Chamber and committees

I recognise the challenges that some people in our fishing communities face. Marine protected areas, highly protected marine areas, renewables and offshore oil and gas all impact on fishing communities and fishing grounds, which is in addition to the challenges that they have around accessing certain fish. It is important that, as we move forward with the development of the marine plan, we fully engage them in that process. You will recognise that we must manage a lot of competing interests, but their concerns and the issues that they have must be a central part of our consideration.

I will ask David Pratt to say a bit more about how we will take forward the marine plan, but there is no doubt in my mind that we must ensure that our fishing communities are a key part of how we consult and engage in that process, given the many competing challenges that we face in our marine sector.

As part of climate adaptation, there is a need for better planning and management around flooding. We can see that that is increasingly becoming a challenge for some local authority areas. Part of the challenge to date is that flood management has often been focused on a particular flooding event. A key part of what we are looking to do with the revision of the strategy—or with the plan around the strategy—is to take a much more holistic approach in dealing with flood management, so that we look at the wider issues that impact on and cause flooding, rather than just at individual instances and events. That is why we are taking this piece of work forward, which will be in partnership with local authorities and other stakeholders, including the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, which all have a part to play in tackling that increasing problem.

The other part to this is how flooding occurs. There are now many more localised intense weather events that last short periods. Those events often overwhelm the existing flood management infrastructure. That is why we must look at some of the wider measures that need to be put in place around that. We intend to achieve that through our work on how we can better develop flood planning with stakeholders.

One of the aspects of this is to try to pool proposals that some small local authorities may have that would not be attractive to private sector investors on their own, where several local authorities might be looking at doing something. Take, for example, somewhere like Forth Valley, with Falkirk Council probably trying to do something on its own but possibly working in partnership with Stirling and Clackmannanshire Councils and maybe West Lothian Council as well. Bringing together collective proposals is one of the mechanisms to try to help it work better for smaller local authorities.

Even for some of our big local authorities, operating on their own for the scale of investment that they are looking for is probably not viable. Some will probably have to think about working in partnership with other big local authorities to get the scale that some private sector investors are looking for.

I will need to take de-risking away. Finance colleagues lead on this matter. I am more than happy to take that away to look at what we are doing to try to help to de-risk some of the challenges. I know about some of the work that the Scottish Futures Trust is doing to try to de-risk EV charging for local authorities and the private sector investment in that, but I am more than happy to take away the issue about reducing the risk. On your other question about local authority propositions that are in the GIP, I am more than happy to take that away and come back with some details on what propositions are there.

Sure. I am happy to do that.

You see it happening in some local authorities. With the scale and level of investment that has now gone into aspects of active travel, you can see the considerable levels of ambition that some local authorities have on helping to get the right active travel infrastructure in place. It partly reflects the significant increase in funding that we are making available to active travel and the priorities that we have set out in the NTS and the investment hierarchy and the transport hierarchy.

You can see it by some of the ways in which local authorities are looking at the future delivery of transport provision within their areas and at different models and different approaches to take it forward. We see some real ambition being set out by local authorities.

Is there more that I would like to see happening in some local authorities? Absolutely. A lot of it is sometimes dependent upon individual officers and their desire to pursue particular policy areas. However, we are starting to see aspects of the NTS hierarchy becoming real policy on the ground, particularly in areas such as active travel and looking at wider transport provision within local authorities. I expect that to continue to develop, given the level of funding that we are putting into it in the coming years.

I gave a commitment to the committee earlier in the year to give you an update, which I am about to provide this week. I hope that it will give you much more detail on how the organisation will be taken forward and how it will operate. I hope that the committee will find it useful, given that I gave a commitment to provide that further detail. That information will be with you shortly.

That is covered by building regulations, but I am more than happy to take it away and we can come back to you with some further detail, including on the technical points that you have raised on how the points system operates.

If I recall correctly, the challenge around that is that we had intended to respond to the committee’s report with our work on developing a new marine plan. That work was paused and delayed, which meant that we were not able to provide a full response. I am more than happy to ensure that we look at providing that response as part of our work to develop the new marine plan.

If the grid capacity is there, it could be by 2030.

Thank you, convener. Good morning. Households across the country are struggling to cope with the cumulative pressures of the cost of living crisis, and energy costs lie at the heart of that crisis. Record-high inflation, which is in large part being driven by energy price increases, has forced thousands of people to choose between heating and eating and to experience the worst decline in living standards in the past few decades. The tragic events in Ukraine have exacerbated the already elevated fuel prices, which have risen to unprecedented levels, and the impacts are felt by domestic and business consumers in Scotland. We have also seen the standing charges in fuel bills double, which means that reducing consumption does not save as much as would have been the case previously.

Scotland is a forerunner in renewable energy generation and has the potential to expand our renewable capacity and reduce energy bills. However, investment is being held back due to unfair network charges, which is a missed opportunity in the current energy crisis. A significant number of Scottish households are off the mains gas grid and, due to the interconnected nature of the energy market, natural gas price increases have had a knock-on effect on electricity, heating oil and liquefied petroleum gas prices.

This year, the Scottish Government is set to invest almost £770 million in helping to tackle the cost of living pressures, which includes a £150 cost of living award to support households with higher energy costs, and there is a further investment of £10 million to continue our fuel insecurity fund. Crucially, we are also committed to investing at least £1.8 billion over the next five years in heating and insulating Scotland’s homes and buildings.

We have repeatedly called for urgent and targeted support from the UK Government in the immediate and longer term, such as: a one-off windfall tax on companies that are benefiting from significantly higher profits during the pandemic and energy crisis; direct financial support for low-income households; improvements to the warm homes discount scheme; and a temporary removal of VAT on energy bills.

Sadly, in the March budget, in the energy security strategy and, last week, in the Queen’s speech, the UK Government repeatedly failed to deliver anything to match the scale and urgency of what is required. However, we continue to engage with the UK Government on those matters. We are also engaging with stakeholders and the sector to explore what more we can do and how we can work on a four-nations basis to help to address what is a growing crisis for many households.

Convener, I am happy to respond to the committee’s questions.