Chamber and committees

I am grateful to members who contributed to the debate on the group. I am sorry that, as it seems, we are not in a position to change the bill to achieve what I am looking for.

I will respond briefly to a couple of the points that have been raised. The spending that is set out in the Scottish Government’s fiscal budget each year is, of course, not the only thing that will contribute to the spending and investment that are necessary to make the transition to net zero and align Scotland’s path with the carbon budget. Many other sources of funding and investment, including the private sector and the UK Government, are critical. However, that situation is not unique to climate; it applies in pretty much every other policy area. If the Government sets an objective in the field of health, for example, its achievement will be partly dependent on health spending and the investment that the Government makes through its budget for the NHS and the necessary services, but it will also be set by a host of other factors that affect public health, from individual behaviour through to the behaviour of corporations, given the goods and products that they sell, and other changes that are happening in our economy. Poverty and inequality will impact directly on health.

That does not mean that we should not set long-term objectives for health in Government policy, and it does not mean that we do not need to scrutinise whether each year’s budget contributes what is necessary to help to keep us on track on Government policies. In that sense, climate is not different from other areas in which we expect to scrutinise the Government’s budget and its ability to deliver on Government policies.

I will press amendment 14 to a vote, simply in order to register the concerns that I have raised. I hope that, in time, the Government will accept the need to close the missing area of scrutiny to fill in what Graeme Roy described as the missing jigsaw piece and to ensure that budgets are subject to independent scrutiny with a climate lens.

I press amendment 14.

First, I pay genuine tribute to Monica Lennon for making the choice to open her speech by recognising what we mean when we use jargon phrases such as “the climate emergency”. This is here and now, and it is life and death. Monica Lennon was quite right to remind us of that.

Throughout this afternoon’s proceedings, I have been struck by—and a bit upset by—the extraordinary gulf between the atmosphere in the chamber today and the atmosphere when we debated the Scottish Parliament’s first climate change bill 15 years ago. Back then, there was a huge demonstration outside the building, showing the anger and urgency, but also the optimism and determination of a host of civil society organisations, which came together in Scotland as a climate movement that was more powerful than any political party or the Government at that time. That is what forced every political party in the Parliament into what I described earlier: a race to lodge more ambitious, more constructive and bolder amendments to strengthen the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill during its passage, which is why we ended up with ambitious climate targets—well, those original climate targets felt ambitious at the time.

The atmosphere in the chamber today—when, for the most part, we have been simply nodding through technical amendments to a piece of framework legislation—tells us something about how we really feel about the bill. I think that we are a bit embarrassed by it, and I think that we should be a bit embarrassed by the need for it.

The first two climate change acts were statements of bold ambition, but the bill is an admission of failure. We need to own up to that and own it collectively, because that failure is largely a result of political choices that have been made. Even 15 years ago, when we were debating the first bold set of targets and racing for amendments to strengthen the bill, the Government was equally happy to celebrate a road-building programme; there was legislation to block or unravel road-pricing legislation that had been set in the first session of the Scottish Parliament; and a host of other policy choices were not being made in a way that was consistent with the bold ambition on climate targets.

Shifting from one legislative framework to another, what do we have in the bill? There are the multiyear carbon budgets, which is fine. I accept that the intention behind annual targets and achieving annual accountability to make it more likely that the Government would stick to a plan did not work—so, multiyear budgets? Fine. The bill includes accountability. It is not perfect, particularly in relation to the budget issues that I raised earlier.

However, the problem is not what is in the bill but what is missing at the moment, and that is the context of urgent policy action. I do not expect a full climate change plan right now, but I expect urgency. However, the assessment of the A96 is stalled and sitting on ministers’ desks unpublished; the energy strategy and just transition plan are stalled, too; there is a 20 per cent car kilometre reduction target, but nothing is happening on that; progress on rail fares and nature restoration is in reverse; and, this week, we find out that the Government is confirming significant job cuts in the heat in buildings programme—yet, without that programme, there is no credible climate change plan, and there cannot be one.

The cabinet secretary—I said “minister” earlier—makes an interesting point, which I reflected on when we debated the first climate legislation. At stage 3 then, we had a competition for the most ambitious amendments that people could make. Every single political party sought to make that bill stronger. There are climate deniers here, but they know that they are not allowed to say so openly, because those opinions are not given the space that they are given in other countries. That every party sought to make the bill stronger did not help us, though—did it? That fact did not keep us on track with the ambition that was set. Would the cabinet secretary like to reflect on why that did not happen?

At stage 2, I lodged an amendment on the emissions impact of major capital projects. I explored a number of ways in which that issue could be fitted into the new legislative framework, and whether it should align with the carbon budget report, the climate action plan and various other points in the cycle.

I think that it was understood and accepted that there needs to be some way of ensuring that the Government reports on an assessment of the impact of major capital projects—on some of which the Greens will disagree with others in the chamber. There will be major capital projects that others make the case are compatible with our climate ambitions but which Greens would criticise. We can have that debate in an informed way only if those projects are properly and rigorously assessed and we have the information available to us in order to make those judgments.

