Chamber and committees

Are there any other views on that question?

Professor McHarg is looking to come in.

If we believe in the principle of religious freedom, surely it is clear that any pupil who is mature enough to decide that they are not a believer should not be required to go through a pretence of religious observance. Can the cabinet secretary assure us that, in analysing the consultation responses, she will give due regard to the views of young people who want to make what is a perfectly reasonable choice for themselves?

Where is it?

The Government was considering the consultation a year ago, and the real concern is that it has been spending that time watering it down. That is my fear and the fear of the green-heat industry.

The reality is that Scotland is already well behind many other European countries on the issue. France and Germany have been accelerating their action, and Scandinavian countries are decades ahead of us. The only way to catch up and to give Scottish households the benefit of affordable and reliable heat, and to cut the pollution that is destroying our environment, is for the Government to act decisively and to show leadership. However, just as the Government has slowed down on other green measures by hiking rail fares and watering down rent controls, progress on clean heat has been stalled.

Will the First Minister commit to getting the overdue proposed legislation published this month, so that we get the clarity and leadership that have been lacking?

Happy news is a rare and precious thing in these times, so I echo the congratulations to the First Minister and his family on their new arrival.

In April, energy bills are set to rise for the third time in less than a year, and people across Scotland are worried about those bills. At the same time, energy companies are raking in vast profits at the expense of people and the planet. Our energy markets are broken. We could both say what we think the United Kingdom Government should do to fix those markets, but the Scottish Government has also promised action that has not been taken.

My most recent question to the First Minister was nearly three months ago. I asked him about his promise of a new law to end our reliance on gas for home heating—law that is vital to tackling the climate emergency and cutting people’s bills. The proposed law was, without explanation, already overdue back in December. Here we are in March, but there is still no legislation and no explanation.

Yes, indeed. Up until recently, there has been a complete lack of consumer protection in heat networks, and that needs to be fixed. We have been learning lessons from countries such as Denmark on how to do heat networks well, and we need to continue to do so.

Some people have posited the issue of fairness purely in terms of the favourability of particular types of energy infrastructure. Do people want a pylon built? Do people want wind turbines? Do people want this infrastructure or that infrastructure? I would make the case that all energy infrastructure brings controversy with it. When I was first elected, Scotland was still burning coal to generate electricity, communities not so far away from where I live were blighted with open-cast coal extraction, and businesses had an abysmal track record in protecting communities from environmental harm, seeking constantly to expand that open-cast coal extraction.

With regard to the infrastructure, every solution—every choice that we might make about what energy system we should build—will bring controversy with it.

However, I am looking at the moment at recent polling by YouGov on public support for the UK getting more energy from different types of sources. The overwhelming support is for tidal, solar, offshore wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and onshore wind, and there is fairly strong support for biofuels. The public view was fairly mixed and balanced on nuclear, and the public view on fossil fuel was strongly opposed. I think that we need to recognise that aspect.

There is not time to address everything that I would like to have said. However, I will say that, notwithstanding some of the anti-net zero comments that we have heard today, which would have been more at home at a conference of the Heartland Institute or the Reform Party—perhaps one or two members have decided to jump ship early—there is a question around just transition. Just transition needs to be more than a phrase, and it will not be if we leave the political and economic power with the corporates, the billionaires and the shareholders and investors, who will only ever serve their own short-term interests. Governments need to make a just transition happen. That has not been happening so far.

Whether the issue is Grangemouth, the North Sea industries, or oil and gas companies slashing their already meagre renewables investment, or every household in the country worried about its energy bills and wanting to shift away from fossil fuels affordably, the market will not deliver—Government must.

Will the cabinet secretary give way on that point?

I do not have time, I am afraid.

We have an energy system that is still regulated as though it is for the needs of the 20th century. Renewable electricity is the cheapest power to generate and should be the cheapest to consume, but the way that the UK regulates the energy market artificially increases its price to consumers and acts as a barrier to people shifting away from fossil fuels for heat and transport.

