Chamber and committees

I am pleased to confirm to Parliament details of the wide-ranging co-operation agreement that has been reached between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Green Party and endorsed overwhelmingly by our respective party memberships.

In nature, scope and intent, the agreement is genuinely ground breaking in Scottish and United Kingdom politics. It represents a new and, I hope, better way of doing politics. Although the agreement is the product of much negotiation and some compromise, it is also a leap of faith for both parties, but it is one that we are taking willingly and for the common good.

The challenge and discipline of working together, and of not allowing the issues on which we disagree to obscure those on which we do agree, will undoubtedly take us out of our comfort zones. Although the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Greens are joining together in Government, they are and will remain distinct entities with different identities and points of view. The agreement is, however, founded on shared convictions and common principles. Above all, it is based on our recognition that the times that we are living through render a business-as-usual approach simply not good enough. Scotland, like most of the rest of the world, faces significant challenges and many opportunities in the years ahead, and many of those are deeply interrelated.

We must tackle the latest surge in Covid cases while leading and supporting the country’s economic and social recovery from the pandemic; we must ensure that the recovery is green and sustainable; and we must address with urgency and determination the climate and nature crises that threaten the planet and the security of this and future generations.

We must, unfortunately, address and mitigate the consequences of Brexit, which are becoming more serious by the week, as labour scarcity and interrupted supply chains lead to shortages on supermarket shelves and elsewhere. Such shortages should be unthinkable in a country such as the UK, and we should make no mistake that they are a direct and shameful result of the Brexit disaster.

We must defend our Parliament against the UK Government power grabs that are undermining the very principles on which it is founded and, as we do so, recognise that the best way of protecting Parliament from Westminster and equipping it with the full powers that it needs to build a fairer, more prosperous country is to make it independent of Westminster—[Interruption.] That is why fulfilling our democratic mandate to let the Scottish people choose our own future is a key strand of the agreement.

Those are the inescapable challenges that confront us, and how we respond to them will shape Scotland now and for the decades ahead. In the face of the magnitude of those challenges—and we all bear a share of the responsibility for this—our politics can too often seem small, polarised, divided and focused on self-interest rather than the national interest—[Interruption.] Perhaps I am seeing evidence of that today.

If we are to meet the moment, we must all try to do politics differently. In this agreement, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Greens are accepting our responsibility to do that. Genuine disagreement, honestly and respectfully debated, and resolved through the ballot box, is the essence of democracy. However, we also have a duty to reach beyond our disagreements and, in the interests of progress, maximise the consensus between us. That is essential if we are to find the solutions that are needed to solve the big problems confronting Scotland and the world.

In my view and experience, instead of division and acrimony, people want to see much more co-operation and collaboration from their politicians. That spirit of co-operation and consensus building is very much in keeping with the founding principles of our Scottish Parliament. Arguably, it has never been more important for us all to live up to those principles, and that is the motivation for reaching this agreement. It is not a full coalition—our parties will retain distinct voices and independent identities—but it sets out processes of co-operation and consultation that will establish a firm foundation for the delivery of our shared and transformative policy objectives and the Scottish Government’s wider legislative and policy programme.

As part of that, for the first time in UK politics, the agreement will see Greens enter national Government as ministers, working in a spirit of common endeavour, mutual challenge and collective responsibility to deliver for the people we serve. To that end, I look forward to seeking Parliament’s approval later this afternoon for the appointment of Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie as Scottish ministers.

Such an agreement would not be seen to be in any way remarkable or unusual in other parts of Europe, but it represents an important landmark for politics across the UK. Most important of all, the agreement provides a strong foundation for bold and decisive action throughout the parliamentary session. After all, as with any arrangement of this kind, its ultimate test is not about how well the signatories get along but about what we deliver.

There is—rightly—a strong environmental theme to our shared policy agreement. We recognise the urgency of the climate and nature crises and the challenges inherent in tackling them. We also appreciate that, with the right approach and a commitment to climate justice, the transition to net zero will create economic opportunities and improve the wellbeing of us all. We are determined to seize and realise those opportunities.