Is there time in hand, Presiding Officer?

I hope that Bob Doris recognises that, in any one financial year—because I am suggesting that we examine each year’s fiscal budget in isolation—we will be very aware of the context. We will know what UK Government policy is and what kind of changes have been made in the investment that is being brought to bear by the private sector, which needs to play a role in reaching net zero. We already have to consider each year’s fiscal budget on its own terms, in the wider context of how the rest of our economy is shaping up, and the connection with climate and with our emissions trajectory is no different.

I am glad that everyone is logged in in time for this last group—although, on this occasion, I do not think that it will do me much good.

I want to take members back to the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. In the passage of the bill that became that first climate act, 15 years ago, I moved an amendment making the case that we needed a degree of scrutiny of the Government’s budget—not of the carbon budget that we are discussing at the moment, but of the annual finance budget, which, I argued, needed to be scrutinised through a climate lens. There is a good degree of consensus that we need proper and robust scrutiny of everything that the Government does under the heading of climate action, including the climate change plan and so on. In addition to that, however, I feel that we need to bring a climate lens to our scrutiny of all Government action, including all Government spending.

I therefore moved an amendment at that point, and the committee and the Government at the time agreed that there needed to be a carbon assessment of the budget every year. We were debating that at a time when no one had ever done it—no one, in any country, had ever conducted a carbon assessment of their budget. It was a piece of work that was about innovation and creating a new methodology, and we all acknowledged at the time that the methodology would change, evolve and grow over time and that we would learn by doing.

Although I think that the methodology has improved and that it still adds some value, what has always been missing is independent scrutiny of the Government’s budget in climate terms, which is what I have sought to propose, both today and at stage 2 of this bill. At stage 2, I lodged an amendment to which the Government and others—quite reasonably—objected on the grounds of timescale—that is, that it would not be possible for Parliament to independently scrutinise the Government’s budget in climate terms in the short time available between the UK Government passing a budget, the Scottish Government introducing a budget, and then Parliament passing it.

What I am suggesting now is that, instead of that scrutiny taking place within the budget process, we set a later date within each financial year, which we align with the end of May or the period just before the summer recess. That is the timescale within which the Government has an agreement that, in normal circumstances, it will present the medium-term financial strategy. That is not to say that the document specified in my amendments should form part of that medium-term financial strategy; it will be looking at one year’s budget and asking whether it adequately funds the action necessary to be compatible with the carbon budget.

However, climate action works over a longer timescale, and so does the Government’s medium-term financial strategy. At that moment—at that fiscal event, if we like—the Parliament will be asking all those longer-term questions, such as whether we are heading in the right direction and whether we are going to achieve what we are setting out to do.

The key issue is that we are missing the independent nature of financial scrutiny. The Scottish Fiscal Commission—which I would consider to be the appropriate body to carry out that independent assessment—gave evidence to the committee at stage 1 of this bill. Graeme Roy said:

“Nothing in the annual fiscal budget says, for example, what we are spending on net zero, so how can you have a bill that says what our ambition is and what progress we are making on the targets, if you are not able to trace that through to whether the Government’s spending action is consistent with that? Is it overachieving, overambitious or underachieving? That is one piece of the jigsaw that has been missing.”

And it remains missing.

Parliament’s scrutiny, of both the budget and wider climate action, would be stronger and better informed if this aspect of the budget was subject to independent scrutiny, in the same way that other aspects of the Government’s fiscal policy are subject to independent scrutiny. We pass tax resolutions through Parliament, but the Government’s tax policy is first assessed by a body with the appropriate fiscal expertise—the Scottish Fiscal Commission—to tell us whether that tax policy will generate the revenue that the Government expects it to. We, as a Parliament, would not be in a position to make those decisions in a well-informed way if it were not for that independent scrutiny, and I am seeking to add that to the bill with regard to the connection between the fiscal budget and the carbon budget.

I expect that the Government will argue that that would imply somehow that it is only the Scottish Government’s budget that is relevant to the investment in spending that we need in order to comply with the carbon budget. Of course it is not: every level of Government—the UK Government, the Scottish Government and local government—has a role to play, as does private investment, both by companies and by individuals and households, in redirecting our entire economy towards our net zero ambition.

As a Parliament, however, we have a responsibility to scrutinise the Government’s budget as it presents it, and that scrutiny needs to be well informed with regard to the alignment between what the Government says that it wants to achieve on climate action and the contribution that it is making to achieve compliance with the carbon budget.

rose—

I thought that I was intervening, Presiding Officer.

We will certainly explore that, as the Government’s quote in response to The Scotsman article seemed to suggest otherwise.

The fundamental question is this: how are we to have any confidence in a new framework? It is not enough simply to pass the framework, just as it was not enough to pass the original framework and the original climate targets. We need to have confidence that we will not wait for Climate Change Committee advice, the carbon budgets or the climate change plan, but will take action now on the issues that are already stalled. It is only by doing that that we will have confidence that the new framework will be effective. If it is not effective, I fear that we will be in a repeating cycle, and we simply do not have time to waste.