Chamber and committees

We support people on low incomes to move towards, and benefit from, greener energy through our local area-based schemes and our national warmer homes Scotland service. The new warmer homes Scotland service relaunched earlier this week and aims to reach many more vulnerable households.

We support social landlords and their tenants to benefit from energy efficiency and heating improvements through our social housing net zero heat fund. We support every household in Scotland with free and impartial advice about greener energy use and lower energy bills from our Home Energy Scotland service.

I am grateful. I agree that we need to take the debate forward in a way that brings people with us. Does Edward Mountain think that the use of language such as “eco-zealots” and “extremists” helps to achieve that or undermines it?

I thank the many members who have spoken in the debate—although perhaps slightly less the member who gave that piece of absurdist performance art that we just heard.

The debate has, of course, marked climate week. Perhaps this year more than ever it has felt that every week is climate week, with the news media full of frequent vivid reminders of the climate breakdown that is already happening, such as floods, wildfires, land destroyed and species pushed to the brink. John Swinney painted that picture extremely powerfully, and Mark Ruskell said that we are reaching a tipping point for the climate emergency. In relation to Mr Ruskell’s reflection on how he feels looking at his children and thinking about their future, I would say that anyone who is not fearful of what young people’s future will look like is simply not paying attention.

Climate week feels different this year for another reason, too. Just as we are at the point where the signs of breakdown are at their most stark and the need for action has never been greater, we find ourselves at a political pivot point in our recent history. The UN global stocktake recently told us very clearly that we need a systemic transformation of every aspect of our society, and we need it fast. Inevitably, almost every member who has spoken today has responded to the Prime Minister’s extraordinary announcement last week. The response has been both to the content of the announcement and the way that it was announced, with no detail attached and no prior discussion or co-operation with the other Governments in these islands.

We are now faced with two scenarios. One is where leadership prevails and Governments respond with urgency and give stability for businesses and investment while ensuring fairness and support for households and communities to cope with the rapid change that is needed. The other scenario is characterised by policy reversals and an approach whereby the next general election is the only horizon in sight.

I will give way to Mr Swinney.

No, thank you.

The Prime Minister spoke about being honest with the public, then proceeded to knock down straw men in his hunger to generate a climate culture war. As I was listening to that speech, I lost count of the number of entirely non-existent policies that he reeled off before saying, “I have scrapped it.” What he scrapped was any shred of credibility that he had on climate. Not only did he betray our future and break his own manifesto pledges, he debased the office that he holds.

There are some on the right who are sincere in their belief that free-market economics can solve this crisis, even though it has been the cause of it. I profoundly disagree with them, but at least they acknowledge the reality of the climate emergency and they want to respond to it, even if they are misguided in how they should do that. The Prime Minister could have listened to the likes Alok Sharma, for example, who is a Conservative colleague who chaired COP26 and said that he was

“Concerned about fracturing of UK political consensus on climate action ... Chopping and changing policies creates uncertainty for businesses and the public ... Ultimately this makes it more difficult to attract investment and pushes up costs for consumers”.

Instead of working with that sort of agenda, Rishi Sunak’s cheerleaders are the likes of Liz Truss and Jacob Rees-Mogg. And, as Christine Grahame reminded us, the notorious climate denier Donald Trump has also weighed in to support the Prime Minister. That is no surprise from a Government whose political motivation is made explicit when it denounces anyone who is seeking credible climate policy as eco zealots or extremists—language that has been repeated by the Conservatives here, in the chamber, today—and seeks ever more draconian laws to arrest campaigners.

That was as cynical an act of political vandalism as I have seen, not just to our green ambitions but also to this Parliament’s ability to legislate.

The direct harm that the change of policy has done will be bad enough, but there is also a huge missed opportunity in the positive steps that could have been taken instead. Let us take the heat in buildings agenda. We can do important things with the powers that we have, which is why we will have a new build heat standard from next April, well ahead of the rest of the UK, which will ensure that new buildings will have a climate-friendly heating system from the outset. We want all homes to reach good levels of energy efficiency, and we know that private tenants need that improvement urgently. Ben Macpherson was right to mention that different challenges exist in relation to our historic tenement stock—I declare an interest as a resident of one—and the heat in buildings consultation will give us more to say on that point.

That is why we are making good progress towards improving energy standards in new homes, towards a Passivhaus equivalent—with the support of Alex Rowley, who spoke very well and challenged us constructively, not opportunistically—and it is why we have the most generous grants and loans for heating and energy efficiency works in the UK, including rural uplifts, which Mr Lumsden seemed unaware of when he spoke.

When we have the levers, we match ambition with action. However, we do not have control over the capacity of the grid to match the increasing electrification of heat and transport, which is controlled at a UK level. We do not control the difference in the unit prices of gas and electricity, which the UK Government has repeatedly promised to put right but has failed to deliver—that is perhaps the biggest step that could make the heat transition more affordable for people, and it would go some way to addressing the concerns about a just transition, which Kate Forbes raised.

We do not have levers over the regulation of products and installers, which is used as one of the main routes to heat transition in other European countries and is needed to give that clear signal to industry to guide investment. Mr Whittle and various other Conservatives said that we needed to create markets and certainty; well, the UK Government’s announcements undermine and cloud the clarity and certainty that the Scottish Government is trying to provide.

Do I have time for one more, Presiding Officer?

I am grateful for the opportunity to offer a counter suggestion to the intervention that we heard a moment ago. Does Kate Forbes agree that, if the UK Government, instead of making the announcement that it did, had come forward with detail about how it would break the artificial link between gas and electricity prices, that would mean that people here in Scotland, where we regenerate cheap, abundant, clean, green and renewable electricity, would see the benefit in their bills? Does she agree that that is one thing that we could do to build public support for more renewables?

So we should slow down.

Will the member give way?