Chamber and committees

I recognise that we need to do a significant amount of work to get back on track to meet those targets. They are tough targets—rightly so—and we need to do better to make sure that we achieve them. My colleague Lorna Slater is working hard to ensure that we take forward the right measures to do that. That is why we have made a commitment to develop the waste route map—to ensure that we are clear on the tangible progress that we must make over the next couple of years to get us on track.

You said that the budget for Zero Waste Scotland has been relatively stable. It is 8 per cent higher in this financial year than it was in 2020-21. We have increased our level of expenditure on that area over recent years. Alongside that, we committed £70 million for the recycling improvement fund, of which some £20 million was allocated last year to a number of local authority partners to take forward strategic investments in recycling infrastructure.

It is not just about finance. We also need to see the circular economy as an economic opportunity. We get clear environmental benefits from recycling, but we also need to look at the economic opportunities associated with it. We will do that through the route map that we are looking to develop and our portfolio work on the circular economy. The intended circular economy bill is all about making sure that we seize not just the environmental but the economic benefits that can come from developing and expanding our circular economy overall.

There are two parts to the green jobs fund. Some £50 million has been baselined for our enterprise agencies and some £50 million is held at Government level. We are undertaking work with businesses to set the criteria to ensure that the fund is aligned with needs in the sector. That will allow businesses to start applying for funding in the new financial year.

For the record, convener, that area of policy does not sit in my portfolio; it sits with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy. However, the approach that has been taken is to have two tranches of funding—one run by the enterprise agencies and the other at national Government level.

The work to set the application process criteria is being done through engagement with the business sector, to make sure that the fund aligns with the skills that the sector requires, to help us to deliver more green jobs.

I cannot give you the figures for the enterprise agencies but I would be more than happy to take that question away and to respond in writing to Ms Lennon’s point, if the committee would be content with that.

There is no clear definition of what a green job is. There are competing views on what should be defined as a green job. The Scottish Government is undertaking some work, through engagement with a variety of stakeholders, to try to arrive at a shared, agreed position on what could be classified as a green job. What we classify as a green job might not necessarily reflect what other countries would consider to be a green job, so we need to make sure that we have an inclusive definition. That piece of work is being done just now so that we have that shared and agreed understanding, which will then allow us to understand the progress that we are making in delivering greater numbers of green jobs.

Convener, we are stretching the definition of my portfolio responsibilities here, but I am more than happy to take that question away.

There is a system for agencies to have business continuity and recovery plans in place. I am more than happy to take that question away and come back to the committee with some more detailed written information on that. When I was justice secretary, I was involved in working on the cyberattack on the national health service here in Scotland and across the UK. A number of hospitals and other NHS facilities were targeted, and I remember dealing with the Home Secretary of the time on some of our approaches to tackling those attacks. The role of the NCSC is to identify risks and provide advice and information, and a range of work was carried out off the back of those attacks.

I would be more than happy to come to the committee with more specific details about the internal processes for managing cybersecurity in public agencies.

I hope that we are in the recovery phase, even though we are still in the pandemic. We want our public transport system to recover. The reduction in passenger numbers over the course of the pandemic has had a significant financial impact on the sector, which has resulted in the need for a significant level of financial investment from the Scottish Government to support the sector. Railways are very resource intensive. They are expensive to run. They are fixed assets, and a lot of money had to be provided to sustain and support services even at a reduced level.

In the draft budget, therefore, we have continued to take account of some of the potential impacts of Covid on farebox revenue for both bus and rail. There are risks. We are in the realms of the unknown. Although rail leisure journeys are returning pretty much to pre-pandemic levels—they are probably not quite there, but they are similar—commuter journeys are nowhere near that. In bus travel, there is some level of recovery. It is probably recovering more quickly than rail but, again, it is not back up to pre-pandemic levels.

There are still financial pressures on the public transport network as a result of the loss of farebox revenue. During the course of the financial year, therefore, depending on what recovery in the public transport system and farebox revenue looks like, we may have to flex some of our budget to take account of that.