During the current session of Parliament, we will do more to decarbonise our transport network and support active travel. We will dedicate at least 10 per cent of the Scottish Government’s overall travel budget to active travel—cycling, walking and wheeling. We will significantly increase investment in public transport. We will work to cut the sector’s emissions and make public transport accessible and affordable, with a commitment to free bus travel for young people, for example. We will bring ScotRail into public ownership.

All those measures will help us to reduce car kilometres by 20 per cent by 2030, which is vital if we are to meet our climate targets and improve the environment in communities and neighbourhoods the length and breadth of our country. We will support the essential transformation in how we heat our homes and buildings. This parliamentary session will see investment of at least £1.8 billion in energy efficiency and renewable heating.

We will do more to protect our natural environment. We will designate a new national park, plant more trees, including more native species, and protect more of our seas.

We will work across the economy to support a just transition to net zero, with just transition plans for all sectors and regions, and a new green industrial strategy with investment in skills at its heart.

As part of that, we will support and accelerate the necessary and inevitable transition from fossil fuels to renewable and low-carbon energy sources. Under the agreement, we will deliver a package of stronger support for marine renewables and offshore wind, and significantly increase our onshore wind capacity. We will establish a 10-year £500 million just transition fund for the north-east and Moray, to ensure that the jobs and communities that depend on our oil and gas sector are not left behind and that we instead use the sector’s considerable infrastructure, skills and expertise to help to drive and speed up the development of cleaner alternatives.

Our agreement will also help to make Scotland fairer. It will tackle child poverty and deliver stronger rights for tenants, including an effective rent control system, so that housing in the rented sector is more affordable and more secure, especially for families and young people. We will make the investment in the current parliamentary session to support the delivery of 110,000 new affordable homes between now and 2032.

We will reform our public services, including through the establishment of a national care service, which will perhaps be the biggest public sector reform that Parliament will ever have undertaken. There will also be improvements in mental health and work to improve education and close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Finally, as I indicated earlier, the agreement confirms our intention to give people in Scotland the choice of independence. The mandate for that is undeniable: between us, the SNP and the Greens won 72 of the 129 seats in Parliament, and each one of us was elected on a clear commitment to holding an independence referendum. However, just as the mandate is undeniable, the reason for a referendum is just as important. As we emerge from the pandemic, the kind of country and society that Scotland is and will become, and the decisions that will shape our society, our economy and our place in the world, must be determined, democratically, here in Scotland, and not imposed upon us against our will by the Government at Westminster.

The agreement that we have reached offers a clear vision of the sort of country Scotland can become: a greener, fairer and—yes—independent nation. It also recognises and puts into practice an approach to politics that sees parties try to work together for the common good. I firmly believe that that is what most people in Scotland want to see. I hope that, as we move now to implement it, the agreement will demonstrate that, when we step out of our comfort zones and embrace co-operation, we enhance our ability to deliver the ideas and practical policies that can meet the scale of the challenges that we face.

Of course, the agreement is novel in terms of UK politics, but across Europe and in many countries around the world, arrangements like this are commonplace and based firmly on the idea that co-operation, rather than confrontation, will lead to better outcomes for people across our country. The Scottish Parliament has undoubtedly secured some significant achievements in the past two decades, and all parties can and should take credit for that fact. However, especially in recent years, there have also been times when our politics has been toxic and polarised—that is not unique to Scotland—and, because of that, we have sometimes seemed to be collectively incapable of properly living up to the expectations of those we serve. Just as we can, and should, all take some credit for our successes, we must all bear some responsibility for our shortcomings. I believe that we all have an obligation to make positive change. The agreement represents a renewed commitment from the Scottish Government to do so.

While the agreement is, at the political level, an agreement between the SNP and the Greens, I sincerely hope that, over time, it can and will encourage greater co-operation between all parties in the Scottish Parliament. There are issues on which we disagree profoundly and passionately, including, and perhaps especially, the constitution. I suspect that that is unlikely to change, although perhaps we should all make an effort to disagree more civilly even on those fundamental issues. However, as we recover from the pandemic and address the climate emergency, there are many other issues where I believe that acres of common ground can be found if we are willing to find them, while still acknowledging and respecting our disagreements.

