Chamber and committees

I will. I assume that the member will go back a bit.

I apologise, Presiding Officer.

It is our responsibility to legislate for the most vulnerable—those who are not empowered and who cannot seek out information on substances or the steps that might be best for them in their dire state of health. We are here to make responsible law, for once. As I said at stage 1—I make no apology for repeating it—one mistake in legislation such as this is one mistake too many.

The stark reality of the process of dying has been highlighted. Colleagues across the chamber have spoken candidly about the difference between the rhetoric of a so-called dignified death and the complex and often unpredictable reality of administering life-ending drugs. Ruth Maguire and Audrey Nicoll presented horrific and harrowing examples. Evidence from other jurisdictions shows that such deaths are not immediate, straightforward and without complication.

I have not been satisfied with what I have heard in response to such concerns. What would a health professional do when they were in someone’s home and something went wrong? Would they revive the individual or euthanise them? We have not been given satisfactory answers to such questions.

We have to ask serious questions about the role of the assisting physician. What would happen if things did not go as expected? What would happen if the process failed? What would doctors be permitted or required to do if something went wrong?

I will not, thank you, Ms Slater.

A six-month prognosis provision has been introduced, but there is no mechanism for solving the issue if that prognosis changes at the second declaration. Even that small, simple amendment throws up a huge number of issues about coercion, benefit, the involvement of professionals and what happens if another doctor’s opinion is different from that of the first. None of those situations are rare and none are unusual.

I lodged amendments 91 and 92 to try to tighten up just one small flaw. By doing that, we open up other issues. The second declaration should, and must, be an assessment to see whether anything has changed since the first declaration and it should, and must, be recorded properly.

The deadline to lodge amendments was quite some time before that agreement. However, I am simply outlining the complexity of the legislation and its ramifications. I am not doubting what the cabinet secretary has been doing or what other members have said. I am here to sum up—I am trying my best to summarise what the debate has been about in the past two or three hours on this group alone.

I do not think that it is good enough that we are being asked to approve legislation on the basis of a hope that everything will simply fall into place. That is not the best way to make law, is it? It is not good enough, and I personally think that it is wholly unacceptable.

As I said at stage 1—I make no apology for repeating this point—one mistake in legislation is one mistake too many.

Yes, I will.

Group 8 has brought into sharp focus some of the serious competence issues that remain in the bill. I will not dwell on that for too long, as Ross Greer gave a succinct outline of what could be done to resolve that a moment ago. Quite frankly, it has been unsatisfactory for the Parliament to find itself at stage 3 still debating and removing provisions that should have been properly addressed and scrutinised much earlier in the process. Using stage 3 to strip out elements of the bill that should have been addressed earlier is not how careful legislation should be made, particularly on a matter as grave and consequential as this. I can think of no issue that Parliament has debated in this session that carries greater moral weight or demands greater certainty than this. Yet, next Tuesday, MSPs will be asked to approve—

The debate has exposed a fundamental divide in the Parliament: on one side sits the left-wing Holyrood consensus that is determined to push ahead with arbitrary 2045 net zero targets regardless of the cost to families, businesses and Scotland’s vital oil and gas sector; and, on the other side, sit most of the Scottish Conservatives, who are clear that climate action must be credible, affordable and deliverable.

Let us start with the facts. The Scottish Government’s independent climate advisers, the Climate Change Committee, have been explicit about what meeting the 2045 target entails. By 2030, 35,000 heat pumps have to be installed every year and, by 2035, 60 per cent of cars and vans have to be electric. There also needs to be a reduction of 2 million in the number of cattle and sheep, a cut of a fifth in meat consumption—I think that I might have a ribeye tonight—and a nearly tenfold increase in land use for woodland. Those are not marginal adjustments. They are profound changes to how people heat their homes, travel to work, run their farms and feed their families.

However, the Government refuses to level with the public about the scale of the disruption that is involved or the bill that will come with it. The CCC estimates the net cost of reaching net zero at £750 million per year between 2025 and 2050, with costs peaking before benefits are realised. The Government’s draft climate change plan admits that the Scottish economy will be £6.1 billion worse off by 2030 and £4.8 billion down by 2040, even after projected savings. Those are massive numbers. Businesses alone face £8.5 billion in costs by 2040. Who will pay?

Consumers at home do not care much about 8 per cent of GDP when they face bills that will cripple their household incomes.

The cabinet secretary has still not answered the question that I asked: who will pay? Officials have admitted that they cannot predict whether the burden will fall on taxpayers, households or industry. That is not a plan. The Government is gambling with other people’s money.

Even Audit Scotland has warned that the costs lack transparency and that there is no clear breakdown of who pays, when they pay or how their investment will be funded. The Parliament has been asked to sign off a strategy without knowing the price tag—we have all seen that before. The Government’s previous target to cut emissions by 70 per cent by 2030 was abandoned after it became clear that that was not credible.

Now, we have been told to have confidence again. Confidence in what? In a plan that was published late? In proposals that are not fully costed? In a strategy that places almost twice the reliance on negative emissions technologies as the CCC’s balanced pathway—technologies that even the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee has described as largely “untested at scale” and a “significant delivery risk”? Should we have confidence in electric vehicle uptake doing the heavy lifting, despite the serious concerns that we have heard about affordability, charging infrastructure and grid capacity? I can attest to all those concerns being real. It is all wishful thinking.

The human cost of that approach is already being felt. Scotland has lost three oil and gas jobs for every clean job that has been created over the past decade, and more than 13,000 jobs have disappeared in a single year.

I will not.

Scotland’s emissions are already down by 50 per cent compared with the 1990 baseline. Progress has been made. The Scottish Conservatives would scrap the arbitrary 2045 target and replace it with a credible and affordable pathway that would protect oil and gas jobs, safeguard energy security, support technological innovation and keep bills as low as possible for consumers. We want to focus on the delivery of a transition that carries the public with it, rather than imposing severe lifestyle restrictions without consent.

If climate policy loses public support, it will fail. If it undermines our economy, it will backfire. If it is built on shaky assumptions and opaque costings, it will certainly not endure. The Scottish Conservatives choose practical progress. We will stand up for Scottish workers, we will stand up for Scottish businesses, and we will stand up for a climate policy that is honest, affordable and fair.

17:12

It will be me this time.