I, too, start by thanking the committee, the clerks and all the organisations that worked tirelessly to get the legislation that we urgently need and the proper debate that we need. I particularly agree with the minister on the cross-party work, especially on amendments at stages 2 and 3. I was glad that I was able to secure support for my amendment last night with support from the minister’s team to provide for vital guidance to be published on the restrictions on the disposal of consumer goods to ensure that damaged or contaminated goods are not reused where it would not be safe. I very much welcome that.

The bill is not as good as it could have been but, because of the constructive work that was done at stages 2 and 3, it is better than the draft. My personal view is that the bill is still a missed opportunity, because it is more about recycling and waste management than it is about seizing the opportunity to deliver the circular economy that is highlighted in the bill’s name that our constituents, businesses, planet and environment need.

We do not have the clear purpose that Maurice Golden proposed at stage 3 and I proposed at stage 2 that would have added strength to the bill. We will still have to wait to see the heavy lifting that is required to maximise the benefits of a circular economy, because implementation will be crucial.

One key issue that is important to highlight is funding. For local authorities, that will be key to whether the ambitions in the framework legislation are delivered. Our Labour colleagues in Wales understood that, which is why the Labour Government worked hard in negotiating with local government colleagues to deliver one of the highest recycling rates in the world. It took a decade of investment and £1 billion to make sure that they had the infrastructure and capacity to deliver on pragmatic and ambitious targets.

Will the minister give way?

As I understand it, it was a negotiation in Wales.

In its analysis of the bill, the Finance and Public Administration Committee raised concerns about the pressures on local authorities and said that more work will need to be done to address cost savings and changes to revenues that the bill would lead to. The code of practice is a key issue and it is key that partnership work and funding take place.

The waste hierarchy is important, because we tend to focus on how we deal with waste instead of supporting our communities and businesses to repurpose, reuse, repair and recycle goods and products and materials, rather than seeing them going to waste and damaging our environment and communities. Where the circular economy is critical is in how we design products in the first place, so that they do not become obsolete, with valuable materials that could be reused being dumped.

One of the missed opportunities that I hope the minister will come back to was in Maurice Golden’s stage 3 amendment to require public bodies to prepare a circular economy plan. That is critical, because public procurement is key. It would incentivise investment in circular economy products, practices and supply chains, raise awareness among public bodies and make a real difference. I hope that the minister will come back to that.

We need stronger action on how we deal with plastics that damage our environment, whether on land or sea, and it is about coming together to think about what more can be done there. Recently, I was contacted by a constituent who, as a schoolteacher, was taking school students to take part in a beach clean, and they were shocked to see the levels of pollution there, and a lot of it was plastic. One of the things that will be key to the implementation of the bill will be investing in schools and involving them in the discussion, so that we educate young people about the damage that is caused by waste and what they can do to stop it. From talking to parents, I know that kids sometimes feed back information from schools.

We need to make everybody aware of the impact of avoiding the generation of waste and dealing with the waste that we produce much more responsibly, we need to make demands on companies and local authorities in that regard, and we need support to be provided for the fantastic community projects that enable our constituents to reuse and repair products. There is a lot more that we could do in that area.

I have mentioned missed opportunities, and I want to finish by giving a couple of examples. One of those involved my global responsibility ambition in relation to not offshoring our waste and leaving other countries to deal with it. Between 2004 and 2022, Scottish waste exports rose from 0.4 megatonnes to 1.5 megatonnes, which is a massive increase.

Whether on our climate ambitions or our efforts to be a global leader, we need to do more. We need to take more seriously the issue of where our materials come from and the human rights and environmental impacts of that, and we need to make sure that work to address that is built into our everyday work and that the public sector leads on that. We will have to come back to the bill, because the job is not finished.

I will come right back on that. People who have written to me have said that they were first going to install solar panels to bring down their electricity bill, and then they were going to install a heat pump, but now they are going to do neither, because the first bit was reducing their electricity bills. Householders need a joined-up approach, because not everybody has access to cheap fuel. That is a key issue.

I thought that the minister was going to intervene on the point about the £133 million that the Scottish Government budgeted for but failed to spend, but no. We need to support our communities—

No, thank you. Members keep interrupting.

We need firm action. The climate emergency is not a future problem; it is a now issue. It is already damaging our rail and road infrastructure and forcing people out of their homes. We cannot afford another summer of wildfires in southern Europe or to have another incident such as the one in Saudi Arabia just weeks ago in which 1,300 people tragically died from extreme heat.

I am delighted that the SNP has adopted many of Labour’s ideas wholesale in its recent election promises. I just thought that the First Minister might have been here to tell us what he is going to do but, sadly, he is not. We had announced many of those proposals days before.

I go back to my point that words are not enough; we need to do things. In 2017, the SNP Government pledged to set up a publicly owned energy company, which of course has never happened. With Labour’s plan for GB energy, which would be headquartered in Scotland, we now have a real opportunity to build on our renewables success to bring down bills for Scottish people, provide energy security and ramp up our progress to net zero.

Ministers say regularly that they are keen to work with the incoming Westminster Government to ensure collaboration across the United Kingdom. That needs to happen now, because it is not acceptable just to always blame the Tory Government. I have blamed it for a lot, but a lot of what it is blamed for are SNP failures of government. The status quo is not enough. The Parliament needs to start with the publication of a new climate bill, followed by immediate publication of the climate change plan. That has been talked about for weeks now, but we still have no information on it. Let us get on with the change that we need. The current inaction is not good enough.

The Scottish Parliament has powers to make positive changes and to become true world leaders, not just world-leading talkers, in this area. However, we need immediate action to make that a reality. Let us get on with it.

I move amendment S6M-13759.2, to insert at end:

“; notes that the Scottish Government is still to legislate after announcing that the Scottish Ministers planned to scrap Scotland’s legal climate targets, and regrets that Scotland’s ambitious legal targets were not backed up by ambitious action from the Scottish Government, despite consistent cross-party support in the Parliament and the Climate Change Committee’s belief that reaching the targets was previously achievable.”

To ask the Scottish Government when it last met with Creative Scotland. (S6O-03624)

Bus companies are doing some fantastic work—Lothian Buses in Edinburgh is doing similar work. However, the key issue is that we simply do not have enough bus services for people to use—we have lost hundreds. We are not seeing the results of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, which should have improved the number of bus services in the country.

If it is brief, yes.

Will the member take an intervention?

It is not possible to get solar panel funding in Scotland, although it still is possible south of the border, so ours is not the most generous system. Do you not agree that we need to do way more to encourage and support people to decarbonise their homes?