Despite all the risks that are inherent in any decision of two parties to co-operate more closely, and with a full appreciation of the compromise and the ups and downs that such an agreement will entail, the SNP and the Greens are choosing to work together because we believe that, in a time of great challenge, a better, more collaborative politics is needed so that a better Scotland can be built, and we are resolving to spend the next five years working together to build it. As we do so, I make an open and sincere offer also to work with others across the chamber whenever and wherever possible. I hope that that offer will be accepted.

The agreement is a milestone in Parliament’s progress. It sets out how the SNP and the Scottish Greens will work together as the Scottish Government. It demonstrates our commitment to a new and better way of doing politics and it provides the strong platform that is needed to deliver the transformative policies that will build a greener, fairer country and make people’s lives across Scotland better. For all those reasons, I enthusiastically commend it to the chamber.

The agreement sets out exactly what we agree on and, as far as my view on new exploration is concerned, I set that out in a letter to the Prime Minister. Just as it is the case that new licences for exploration have to be assessed against the climate emergency, so too should existing licences be, before production goes ahead. We face an inescapable climate emergency and we have to recognise that it is no longer consistent with tackling that climate emergency simply to assume that we can go on and on with unlimited extraction of fossil fuels.

However, we must support a fair and just transition, and the oil and gas sector recognises that. The responsibility on Government is to make sure that we provide the support and investment to do that. Parties such as the Conservatives will no doubt go on burying their heads in the sand in the face of the climate emergency, but we will not do that. We will provide the leadership to make sure that Scotland meets its targets on climate change and the transition to net zero by 2045 and that we take the jobs, expertise, skills and infrastructure that have been built up over decades in the oil and gas sector and use them to drive the alternatives that we need.

I hope that other parties will be part of that, because we all have an inescapable duty to meet the climate emergency head on.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am absolutely delighted to be back in the chamber. I am enjoying it very much indeed so far.

I am sure that the Greens will achieve a great deal in government through collaboration and co-operation and by being constructive in getting things done.

I say again to the Opposition parties that the offer is there for all of us to try to come together to find the areas on which we can agree. The question is who is prepared to do that and who is not. The Greens, to their credit, are prepared to do that. It remains to be seen whether anybody else is willing to work in that constructive way.

The commitments in the agreement are about investing in our rail services, bringing them back into public ownership—nationalising ScotRail—and ensuring that people in every part of our country can rely on services, that fares are affordable for travel and that we cut emissions in our rail network.

Will there be difficult decisions to make along the way? Of course there will, but there is a determination to come together to take the decisions so that our transport network is capable and fit for the purpose of transporting people across the country for work and leisure, and so that it meets our imperative on the climate emergency.

I welcome input and engagement from members across the Parliament. The question is whether Labour members are prepared to work on that basis. I hope that they take up the invitation.

Yes, I do. That is one of the biggest challenges that we face. Notwithstanding the impressions to the contrary from some members today, I hope that there is unanimous agreement in the chamber that tackling the climate emergency with urgency and determination is not seen to be an option. I genuinely hope that we all agree on the need to do that.

One of the big questions is how we do that. Do we achieve it in a way that is just and fair, and which seizes and realises the massive economic opportunities? Being candid, I note that, although we have had exchanges about that in the chamber on many occasions in the past, we have not been as successful at it as we should have been. Subject to parliamentary approval later, Lorna Slater will have a key role to play in driving a new green industrial strategy so that we meet our obligations on reducing emissions, and do so in a way that creates new jobs and industries for the future. There is a big challenge in relation to climate change, but there is a massive opportunity as well, and the agreement will help us to seize that. For that reason, I think that all of us and people right across the country should be genuinely enthused, inspired and excited by it.

I spent an election campaign hearing Anas Sarwar talk about the responsibility on us all to focus on what we agree on rather than the things that we disagree on, and we have heard more of that today. I agreed with him and commended him during the election campaign for striking that tone. The problem is that, so far, there has been nothing from Anas Sarwar to suggest that that has any substance and is anything more than rhetoric.

