Chamber and committees

With previous plans, it has been very difficult to understand what is happening in some sectors, as there has been a lack of data and information. It is felt, rightly or wrongly, that, because there is a lack of data on farming and land use, for example, and a lack of clarity as to what individual actions will do to reduce carbon emissions, certain sectors are almost being given a bye or being let off. In other sectors, however, such as transport or heat in buildings, it is very clear what certain actions will do to reduce carbon emissions. How do we bring the data up to a point where we can understand exactly what is happening across different sectors and exactly what the various measures will achieve? There seems to be a bit of fuzziness in some areas around what making a change might result in—people are not exactly sure.

Generally speaking, PFOA is not available in a wider market. There is just the single exemption that we are discussing today, so I will turn to that matter. Is it the case that the Ministry of Defence or defence-related contractors apply for exemptions from environmental regulation? On the face of it, if you are a civil contractor wearing protective clothing, the use of PFOA in that clothing would be banned, whereas if you are working in a defence-related sector or industry, its continued use is allowed. Therefore, there is a bit of divergence between the situation for people who are working in defence-related industries and the situation for people who work in civilian areas, where there is no exemption for that chemical. It might be a minor divergence, but I wonder how those issues are discussed and resolved. Is it something that you just have to accept—that is the decision that the UK Government has made on that—or is there a protocol with the MOD or defence sector more generally around lower or different environmental standards?

I am happy, unless Dan has anything more to say.

Thanks for that.

The last area that I want to ask you about is negative emissions technology—comprising bioenergy carbon capture and storage—BECCS. The Climate Change Committee highlighted the continuing uncertainty around that. Around a year or two years ago, it recommended that there should be a plan B, which is very challenging. How do you respond to that?

My understanding is that, in the past, there has been a memorandum of understanding between the Scottish Government and the Ministry of Defence on a range of areas, most notably environmental compliance, habitats regulations, environmental management and that side of things. Obviously, this strays more into health and safety. It is clear that there is environmental compliance in the Ministry of Defence, but scrutinising that is pretty hard. This is another example of that. Such examples come up from time to time.

Great. I will go back to the points that Phil Raines raised around critical detail, which was a feature of the UK CCC’s comments. Can you give us a bit more explanation? When it comes to the individual policies listed in the climate change plan, will it be really clear what the expected reduction in emissions will be, and what underlying modelling and assumptions have been used? In previous climate change plans it has been almost impossible to see what is going on behind the assumptions, particularly because of the use of the TIMES model. Previous cabinet secretaries have said that it is incredibly complex and they cannot explain it because it is a big computer model.

How clear will the plan be to people looking through it, in particular for sectors that will have to make quite big reductions in emissions and respond to the opportunities around heat and other areas?

Okay. Am I right that its use will be phased out by 2025 anyway?

Does that mean that aviation emissions are going to drop—just as they are going to have to drop on the A9 and A96 and in farming and every other sector of our economy—or are they going to grow?

So it could be that other sectors or other parts of the transport sector might need to have steeper reductions in emissions in order to deliver the benefits that aviation—[Inaudible.]

I am content with that course of action. It is a slightly odd situation because of the defence-related nature of the chemical’s use. There is a lack of transparency there. Bob Doris’s points on that are well made. Perhaps there will be an issue about ensuring that there is adequate opportunity for scrutinising how the Ministry of Defence applies environmental management and wider health and safety requirements.

We are taking it on trust that there is a defence-related use of the chemical and that it will be dealt with in a responsible way, but there is no real way for us to scrutinise that. It is worth putting on the record that this is not the only area that I have come across in this committee and in predecessor committees where environmental regulation has come up against a defence exemption. You are left wondering what the actual protocols and protections are for workers and the environment in the Ministry of Defence and related industries.