I very much welcome the cabinet secretary’s outlining that support. Would she agree that we should also be thinking about support for local authorities, so that they can be pioneers in Scotland? We have very few local authority schemes at the moment.

I will take an intervention if it is very brief.

There are all sorts of opportunities that we are not maximising. That has been part of the discussion at the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee in relation to project willow and Grangemouth. It is about more joined-up thinking in communities and nationally.

I will give another example. The Midlothian project at Shawfair is a joint-venture partnership between Midlothian Energy Company and Vattenfall, which will power 3,500 houses. The council is leading that. It is using the private sector to deliver, but there is accountability. However, we are not seeing such projects across the country. Local authorities need to push down the costs of those projects, share best practice and make sure that there is a joined-up approach.

In the Lothians, I have mentioned the Midlothian project, which is just on the other side of the Edinburgh boundary, but a huge amount of work is being done in East Lothian, too, and work is also being done by the City of Edinburgh Council.

We need a more joined-up approach. The work is very innovative, and both the Scottish Government and the UK Government should think about how we get projects going and then share that best practice with councils.

I was at an event in Galashiels last month at which people talked about Scotland beyond net zero. I have talked about urban areas, but district heating can also be a win-win in rural areas, using electricity that is produced locally but also giving councils the opportunity to use that electricity too. Again, I refer to the example of Denmark.

I also want to comment on the huge benefits for communities. I welcome the cabinet secretary’s reference to the Point and Sandwick Trust. The Scottish Trades Union Congress published stats today that show that community-owned wind farms benefit communities by a factor of 34 when compared with privately owned wind farms. We are missing out there. That is why I welcome the extra money from both GB Energy and the Scottish Government. However, it is now about how we spend that money, because communities need support now, not in a couple of years—and it is not a nice to have, but critical.

The other thing that needs to happen is land reform, so that communities get the chance to have priority access to the land when it becomes available and do their own projects. I know that my colleague Rhoda Grant has been working on that.

Community energy is also about the range of tech that could be used. I have mentioned wind, and there are also solar and hydro schemes that could be used right across urban and rural Scotland. We should have a solar plan—we have one for wind—and we should have 2030 targets. I gave the example of the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative. Why do we not have such projects across Scotland? It does not make sense to me. It took years for the council to agree the project, but our schools and leisure centres now have solar on the roofs. That is good for the environment and it generates income for the council.

Why is that approach not taken across Scotland? I think that it is because it is too complicated, so we need to support local authorities. It is not even about new buildings; we can retrofit existing buildings. I am glad that the cabinet secretary is now talking about supporting our amendment, and I want to highlight that retrofitting could be an additional factor that would help us to open up solar. There could also be solar in rural communities alongside agriculture. That could be more integrated—and, again, those projects could be community owned.

My next point is critical, as it is about procurement. I have spoken to people who have set up community projects that cannot get access to the Scottish Government’s electricity supply contract. We need to reform procurement, given the huge opportunity that we have.

One of my former colleagues, Allan Wilson, is involved in a community project. He highlighted the difference that it would make if projects had the opportunity to access such contracts through procurement. It is a big missed opportunity if communities cannot access that £700 million contract. Why is that? If the minister were supportive of giving them that access, I would be very keen to meet her and discuss the changes that are needed, given the feedback that I have had from local communities. It is not a nice to have, but a must have. We need change.

Lots more could be done. I am keen that a constructive approach is taken today, because community energy is not a nice to have. As one of the representatives from Point and Sandwick made clear, the project has been transformational in their community—but it has taken years and years.

I will make two final points. Why we do not use the Scottish National Investment Bank, and why we do not think about using pension investment—that is, long-term, safe investment? We need to think about new investment opportunities and make the case for using the National Wealth Fund and GB Energy. These are safe investment projects that will be successful over time. However, we need local authorities, co-operatives and communities to be empowered to make the most of them.

There is way more that we need to do. The Scottish Government has reached just over half its target for 2030, so an awful lot more will need to be done in the next four and a half years. The Scottish Labour amendment identifies the key ways in which we might make that happen.

I move amendment S6M-17648.1, to insert at end:

“; welcomes the £4 million in funding from Great British Energy to fund half of the Community Energy Generation Growth Fund; believes that, as well as community groups, councils and public sector organisations are well placed to host, or collaborate on, community renewables projects, community heat projects, municipal ownership and co-operative models; further believes that land reform should mean the chance for communities to be able to have priority access to land when it becomes available; notes that there are a range of different technologies that could be utilised for community-owned energy projects, including wind, solar and hydro schemes among others, in both urban and rural Scotland; acknowledges that the Scottish Government could help to grow the sector by opening up the government electricity supply contract to community generators, which are currently denied access to the market, whether directly through conditions of tender or indirectly through procurement; calls on public bodies to create space for community ownership where possible by making public land and buildings available to community energy groups, and calls on the Scottish Government to work productively with the UK Government to create further opportunities for communities to own a meaningful stake in energy infrastructure through partnering with Great British Energy.”

The member’s amendment makes a point about

“diversifying the ownership of existing energy assets”.

Would an example of that include, when repowering is taking place, a company thinking about possibly donating one or two of the turbines to the local community so that the local community could own those turbines? We have the example—if we go way back—of Fintry, where the local community negotiated an element of that wind farm. The issue is not about nationalising projects; it is about having a share in projects and working constructively to give communities that opportunity.

Will Alasdair Allan give way?

The point is that we have loads of experience, and what we need to do is package that up and share it with communities, so that they can make the choice that will work for them, regardless of community size or where they are in Scotland.

