewheeling in Ms Gougeon’s portfolio, which I ought not to do. Having had the role previously, however, I note that the forestry industry in Scotland is exceptionally well established. It brings £1 billion into the economy, it employs 25,000 people and it is doing exceptionally well. People around the world often ask us how they can mirror what our forestry industry has done.

We are pushing the industry with targets that are really stretching, but headwinds including Brexit, storm Arwen and a contraction in the availability of labour following EU exit have created difficulties in recent years. I want us to meet the annual targets for tree planting because that is essential to net zero. I have great confidence that the forestry industry in Scotland will face the headwinds, come through them and reach the very stretching targets.

We should clarify, convener, that forestry is not in this portfolio.

It comes back to the question of the public sector’s role in giving confidence to the market. We made an intervention early and we have been successful with it. It is only right that we now assess whether public funding should continue at the same level or whether the market is developing sufficiently. Alison Irvine’s point—which relates to yours, convener—is that some areas of the market might not drive the required change. That is where public funding can come back in.

We have done very well to date, but we need more charging points. It is worth pointing out that the current charging network is owned through a mixture of private and public investment.

In relation to all aspects of our journey to net zero, I expect there to be changes and developments in the way in which we account for emissions, particularly in the natural world. You are absolutely right to highlight blue carbon. It is often said to me that our understanding of blue carbon is now at the stage that our understanding of peatland emissions was at five years ago. I expect advances in that regard, as well as advances in technology, so everything that we do has to be iterative.

I will round off my answer by saying that we are statutorily bound to seek the Climate Change Committee’s advice on such changes at least every five years. We will continue to follow the legislation in that regard, so I expect that there will be adjustments to be made as we move through our annual targets.