Chamber and committees

First, I assure the committee that I will keep my remarks as brief as possible. I know that we are up against the clock, but that should not preclude a proper debate. Nevertheless, I will try to truncate what I was going to say.

Amendment 1 states:

“A budget for a period must set out the proportion of the budget that is to be attributed to emissions from each of the following sectors”

and lists transport, energy consumption, land use, aviation and shipping as those sectors.

The committee took evidence on that when it produced its excellent stage 1 report on the bill, so I do not need to rehearse the arguments for it. The amendment is pretty straightforward; I do not need to explain it any further.

On my amendment 3, there may be differing views. It proposes full alignment with United Kingdom carbon budgets as set out in the Climate Change Act 2008. There was debate around that at stage 1—I remember that there were some very healthy contributions. There will be different views in the committee. My view—indeed, it was the view of the majority of respondents to the committee’s call for evidence—is that there should be alignment.

Amendment 53 came about as a result of some very good collaborative working with the cabinet secretary and her officials, which I found refreshing. Under the current provisions in the bill, ministers will be required to make a statement to Parliament setting out the extent to which each of the proposed carbon budgets takes into account the target-setting criteria and whether each budget is consistent with the latest advice from the UK Climate Change Committee. Following discussion at committee and during the stage 1 debate about the further information that Parliament might require to conduct scrutiny on the budgets, the amendment adds to the information that must be included in that statement.

Amendment 53 would also require ministers to share an indication of the policies and proposals that would likely be included in the next climate change plan, should regulations be approved. As I said, I have discussed it with the Government and, having had that discussion, I understand that it will be possible to publish that information only in “broadly indicative” terms. Members will have seen that that phrase appears in the amendment and they might think, “Why is Graham Simpson including such a woolly phrase in one of his amendments? That’s not his style.” It is not. However, I am accepting the wording in the spirit of compromise.

Thank you.

Will the member take an intervention?

Amendment 22 specifies a date for publication of the draft climate change plan. However, it would cut across amendment 55 in the name of Sarah Boyack, and we prefer amendment 55, so I will not move amendment 22.

Okay, I will leave it there.

Every committee member who has spoken today is in favour of franchising—and it is in the 2019 act. The message to SPT from the Parliament would be that the Parliament is in favour of franchising. The only thing that has been debated today is an element of that, which is about the existence of a panel.

You would then consider your legislative options, in the meantime. Is that correct?

I understand that. It is a negative instrument. We either pass it or do not pass it—we accept it or reject it. If it is rejected, there is nothing to stop SPT continuing with its work.

I thank the cabinet secretary for the work that we have done jointly on the issue. I enjoyed working with her while I was transport spokesman.

We have spoken about the issue before. I think that the cabinet secretary has the powers to do something, so will she confirm that? Will she agree to meet unions whose members are affected by such antisocial behaviour? Will she put a timescale on taking action?

That was a lengthy but welcome intervention. Monica Lennon knows the answer; she knows that I agree with her.

At the heart of this is the Scottish Government’s failure to meet legally binding climate change targets or to produce a draft climate change plan by the end of November, despite having promised to have it ready a year ago. Patrick Harvie was absolutely right when he mentioned that. That sets a worrying precedent, such that if a Government finds itself in a tight spot where it is unable to abide by the law, it just changes the law and, even worse, it expects Parliament to go along with it and to act at a speed that Parliament would not wish to act at, and without the level of robust scrutiny that we would normally wish for.

As the committee said in its report,

“effective Parliamentary scrutiny of targets and plans is a crucial component of overall net zero delivery and should not suffer due to the timing of this Bill’s introduction or the Scottish Government’s understandable wish to re-establish momentum.”

I agree with that.

It is worth setting out, as others have, the legislative landscape that has got us to where we are today. First, we had the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, which established the legal framework for setting emissions reduction targets and reporting on progress towards meeting them. That was amended by the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019. There was a lot of excitement that year about the climate emergency. That was the year when Nicola Sturgeon declared that there was one, so it must have been true. She said at the time that

“Scotland will live up to our responsibility to tackle it.”

No doubt the international confidence in the former First Minister’s messianic abilities to deliver is what had as-yet-unnamed world leaders queueing up for advice on how to do so.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the 2019 act imposed some pretty tough targets, including an interim target of at least a 75 per cent reduction by 2030, an interim target of at least a 90 per cent reduction by 2040, and a final target of net zero emissions by 2045. We are not going to hit the first target. That is not so surprising, given that the Scottish Government does not seem to have a plan to achieve it. Also, the Government is not going to meet its legal requirement to lay a draft climate change plan by 22 November.

The CCC, which is the independent adviser to Governments in the UK on climate change policy, had been due to produce its annual Scotland progress report in December 2023. In the absence of a climate change plan, that was postponed. The CCC eventually published its report in March this year, and among its conclusions were that

“Scotland missed its 2021 annual legal target. This is the eighth target in the past 12 years that has been missed ... The acceleration required in emissions reduction to meet the 2030 target is now beyond what is credible.”

The CCC went on to say that

“Scotland is therefore lacking a comprehensive strategy”

that outlines the actions and policies required to achieve the 2030 target.