We know that our constituents are already being impacted by extreme weather, such as forest fires and flooding. Will the Scottish Government accept that it needs to up its game to support people and businesses to decarbonise, given the Royal Scottish Geographical Society report, which highlights:

“Climate change is already costing Scotland billions a year.”

If left unchecked, by 2050, those costs could rise to 5 to 20 per cent of gross domestic product, which is £11 billion to £45 billion a year. Do we not need to take the action that the cabinet secretary talks about now rather than dump our targets?

We need more joined-up thinking between public transport organisations, with more choices for people. That is not happening at the moment.

Having attended both project willow briefings, I agree with the need for urgent action. Can the Deputy First Minister give us a timescale for the Scottish Government’s delivery of the regulatory changes to enable the use of Scottish deposit return scheme waste resources, bioresources and agriculture and forestry resources, which are critical for the development of sustainable aviation fuel and the hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids—HEFA—process?

I am down to the last minute of my speech.

The SNP has let Scotland’s roads crumble. That is probably one of the few things in Sue Webber’s opening speech that I agreed with. Scotland’s road repair backlog for potholes has now risen to an eye-watering £2.6 billion. That means that the roads are not safe for people who are walking and cycling. It is not good for bikes and vehicles, as potholes damage tyres and increase people’s costs.

In Edinburgh, the Labour-led council had to make difficult choices in its budget because of years of underfunding by the SNP Government, but the cross-party council rejected the cuts to pothole funding suggested by the SNP councillors. We need to get that cross-party work right.

With better choices, more and more people would actually have a choice of when they use their car, instead of experiencing more congestion and delays. Anyone who has driven on the Edinburgh bypass will know that it regularly grinds to a halt, because there are far too many vehicles on it.

The language that is used in the Tory motion does not reflect reality, and it has been criticised a lot around the chamber. However, some good points have been made. It is clear to a lot of us that the SNP Government dumped its target of a 20 per cent reduction in car use because it knew that it was not going to deliver and it did not have a plan.

Several colleagues have talked about the need to lower carbon emissions across the country if we are to address the climate emergency. We are now seeing extreme weather, which is leading to increased flooding and forest fires in Scottish communities. Transport is a key sector where we face a challenge in reducing our emissions, but we need to do that in such a way that people will have better choices and more affordable, accessible and reliable public transport services that they can use.

We need to think about how we can have safer roads. I will come back to that point, which has been raised several times. We need to think about people’s health and improving air quality.

To pick up on what Mark Ruskell said as he finished his winding-up speech, we do not have the bus and train services that people in Scotland urgently need. That is a key message from young people. They love the idea of the under-22 bus pass but, as one of them said in a meeting that I was at, it is not much use if people do not have a bus to use it on. We have opportunities, but we are not delivering on them.

As Claire Baker powerfully argued in her opening speech, reintroducing peak rail fares after passenger use had increased by 6 per cent was a mistake, because it will stop people using the trains, and it means that they will have to revert to using a car to get to work. Three price hikes in just over a year disproportionately punished those who chose to use the train instead of driving, and that has meant that roads are more and more congested. People have to use cars even when it is not necessarily their first choice and even when it is not affordable for them, because they simply cannot rely on buses, particularly if they have a bus route but the buses are delayed by traffic congestion.

There is a real challenge here. In many of our rural communities or on the edge of towns, people do not even have transport services at all, and we do not have a connected system between bus and rail.

This is not about a war on drivers. The debate should be about how to provide people with real, affordable choices—with more efficient and reliable public transport choices across Scotland—and with opportunities for safer active travel, especially for shorter journeys. Instead of increasing car use, we could reduce car use and have fewer cars on the road, and we could make it easier for people who drive not to get stuck in traffic queues.

There has been a lot of debate about low-emission zones. They are reducing carbon emissions and improving air quality. One thing that was interesting in Edinburgh was learning from Glasgow’s experience of working with businesses before the LEZ there was introduced. The other thing in Edinburgh—

Is the cabinet secretary aware of the cuts that are being made to dozens of vital charities by the Edinburgh integration joint board, which means that the City of Edinburgh Council must now step in to fund those organisations—given the massive pressures that NHS Lothian is under and our growing population—to keep people well and healthy?

There was a discussion at the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee meeting this week on what more the Scottish Government could do to ensure that we have reliable and affordable bus services. Will the minister talk about what the Government will actually do?

Sarah, your numbers have actually gone up, and you have the fastest-growing population in Scotland to deal with and thousands of new houses. How do you deliver new services to give people the opportunity to use the bus rather than the car?

At last week’s committee meeting, we got feedback on the issue of having buses that people can use. One thing that has come from young people about the bus pass is that you need a bus to use the pass on. Get Glasgow Moving was in touch about its better buses for Strathclyde campaign, through which it has been working with local communities. One issue that comes up is the lack of access to hospitals. As a sector, how do you work with local authorities and key public sector organisations to ensure that you have bus routes that people can use to get to hospitals, for example?

We talk about choosing the car, but a lot of people cannot use the car or do not have one to use to get to a hospital. How do you increase the number of services where you obviously have people who want to use those services?

Duncan Cameron might want to come in on that.

Last week, the Scottish Government abandoned its commitment to reduce car travel by 20 per cent by 2030. What impact will that have on bus patronage? You have talked about congestion. What opportunities do you have to deliver better choice for people?

Paul White might want to kick off on that.