Chamber and committees

I have no relevant interests to declare, thank you.

Thank you for having me.

The Law Society and the academic lawyer, Yvonne Evans, have suggested that, in view of Scotland’s increasing emphasis on net zero goals, sections 16 and 17 could be amended in relation to trustees’ powers of investment. The bill could be amended to allow trusts to adopt environmentally friendly investment policies, particularly when those might underperform compared with other investments. Does the commission have a view on that suggested amendment?

Thank you very much.

If the member is suggesting a meeting to discuss how we can use public investment to generate wealth for the whole of society, I would be very happy to take that meeting.

In the private sector, tenants are repeatedly faced with landlords who are reluctant to make improvements to the quality of housing, despite continuing to charge excessively high rents. That leaves tenants bearing the costs of rising energy bills and living with damp and mouldy housing and the stress of choosing whether to heat or eat.

However, it is not just tenants who pay. The housing emergency impacts us all, and our cash-strapped local authorities are having to pay the private sector to house people in temporary accommodation for years at a time while they and the Scottish Government provide grants to pay private energy bills to try to prevent people having to leave their homes in the first place. We are looking at the widespread use of public funds to enrich the private sector, every penny of which could be better spent on upgrading and expanding our council housing stock.

As my colleague Mark Griffin has detailed, local authorities would benefit hugely from being able to provide more affordable council housing, and an industrial strategy for housing could see the creation of many well-paid, secure, unionised jobs to build and maintain the homes that we so desperately need.

Therefore, if the First Minister truly aims to deliver a green wellbeing economy that reduces poverty, that must start by ensuring that every person in Scotland has a warm and secure home that they can afford to live in. However, the current pace of retrofitting old housing stock and building new homes is not meeting Government targets or public demand, and local authorities are struggling to provide homelessness support while their resources are stretched so thinly. Therefore, the Government must work with councils, and, crucially, it must provide fair funding to fulfil these ambitions.

That is why Labour welcomes the Scottish Government’s move to increase council tax on second homes. However, the Government has had that power since April 2013, and it has taken a decade to decide to consult on that once again. It cannot be another decade before we actually see the measure implemented.

We are faced with an emergency in housing, the scale of which can be addressed only with a response of the same magnitude. That means a co-ordinated mass roll-out of council house buy-back, retrofitting and building. It is the only way to ensure that public money, which is our money, is spent on what people need most: warm, secure, affordable homes—not subsidised private profits for a select few.

Our housing system is broken. Record numbers of children are trapped in temporary accommodation, and the homelessness rate is rising. Not only is that damaging to the health and wellbeing of people who are experiencing those appalling conditions, but the knock-on effects are felt throughout our society, in our schools and workplaces and, of course, on our streets.

We know that education, employment and health outcomes are all linked to our fundamental need for homes that we can thrive in. As Ben Macpherson has said, that basic need is also our right. Because housing is devolved, there is no excuse for this Parliament not to act. The housing emergency that we face is entirely avoidable. What it needs is political will from the Government and the resources to tackle it.

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s report, “On the Move: Investing in public transport to meet carbon targets and create jobs” highlights how, through increased capital investment in public transport, the Scottish Government could create 22,000 jobs directly and 416,000 jobs indirectly. In the Scottish National Party leadership campaign, the now First Minister made it clear in his response to the pledge for rail campaign by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers that his Government would be committed to investment in our railway. Will the minister therefore once and for all rule out cuts to ScotRail ticket offices, which threaten rail jobs and services?

Let us see those consultations turned into action for workers.

In addition to the lack of urgency around protecting communities from economic collapse, the Government is consistently overpromising and underdelivering on climate change and biodiversity improvement measures. My colleague Sarah Boyack highlighted the UK Climate Change Committee’s concerns about Scotland failing to meet targets, especially in peatland restoration and protection, which the Government does not mention in its motion. Peatlands are an essential carbon sink, as well as sites of biodiversity, so I welcomed the First Minister’s promise on Tuesday to deliver 110,000 hectares of restored peatland. However, that is less than half of what the Government promised only two years ago, when it pledged a quarter of a billion pounds to restore 250,000 hectares by 2030.

That downgrading of the promise on peatlands has come after we found out in January that the Government had achieved in 2021-22 only 28 per cent of its annual goal of restoring 20,000 hectares. It also came after the Government inflated its own figures by 40 per cent, thereby underestimating its own shortcomings, until NatureScot corrected it. Peatlands should be offering substantial carbon capture, improved habitats for our native wildlife, resilience to extreme weather and vital green jobs; yet, according to the Government’s own figures, 80 per cent of our peatlands are damaged.

NatureScot has also shown that many of our native species still struggle as they face the combined effects of biodiversity loss and climate change. The average abundance of our 2,803 marine and terrestrial species is still well below historical figures, and species continue to be damaged by extreme weather, habitat loss and scarcity of food.

We all know that our natural environment is a complex ecosystem with interdependent parts. That means that there are significant knock-on effects of the Government’s failure to improve our native biodiversity, our habitats including peatlands, and our air and water quality. All that must be rapidly addressed to ensure that Scotland meets its ambitious targets on the climate and the environment.

It is positive that the Government’s Scottish biodiversity strategy, which was announced last year, promises to reverse biodiversity loss by 2045. That is an ambitious target that would, if it were met, have a significant effect across Scotland. However, given the Government’s consistent inability to keep its promises, it is hard to have confidence that biodiversity targets will not go the way of the peatland target—a great dream, but far from reality.

What we now need is not more promises but action—action to address the current and future challenges that are faced by our communities, our habitats and our climate.

Labour agrees with the Government on the urgency of the climate crisis as well as on the need to make sure that the transition to a net zero future is just. We will always work constructively across parties to achieve the change that Scotland needs. However, today’s self-congratulatory motion from the Government will not help us to meet our goals. It does not give clarity about the Government’s approach and it does not instil confidence that the SNP is the party to guide the country through the challenges ahead.

I urge all members to support the Labour amendment, which would strengthen Parliament’s commitment to urgent and whole-hearted tackling of climate change in order to ensure that all the communities of Scotland are brought with us in the transition.

The point is that environmental organisations have come up with very clear and tangible demands in consultation with workers. The Scottish Government likes to consult, but where is its substantive action?

In February this year, the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity claimed that there were 500 new jobs out for recruitment as part of the deposit return scheme, including 60 in Aberdeen, all of which would contribute to our just transition; and, in March, the minister announced that 664 businesses had registered with the scheme ahead of the August launch. Can the minister share what assessments the Scottish Government has made of the impact of the significant delay on those new jobs, and of the implications of the cost to those businesses and organisations that have already invested in changes to their operations as part of the scheme?