Chamber and committees

Will the member take an intervention?

The agreement between the Scottish Greens and the Scottish Government is historic. It is a new model of politics that responds to the code red for humanity on the climate, while building a fair recovery from Covid. The agreement has a bold and far-reaching programme, which will accelerate a just transition, double the size of the wind industry that was previously butchered by the Tory party at Westminster, invest £1.8 billion in energy efficiency and renewable heat, and invest £500 million in a just transition fund for the north-east. Does the First Minister agree that the programme will help Scotland to grasp the economic opportunities of the just transition by creating new fair jobs while tackling the climate emergency?

I thank Dean Lockhart for giving way. If he backs economic growth, will he back the target in the Green agreement to double onshore wind capacity in Scotland?

Empty town centre properties are being repurposed into spaces to house artists’ studios, venues and workshops, including Fire Station Creative in Dunfermline and Creative Stirling’s hub. How has the culture organisations and venues recovery fund directly supported those types of initiatives? What further support can be offered in order to provide a viable future for our town centres?

Families in Fife who are waiting for autism assessments for their children are at crisis point. There have been no assessments since the start of the pandemic, and there is now a backlog of more than 1,000 children waiting for support. Given that there is currently nothing in Government guidance to prevent autism assessments from taking place, what more can the First Minister do to ensure that NHS Fife clears the backlog and gives families the support that they desperately need?

Three years of missed targets shows that we need that transformative step change. We have already seen what is possible with renewable electricity, in which this country has taken a great lead in the UK.

On renewable heat, the statement talked about 1 million homes needing to switch over to green heating by 2030. That is 100,000 a year, but we saw only 3,000 installations in homes in Scotland last year. How will the cabinet secretary work across the Government and the Parliament to fill that huge gap between ambition and reality?

Will the member give away?

I welcome the minister and the cabinet secretary to their new posts, and I welcome the many members who have given their first speeches in the Parliament this afternoon. I was particularly struck by Mercedes Villalba’s points about the transformative role of the state in investing in solutions and the importance of a green new deal that involves the unions and workers in the transition.

I have been looking at what is happening in the US under Biden’s Administration, with the absolutely transformative investments in new technology and industries there. That is not just about fixing markets; it is about creating new markets, so these are exciting times.

I say to Labour colleagues that, if the Parliament had more borrowing powers and powers over electricity regulation, we could fix things such as the unfair transmission charges. However, this is a consensual debate, so let us hope that, in this year of COP26, we can achieve a new spirit of co-operation with the UK Government and that it will understand that Scotland’s contribution to tackling the climate emergency is absolutely critical. The UK Government needs to allow Scotland and our industries to thrive.

It is important that we define what a just transition is. Claudia Beamish, who used to sit near me in the chamber, was absolutely pivotal in getting measures on a just transition into legislation, and I miss her work greatly. I absolutely get that the transition has to be just and that nobody should be left behind. That is why, in the Greens’ manifesto, we proposed extending the jobs guarantee to workers in the oil and gas industry.

Over the past five years, Gillian Martin and I have had a lot of conversations about a just transition, and I am struck by the strong work that she is now doing to survey workers in the north-east and to find out where the skills gaps are. It is hugely important that we learn the lessons from the 1980s, when coal mining communities across Scotland were absolutely decimated. In recent years, we had the closure of Longannet with no transition for the 360 workers there. Rather than involve those workers in a conversation before the closure, everything that was done to secure their employment happened after the event.

I say to Liam Kerr and other members that, although the transition has to be just, it also has to be a transition. It is not a transition from the current estimated level of extraction of oil and gas resources from the North Sea—around 5 billion barrels—by licensing for 20 billion barrels to be extracted. Well, it is a transition—it is a transition to the extraction of four times that level of resource, which is simply incompatible with the Paris climate change agreement.

To answer Mr Kerr’s question about where we draw the line and how much time there is left for the oil and gas industry to transition, we must start with the science of climate. We must look at what the carbon budget is under the Paris agreement and work back from that. As a lawyer, surely Mr Kerr understands the importance of international legal agreements. We must stick with that.

There are even signs that the UK Government now understands that. In its North Sea transition plan, it is starting to question the policy of maximum economic recovery. It is starting to turn the corner. It is not doing so quickly enough, but we can get there. I say to Mr Kerr that, if the UK Government turns that corner, it will join other Governments that are dangerous: the Governments of Ireland, New Zealand—New Zealand has Greens in Government, too—Denmark, which is now Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, and France are all drawing a line under licensing and moving on.

Carbon capture and storage is the wrong priority at this point. Even the Tories on the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee agreed that we cannot meet the target of a 25 per cent reduction in emissions using CCS. Therefore, we must move on, work collaboratively together and test one another’s arguments to destruction. There are some inconvenient truths that need to be addressed, and in today’s debate we have just started to uncover and examine those.

If that is the case, why did the member’s party take away the market support for the onshore wind industry?

Like so many people across Scotland and around the world, I have been deeply inspired and moved by the school climate strikes, and I feel ashamed—in particular, as a father—of the burden on future generations that we are set to leave. However, at the same time, I am really hopeful and positive that a greener, fairer future is possible, and I think that we have all the tools in the box to tackle the climate and nature emergencies. We just need the political will to break from business as usual and drive that transformational change.

It is fair to say that, so far, we have enjoyed a fairly leisurely pace of change. An early retiral of coal-fired power stations, a first wave of onshore wind development and the recycling of household waste have all helped to halve emissions over the past 30 years, but halving them again in the next nine years demands an absolute step change. Tokenism just will not deliver. Deep system change will be needed to tackle climate change.

I think that that will be a real test for the Parliament, our committees and the political culture that we create here. It will mean making hard decisions that will not please everyone in the short term. It will be a case of seeing those decisions through and making the transition work so that no one is left behind, and it will mean sharing thinking and ownership of the solutions and taking some political risks. That is a challenge for everyone and every party in the Parliament, including the Greens.

If we look at the climate change plan, which is our only real route map to net zero in this Parliament, we can see that there are major challenges in there. For example, we all know that the 20 per cent reduction in vehicle mileage target is attempting to reverse a trend of traffic growth that has been relentless for the best part of 70 years.

Like many in the chamber, I grew up with access to a family car and I benefited from that, as have my children. However, our overdependence on the private car is not only killing the planet but ruining our health and wellbeing and dominating the public space that is needed for economic regeneration in our towns, while excluding many people because of their age, disability or income.