All the challenges that he has alluded to today are exactly the challenges that the agreement sets out concrete actions, investments, plans and policies to address—not in rhetoric, but in substance. The SNP and the Greens have agreed to do that notwithstanding the disagreements between us. Both parties have been prepared to compromise, cede some control and come together in order to do better for the country.

In the days after the election, as Anas Sarwar knows, I invited Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater in to talk about how we could co-operate. I also invited Anas Sarwar in to talk about how the SNP and Labour might co-operate. The difference is that the Scottish Greens took that seriously—they went away, thought about it and came back to try to work towards an agreement.

I say to Anas Sarwar that it is not too late to be part of that consensus. There is a strategic choice for the Opposition parties in the face of the agreement. I am fairly certain which choice the Conservatives will make, but which choice Labour will make is perhaps more of an open question. I suspect that it will define much of Anas Sarwar’s leadership of his party, because the choice is whether to come with us to try to find common ground while respecting our disagreements, and to work together to meet the challenges that we face, or to move more and more to the margins of politics along with the Conservatives.

I again make an open invitation to Anas Sarwar to work with us, co-operate and be part of that consensus building, because I agree that that is what the country needs. However, it takes courage and boldness to do that, and a willingness to do it in substance and not just in empty rhetoric.

The £500 million just transition deal is vital not only for making the transition from oil and gas to renewables but for doing so in a fair and just way. We will set out in the period ahead the detail of how the fund will operate and the objectives that it will support. We will work with partners, communities and other stakeholders to take it forward. It is intended to accelerate the transition of the region and support the role of Aberdeen and the wider north-east as a centre of excellence for the development of new technologies and the transition to a net zero economy. The scope, timing and design of the fund will be developed in consultation with stakeholders and set out to Parliament as soon as possible.

I have a duty as First Minister to continue to lead the country through the on-going Covid crisis, and I will make a statement in Parliament tomorrow on the latest Covid situation and the steps that we need to continue to take collectively to tackle the increase in transmission.

As we come out of the acute crisis and recover our economy, our society and our whole way of life, we have big choices to make about the kind of country that we are recovering to. We are not alone in that regard; countries across the world are asking themselves those questions. I believe that the answers to those questions should be shaped and decided in Scotland by our democratically elected Government and Parliament, and not imposed on us by a Westminster Government that, as we see so powerfully with Brexit, is intent on taking us in a direction that the majority do not want to go in.

The question is not whether we, in the Parliament, all agree on the question of independence. It is clear that we do not, and that is perfectly legitimate in a democracy. The question is whether we are all prepared to agree on the basic principle of democracy that election mandates should be honoured and questions about the future of our country should be taken not by politicians but by the people of our country. The arithmetic in the Parliament is clear: there is a mandate for an independence referendum. That should be honoured, and I am determined that it will be honoured and that the people of Scotland will decide the future of this country.

I have to say that it is a bit rich for the leader of a parliamentary group—I congratulate Alex Cole-Hamilton on his election as leader—that no longer qualifies as a parliamentary group because it lost ground in the election to criticise a party that increased its presence in the Parliament and is intent on trying to achieve change for the people whom it represents. Over all the years in which I have been in government, the Greens have, through co-operation and constructive opposition, achieved more than the Liberal Democrats have, and they will achieve even more in government.

The agreement has many positive elements for local government and democracy, such as work to increase voter registration and participation, particularly among underrepresented groups, and the commitment to undertake an independent review of the Scottish welfare fund, which is important to many families and individuals across the country.

The shared programme contains a variety of policies on which we will work collaboratively with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, such as commitments on community wealth building, planning, active travel, work on education reform and the establishment of a national care service. All those policies will have an impact on local authorities, so engagement and joint work on them will be important.

We will seek a strategic discussion with COSLA’s leadership on the agreement and the upcoming programme for government. We work collaboratively with COSLA, and the agreement will enhance the measures whereby we help local authorities to deliver their services for people across the country.