I welcome today’s debate because the issue of community energy is a crucial one for us to debate. As a Labour and Co-operative member, I am proud to be a member of the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative. I will come back to that later.

The debate is not just nice to have; it is absolutely key that we maximise our fantastic land, wind and water resources to the benefit of communities. Moreover, this is about empowering our local communities, and should also be about creating local jobs and investment, and delivering community wealth building. If we get it right—if we have effective planning—we will, potentially, also tackle our nature and climate emergencies. The issue is absolutely crucial.

I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government will support our Scottish Labour amendment. I constructed it as an add-on amendment. My aim is to be constructive, although, if members read our amendment, they will understand that it is about our need to go much further. I will focus on that today.

So much more needs to be done—and can be done—to ensure that more community-owned, co-operatively owned and municipally owned projects can be delivered. I totally agree with the point that Douglas Lumsden made about the huge amount of time that it takes for individual communities to do the work. It is not just a commitment of a year or two. Getting a project through is a commitment lasting years: the community needs to work up the financial and investment side, get the project through planning, and then run it. It is a huge commitment.

We should not underestimate the challenge for local authorities, because they have had lots of cuts to their funding and they do not have the necessary dedicated staff. We need to learn from successes in areas in Scotland where community projects have been owned by authorities, so that we can spread that approach through working with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and individual local authorities. The geography of our local authorities in Scotland means that they all have opportunities, but there are risks that need to be assessed, investment is needed and officers need skills. We need to share more. That is why I mention working with CARES, and what more Co-operative Development Scotland could do to share best practice. There is much that needs to be done.

One reason why we need to focus on why community energy has to happen relates to the discussion about having a joined-up approach. At the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee last month, we discussed constraint payments. Last year, £393 million was paid in such payments—when we had to turn wind farm turbines off—98 per cent of which was as a result of wind turbines in Scotland. We need to use that electricity now. We need to think about creating local power but we also need to think about how we use that power. For example, we could power electric vehicles, buses and trains.

I recently saw a briefing about the impact of sea-based turbines and how they can benefit fishing communities in the long run as they can create potential food sources for fish on the sea bed. Is it not a question of ensuring that all the projects properly assess the opportunities and then deliver them when they are being built, so that nature and our fishing industry benefits?

There are opportunities in our urban areas. We could have projects like the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative right across our urban areas, and we could have community heat networks in urban and rural areas. It is about taking a joined-up approach and seizing the opportunities, and it is not just about rural areas—the whole of Scotland needs to benefit.

I might go slightly further than that one minute and 41 seconds.

This has been a really important debate, because it has been quite a cross-party and cross-experienced debate. There have been jokes about how long people have been here. I have experienced the different dynamics of being a Cabinet member and a committee convener. We should be thinking about the role of committee conveners, because they are critical to the effectiveness of this Parliament.

People have talked about the nature of what our committees do, which is central to how this Parliament was designed. Given the number of bills that we consider, it is increasingly important that we engage with stakeholders, hold ministers to account and carry out post-legislative scrutiny.

In this parliamentary term alone, some pieces of legislation that are before us still need a huge amount of work. Some members’ bills, such as my own, have not yet gone to committees. An awful lot of work will be needed on those. We need to reflect on our approach to post-legislative scrutiny, too.

Members have made really useful comments about the importance of committees carrying out inquiries. Again, that is a really important part of their work. It should be about not just shadowing what ministers do but deciding, over the next few years, which important issues need to be discussed and which recommendations need to be made.

On committees doing cross-cutting or parallel work, a good current example is the work on Grangemouth and project willow, on which both the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee and the Economy and Fair Work Committee are taking evidence. There are various topics that cross over committees’ basic subject areas.

We could do more post-legislative scrutiny, and do it better. We could also do more joined-up, cross-government or cross-policy thinking. However, that is often difficult for committees, because they are so busy. There is a huge amount of work to do across the Parliament.

As a couple of members said, the nature of our job has changed, with regard to not only our digital capacity but that of our constituents. The ways in which we can communicate with people have greatly increased.

Overall, a huge amount has changed, and we need to reflect on how our committees could do better. Therefore, the timing of this piece of work by the SPPA Committee is really important. For me, many of the issues come down to capacity and leadership and how we can learn lessons on those aspects. Things have changed a lot over the past 25 years, so such lessons are there to be learned.

Other key aspects that members mentioned included committee structure, having elected conveners, committee size and committee responsibilities. We must ask whether we should have short-term committees or ones that are set up to deal with a particular piece of legislation. That could happen if, for example, a committee that should be dealing with a bill was simply too busy. We have lots of challenges ahead of us as we move into year 5 of this parliamentary session.

I turn to members’ views on committee size. There were good comments in favour of there being a role for smaller committees. One point that occurred to me is that we need not have that as a requirement for all committees. We have a lot more Government ministers than we have ever had, but some members of the Parliament are not on committees at all and others are substitutes rather than full-time members. That raises questions about capacity, which we should consider.

I strongly support the points that have been made about ensuring that there is a good gender balance on committees. I say that as a former planner. We need to have women involved in every policy area of life. It is not only committee members who will deliver that; important work is done by groups such as the women’s budget group. We need a balanced Parliament in terms of both representation of women and supporting other forms of diversity. Richard Leonard commented on diversity in committee membership, and others spoke about both urban and rural sectors being represented. Our approach should extend to having members from different professional backgrounds as well. We should draw on all members’ experience.

A lot of good comments were made about the need for committee conveners to be elected. I think that the time has come for that.

I have been a member of committees that were critical of the Government; I have also been a Government minister who received massive criticism from a committee.