Chamber and committees

In order to ensure safety for everyone who travels actively, we need to reduce the barriers to active travel. We also need to continue to invest in safe infrastructure. The Government is doing that on a scale beyond anything that Scotland has ever seen.

However, as Pam Duncan-Glancy rightly says, we also need to ensure that there is a wider package of support. All the pilots issue safety equipment to the children who have been provided with a bicycle, and the range of models used in the pilots also needs to inform the design of the national scheme. That is why the evaluation of those pilots will be important in providing useful information to make sure that our national scheme is as successful as possible.

Our commitment to encourage our youngest citizens to make active travel choices by providing free bikes for all children of school age who cannot afford them was initially met through nine pilots that have operated since summer 2021. An independent evaluation of the pilots was published on 27 January 2023, and the total number of bikes issued is 3,650, including 52 adapted bikes.

The free bikes activity has taken place in 20 local authority areas, including Glasgow, although we do not record data at a local authority level.

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.

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—

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.

—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.

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.

They are being spent.

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?