We are literally in the realms of the unknown, because we do not know how quick and to what extent the recovery will be over the course of the next financial year.

Another example could relate to district heating systems. Trying to facilitate and bring together a scheme of that nature would require resource support to get all the interested parties together. I will take that away and come back to you with more details on specific funding pots that might be available at the national level which community-based organisations could apply to.

You will be aware of the climate hubs that we are creating to try to help to create a much more sustainable approach to changing local communities to tackle the climate emergency. The first two are already up and running. We also have plans to roll out further climate towns. That might be one route for some towns and communities, but it might not always be the case. I can get further details on that for you and on other funding pots that might be available.

It is also worth thinking about funding pots that might not sit in my portfolio and that can help to deliver programmes that assist us in meeting our net zero targets. The funding will not all come through my portfolio; some of it will sit in other portfolios. I can take that away and ask officials to pull together some of the details for you.

I agree about the importance of the twin crises that we face—nature loss alongside climate change. Of course, climate change drives a significant part of nature loss.

Our budget line for biodiversity and natural infrastructure has increased significantly over recent years—there has been a 55 per cent increase overall. It includes £55 million of new funding to extend the nature restoration fund to £65 million.

As you rightly said, that is a multiyear fund. It will work across Scotland, and its objective is to help to create green jobs, to reinvigorate local communities, to reinforce Scotland’s green recovery, and to support large-scale multiyear, multipartner projects that can deliver transformative change. Part of the reason for its being a multiyear funding package is to give the sector reassurance of the level of funding that will be available in future years, to allow some of the long-term projects to be taken forward. Many nature-based projects are long-term ones, so we have sought to provide a funding profile that gives assurance about that.

I do not have to hand further breakdowns of how the nature restoration fund will be utilised at a lower level. However, I would be more than happy to take that away, and I will try to provide more detail, if that would be helpful.

There is.

You raise an important point. There is a capacity issue in the peatland restoration sector. It is a fairly new sector, and a limited number of companies or businesses operate in it. There is also a very small window in which peatland restoration can take place each year, which means that businesses that are involved in peatland restoration often do that work as an add-on to other things that they are involved in, because it is not sustainable in its own right. I think that the work has to be carried out in the September to October period. The sector is growing, and there are limitations in the skills that are available in it. Peatland restoration work is not viable on its own, given the very short timeframe in which it can be carried out.

There are capacity issues in the industry. I am not sure whether that is to do with people not being willing to take up the opportunity to restore peatland. I am not saying that that is not an issue, but I am not sure that it is one of the main issues. I suspect that a big part of that is access to skills and businesses being able to flex to doing peatland restoration work for a short period of time each year. That means taking their equipment away from the other things that they would normally do for the short window of time in which the work can be carried out.

You will be aware that we withdrew the proposed bill because it was criticised on the basis that it was not ambitious enough and would not drive forward the circular economy sufficiently. We decided to withdraw it and reintroduce a different piece of legislation. That is part of the background to the bill.

I expect that bill to come in the early part of this parliamentary session. I cannot say much more than that, because we have to go through a process in Government of agreeing landing slots for bills coming into Parliament and our future programme for government.

I assure you that the bill is viewed as one of the priority bills in this parliamentary session. Given the importance of making progress on the issue, I am of the view that it needs to be one of the earlier bills in the session. I will not go much further than that, but I hope that I can reassure you that it will be in, I would say, the first half of this parliamentary session.

This is partly tied up with the warm home discount scheme. For some time now—indeed, over the past year—we have been pursuing with the UK Government issues such as the future of the scheme and how it should operate, and we have only started to get a response from it. I hope that in the next couple of weeks we will be able to give a clearer indication to the sector about what will happen post-April, but, as I have said, the issue is partly tied up with some of the work that we have been doing on the UK Government’s warm home discount scheme and the reforms that it is planning to make in England and Wales. We want the system to be much more aligned with Scotland’s needs, but it appears that the UK Government is not prepared to allow that to happen.