Chamber and committees

I am sure that Mr Kerr is aware that combi boilers also require an electrical power supply in order to operate, so power cuts would be disruptive whichever heating system was used.

Scaling up our ambition on zero-emissions heating is not only a positive opportunity to create jobs and skills in this country and to support businesses that are innovating. It also presents a challenge that is simply unavoidable: there is no path to achieving Scotland’s emission reduction targets without decarbonising heating, including in a million homes in this decade.

The Scottish Government has expanded capacity—for example, through warmer homes Scotland, support for small and medium-sized enterprises through Business Energy Scotland, and a host of other programmes. It is really encouraging to see the innovation that is happening—for example, through the much more affordable low-cost heat pumps that are being produced by British Gas and Octopus, supported by the flexible grant and loan systems that Scotland has available.

—and that it is

“irresponsible to impose huge demands”.

The Conservatives therefore need to make up their minds: are we doing too much or too little here?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. In my answer to question 1, I intended to refer to a figure of 200,000 installations per year by the end of the decade. I believe that I may have used the wrong figure, and I want to very quickly draw attention to what was an inadvertent slip of the tongue.

The WWF Scotland report is both welcome and challenging. It supports the main policies in our “Heat in Buildings Strategy”, which are designed to meet our objective for emissions reduction by 2045. Since that strategy was published, we have been developing more detailed proposals on supply chain capacity, delivery programmes, advice and funding.

On the key issue of regulation that the report identifies, we will consult very soon on proposals for a heat in buildings bill that is designed to give a very clear signal on how and when climate-friendly heating systems and improved energy efficiency measures will need to be installed.

As I said in my first answer, we have continued to develop an ambitious programme of work, including on the supply chain delivery plan, and to work with stakeholders, including businesses right across the sector. Incredible innovation is happening in the area of heat decarbonisation, as well as there being strong enthusiasm in the sector to retrain and reskill people so that we will have the capacity that we need. In recent years, we have been reaching the level of a few thousand installations per year, but we need to reach significantly more than that—perhaps 100,000 installations or more by the end of the decade. An extraordinary scale of expansion is therefore required. We are clear that the ambition is matched by the actions that we are taking.

I would also question whether the Conservatives are being entirely consistent on some of these issues. As the net zero spokesperson for his party, Mr Kerr told the Daily Mail—that notable champion of climate action—that the Government’s

“stated intention to ban the replacement of fossil fuel boilers from 2025 is unrealistic and will alarm”

people—

Unlike some other members, Mr Smyth is serious about wanting to see such a transition happen—and happen fairly. I mentioned the innovation that is happening in having more affordable, lower-cost heat pumps coming on to the market from providers such as British Gas and Octopus. We will see more of that happening, and it fits well with the Scottish Government’s more generous and more flexible grant and loan package of £7,500 for both energy efficiency and zero-emission heating systems, with additional uplifts for rural and remote areas. That means that the installations that we need to see in both of those sectors will gradually and continually become more affordable.

We also need to put pressure on the current United Kingdom Government if there is to be any hope of that happening. Mr Smyth might have colleagues in that Government before too long anyway, and he will need to put pressure on them to do what the UK Government has not done so far by rebalancing energy prices so that electricity and zero-emission heating systems are more affordable for people to run. I am sure that he shares the Scottish Government’s ambition on that point.

We all know that, when one particular budget is underspent, that money does not disappear—it goes back into other public services. However, does Colin Smyth acknowledge that, as a result of changes that we have made recently, Scotland now has, by far and away, the most generous and flexible package of grants and loans—not only better than any other part of the UK, but much better than Scotland has ever had—and that the industry is stepping up and making sure that the capacity is there so that people can use those grants and loans?

They are being spent.

I refer Mr Simpson to the answer that I have just given to Liz Smith. The private rented sector is dynamic: it is made up of tens of thousands of small-scale landlords and there is constant coming and going within the sector. Those landlords who leave the sector may, in turn, sell to other landlords, and of course new landlords enter the sector.

It is significant that the size of the private rented sector has more than doubled over the long term since devolution, even during a period of generally tightening regulation. As is acknowledged in the report from the cross-party group on housing, which Mr Simpson is involved in, regulated markets can in fact be attractive to institutional investors.

I remind Mr Simpson of what I have said repeatedly on the matter. I hope that he is not in denial of the reality, which is that the number of registered properties in the private rented sector has not decreased. It increased slightly over the first three months, between August and December. We will keep that under review.

The work that Graham Simpson referred to as “data” is surveys of landlords’ possible intentions in the future. It is not data about properties actually being deregistered and no longer being available in the private rented sector.

I come back to the wider point that, if we look not only at the past 20 years or so of the private rented sector’s more than doubling in a period of tighter regulation but at the experience of a number of other European countries where the rental market is more regulated, bigger and more viable than ours, it is perfectly clear that an approach that seeks to achieve everyone’s human right to adequate housing is entirely compatible with a viable rental market.