We also have a gap between the political desire to be seen as climate leaders and the political courage to act. Despite our strong track record on renewables, there has been little to no progress on other sectors such as land, buildings and transport, and there is now a series of delays to the energy strategy and just transition plan. I have seen suggestions that the legal rulings on the unlawful approval of Rosebank and Jackdaw have in some way led to those delays. That can be the case only if the Government proposes to express positive support for those unlawfully approved developments.

The heat in buildings bill would relate to one of the most obvious areas in which we do not just need to cut emissions but to deploy systems that can use renewable electricity to displace fossil fuels at scale and in a way that will cut people’s bills. That was accelerating in the first two years of the current parliamentary session, and the bill was on track to be introduced before the end of 2024. Now the bill is absent, with no explanation.

Renewables growth did not happen by magic. Scotland was successful because successive Governments gave clear and consistent signals to innovators, investors, the workforce and policy makers that Scotland was serious about renewables. That is the clarity that we need on the clean heat sector—for building owners, investors, installers and those who train them, and for the businesses that are innovating in new systems. The benefits are there for the taking in jobs, reduced bills, emissions cuts and energy security, but only if the Scottish Government ends the delay, commits to a truly ambitious agenda and puts the bill before the Parliament now.

I move amendment S6M-16657.1, to insert at end:

“; believes, however, that for the benefits of renewable energy to be maximised, further action is needed; further believes that both governments should place a higher priority on public and community ownership of renewable energy infrastructure; recognises the need for the UK Government to make changes to energy regulation and pricing to incentivise renewable generation, storage and grid infrastructure, and to make electrification of heat and transport more financially attractive, and further recognises the urgent need for the Scottish Government to end the delays to the Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan and the planned Heat in Buildings Bill, which must be introduced to the Parliament as soon as possible.”

We have heard some well-reasoned, thoughtful and well-informed speeches; we have heard some bluster as well. In particular, some of the SMR boosterism has been a little bit overblown and silly. In their speeches, some members were pretty much saying, “SMRs are just lovely. SMRs are modern. SMRs are just wonderful, and they’ll solve every problem.” I was pleased that Michael Matheson tried to burst that bubble. At one point, I almost thought that I was hearing Sir Humphrey Appleby telling his minister, “SMRs are quite simply the nuclear power station Harrods would sell you.” We should attach to some of those speeches the same kind of absurdity that we would to those performances.

SMRs have not been proven anywhere in the world. In fact, I draw members’ attention to the comments of the Environmental Audit Committee at the UK Parliament, which wrote last year to the outgoing UK Government expressing doubts on SMRs. When referring to whichever reactor wins the UK design competition, it said:

“It seems unlikely that the reactor will be contributing generating capacity to the grid until 2035, which is the date by when the Government expects the GB electricity grid to have been decarbonised.”

The new UK Government wants to decarbonise the grid by 2030. SMRs will play no role in doing that, even if somebody somewhere in the world cracks the many challenges in making them viable.

I want to talk a little bit about how this debate links to the previous statement on the geopolitical changes that we are seeing around the world. There is a profound link to energy policy, and there is a good reason why many of my colleagues in the European Green Party have used slogans such as “More wind, less war” and “Less power from gas, less power for Putin.”

The way in which we move away from fossil fuels, which have been used as a geopolitical weapon by global bullies for decades—even for generations—needs to be accelerated. Some people say that nuclear power can be part of the shift away from fossil fuels, but nuclear power is still based on and would still bake in the reliance on a fixed, finite commodity—high-grade uranium ore—and whoever ends up possessing that commodity. If the world was to commit to a transition away from fossil fuels that was fundamentally based on nuclear power, we would simply be redesigning that same dynamic but with a different commodity—not fossil fuels, but high-grade uranium ore—and future generations would come to curse our name for having made that mistake.

Various members have talked about fairness in that transition. I spoke in particular about fairness in terms of cost, contrasting the low, low cost of production of clean, green, renewable electricity with the high cost of consumption. That fundamental injustice needs to be changed. I wish to goodness that we could change that here in Scotland. In its review of pricing, the UK Government must be put under pressure to break the link between fossil fuel prices and electricity prices, so that people are given a real incentive for people to shift away from fossil fuels for their heat and their transport.