Chamber and committees

Thank you, minister, for joining us today. You are right that the new Government coming in is a nice reset.

I have a question about how Grangemouth fits into the wider energy strategy. The Scottish Government has a draft energy strategy, although it has been stalled for more than a year. The idea is that the strategy shows where our energy in Scotland will come from and how much energy demand there will be as we phase out and exit from North Sea gas and move to zero-carbon energy systems. For example, it shows why we do not need nuclear power in Scotland.

Grangemouth has been floated for all sorts of things, including carbon capture and storage—which is not a proven technology at scale—green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, biofuel for aviation and so on. How does that fit into the wider energy strategy? Is the UK Government developing an energy strategy along the lines of what the Scottish Government has done to chart the transition away from North Sea oil and gas and the importation of fossil fuels towards that zero-carbon future? How does Grangemouth fit into that?

There is always a concern that carbon capture, usage and storage—CCUS—does not work. It has not yet been proven to work at scale and it may not be a good investment as it is very expensive, and hydrogen may not live up to the potential that we think that it might have. Our worry would be that any investments in Grangemouth would therefore become white elephants and not be sustainable in the long term.

Can you give us a story about what the UK’s plan is for a wider energy strategy and how we fit into it?

You set out some political intentions as well as some good intentions around outcomes, but I have not heard about a strategic plan. We need to identify sites and infrastructure, such as at Grangemouth. We need to be looking to the future and saying which sites will need to transition and which sites will need to be closed down. An actual plan is needed, instead of setting out intentions and hoping that we will go in the right direction. Will the UK be creating an energy strategy? We are chasing the Scottish Government to get its strategy published.

Convener, if it is helpful, I would be happy to summarise the final page into just two questions.

I have a cheeky supplementary question to Murdo Fraser’s question. Mr Carlaw, we have been speaking about effectiveness. Some of the evidence that the committee has taken about commissioners such as the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner shows that they do a great deal of wonderful work but that nobody ever reads it—it does not get fed into Government mechanisms. In addition to the challenges that you have outlined with the advocacy commissioners, which my colleagues have asked you about, I am interested in your thoughts on that aspect. In other words, when commissioners, the SPCB or the wider public sector are doing excellent work, how effectively is that work fed into Government mechanisms?

Yes. I have one more thing to follow up on but will do so after you.

Brilliant.

As we have sought to understand the many and complex issues that we are talking about, some potential solutions have floated to the surface. I want to float three of them past you, just to understand whether there is an appetite for them and to give you the feeling of them.

If the problem is that the SPCB is overloaded, Bridgeside house is too full and there is a capacity problem in the Parliament, the first potential solution—I think it was the convener who highlighted it earlier, or maybe it was Murdo Fraser—would be to redefine some of the SPCB-supported public bodies and put them into the more general public body space, so that they are directly funded by the Scottish Government.

It seems that the creation of new commissioners is, in many ways, about trying to fix the gaps in a system when there have been scandals. People might see a need for a patient safety commissioner because they are reacting to a scandal, for example. The second potential solution might therefore be to give more proactive powers to existing bodies—the ombudsman could have wider investigatory powers, for example—with the intention of trying to prevent such scandals, rather than people feeling like they need a commissioner as a redress.

The third potential option that we have floated around, and I am aware that some other Parliaments have done this, is some sort of consolidation act of Parliament, whereby, for instance, the Scottish Human Rights Commission would have its remit substantially redrawn in legislation so as to incorporate powers and effectiveness.

The Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland has been held up to us as the gold standard of what a commissioner can and should be, but not all advocacy commissioners are defined in the same way. For example, the Scottish Human Rights Commissioner seems to have quite significant limitations on its legislative remit.

I am interested in your thoughts on those three options. Are there reasons why we should not be considering any of those, and do any appeal more? Are they the solutions to our problems?

Yes.

This committee will need to consider whether it makes recommendations on that topic if that work is already under way.

Another recommendation that the finance committee made to the SPCB was to

“explore ways in which it will seek to bring greater transparency to its governance and oversight arrangements ... This should include considering whether any material from internal assessments could appropriately be published for use by committees and others.”

Is that work under way?

That is superb. There were three recommendations from FPAC. I am going to ask for an update on those, because they relate to matters that this committee is also considering and I do not want to duplicate effort. Can you give us an update on the work of the SPCB to identify opportunities for sharing services and premises and achieving other back-office efficiencies?