Chamber and committees

Actually, I will not, because I think that I am out of time, and I do not have any extra time.

There are things that we can do, but we are not doing them. We need to consider examples such as that one in order to create a market in hydrogen. If we can create a market in hydrogen, we can benefit places such as Grangemouth. It is the same with sustainable aviation fuel.

It is clear that, despite what the cabinet secretary claimed earlier, the Scottish Government’s record in climate change is poor. It has missed target after target, as Maurice Golden said. The Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Bill will not change the climate—the title is a misnomer. We do not know when carbon budgets will be set, we do not know what the new level of emissions reduction ambition will be, and the Government will be able to produce a climate change plan whenever it likes. Warm words will not cool the climate, but action might.

The Deputy First Minister talks about good, well-paid jobs in Scotland. She may be aware of today’s announcement by Alexander Dennis that it could be shedding about 160 jobs. It is blaming the Scottish bus fund, which has funded more vehicles being produced in China than anywhere else—or certainly than in Scotland. Will she say something about that serious issue?

As a member for Central Scotland, I, too, have to mention Grangemouth today, because the news has been devastating. I hope that our two Governments can work together to save that facility. I think that it has a future, and I will go on to say why.

The title of the debate is “Growing Scotland’s Green Economy.” Earlier, I asked the Deputy First Minister about the announcement by Alexander Dennis, which is also in my region—it has two plants, in Falkirk and Larbert—that 160 jobs are at risk. In its press release announcing that terrible news, it mentions phase 2 of the Scottish zero emission bus challenge fund—ScotZEB 2.

Members may not be aware of what ScotZEB 2 is. It is a Scottish Government fund for zero emission buses or coaches, so it is very much in keeping with the debate. Alexander Dennis says that

“government zero-emission bus funding has disproportionately benefitted competitors from lower-cost and lower-security economies.”

In a letter to me, Fiona Hyslop confirms that 66 per cent—the majority—of the orders from that fund have gone to China and 17.6 per cent have gone to Alexander Dennis, which is Scotland-based. For me, that is a problem. We have Scottish Government money going to China and not to Scotland or even the rest of the UK. There is an issue there, and the Scottish Government needs to take a good look at it.

Paul Davies, the managing director of Alexander Dennis, said:

“We are deeply disappointed that the ongoing effect of various government policies”—

he mentions the UK Government, too—

“is now threatening some of these jobs.”

He went on to say:

“Competition ... is healthy, but when taxpayer money is spent with little domestic industrial, economic or employment benefit and bus companies effectively are incentivised to buy from lower-security economies, it creates an incomprehensible dynamic and an uneven playing field.”

That is the effect of that Scottish Government fund. When we are talking about growing Scotland’s green economy, we really need to look closer to home.

I read with interest the green industrial strategy, which was published yesterday. There is some well-intentioned stuff in there. It talks about

“Maximising Scotland’s wind economy ... Developing a self-sustaining carbon capture, utilisation and storage sector ... Supporting green economy professional and financial services, with global reach ... Growing our hydrogen sector”

and

“Establishing Scotland as a competitive centre for the clean Energy Intensive Industries of the future”.

That all sounds good enough, but let us take just one of those examples—hydrogen. The strategy lays out the actions that the Government will take:

“Identify barriers to hydrogen production development ... Encourage domestic demand for renewable and low carbon hydrogen and hydrogen products ... Support the sector to develop new place-based hubs of co-located hydrogen production and demand”

and

“Maximise export opportunities for hydrogen and hydrogen products.”

When we see words such as “identify”, “encourage” and “support” in Government documents, it often means that nothing will actually happen.

I can give the Deputy First Minister another idea. I have quoted in committee European Union regulation 2023/1804 on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure. Members will never have heard me say, “Let’s follow the EU”, but I do so on this one, because the regulation says that, by the end of December 2025, there should be one recharging pool at least every 60km—that is 37 miles—on the main road network in the EU.

The regulation also does a number of other things in relation to hydrogen infrastructure for road vehicles, liquefied methane for road transport, electricity supply in ports, electricity for aircraft, and railway infrastructure to include hydrogen and battery power. We are seeing hydrogen fuel stations being installed along main routes throughout Europe—measurable outcomes with measurable carbon emission benefits. If we do that, we create a market. If we create a market, people start to change behaviour.

It is the same with—

When the cabinet secretary announced the decision, she admitted that, in some cases, people had saved thousands of pounds through the pilot. Does she agree, then, that ending it will cost people thousands of pounds?

Will the member take an intervention?

Would Ben Macpherson not accept that this is about the way that ScotRail is run? It is now nationalised. Surely he would accept that putting fares up—as is about to happen, in just over two weeks—is not what should be happening. Does he accept that?

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason rainforests were excluded from the deer management incentive scheme pilots. (S6O-03688)

Just before Parliament returned from the summer recess, Fiona Hyslop announced that peak fares will be returning to Scotland’s railways. There was no debate—that was it. Well, here is the debate today, and Parliament can give its view. I hope that the Government listens.

Transport Scotland declared the trial of having a simpler and lower fare structure to have been unsuccessful, even though it led to more people using the trains. With fares having been raised by 9 per cent in April, passengers are to be hit with a double whammy in just 16 days, which will result in someone commuting between Edinburgh and Glasgow facing fares that are nearly double what they were at the start of the year.

When Fiona Hyslop faced a barrage of questions on the topic last week, all she had in her locker was a bizarre claim that people will pay less if they take advantage of season tickets or something called a flexipass, which friends tell me is fiendishly complicated. All that begs the question of the transport secretary, if there is money for her new complicated rail discount schemes, why does she not use some of it to scrap peak fares, which passengers overwhelmingly prefer?

My fare from East Kilbride to Edinburgh will rocket by 83.8 per cent. That is not a saving.

In March, the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, Unite the union, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, Transform Scotland, Friends of the Earth Scotland and the Just Transition Partnership issued a letter to Fiona Hyslop. It read:

“If you were to restore peak fares it would be a retrograde step that would send exactly the wrong message at the wrong time. We urge you to do the right thing, scrap peak fares permanently to help Scotland meet its climate targets”.

Mike Robinson of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland will be delighted that I am quoting him. In March, he said:

“If we are serious about tackling the climate crisis, along with reducing inequality and improving health and wellbeing, it’s a no-brainer that using public transport should be cheaper than driving.”

I would not want to leave out my good friend Kevin Lindsay of ASLEF, who, in May, said:

“Surely just at the time the Scottish Government has backtracked on its net zero targets they should be doing all they can to make our trains more affordable and reduce CO2 emissions from road travel, which their own policy is committed to.”

Not for the first time, Mr Lindsay is bang on the money, as is Alex Rowley, whose amendment we will support because it calls on the Government to reverse that retrograde step. The Government amendment does not do that, so it should be rejected.

I should say that I would have been happy to support the Greens’ amendment, too, had it been selected for debate, and I give them credit for their work in getting peak fares scrapped in the first place, although, of course, others were also calling for the same thing.

If we want to get greater numbers of people to use public transport instead of driving, we have to make it simple and affordable. However, the service also has to be reliable, and it has not been. Almost 6,000 ScotRail trains have been cancelled since April, and more than a quarter of a million pounds has been paid out in compensation for delayed or cancelled trains. Two million pounds has been paid out since the nationalisation that was supposed to make things better. We have an unreliable service, and now it is to be more expensive. If the policy was to get more people on to the roads, that would be genius.

Fiona Hyslop has not been able to explain how increasing fares will help the Scottish Government achieve its ambition of cutting car miles by a fifth by 2030. Last week, the dire programme for government warned darkly of “demand management” measures. People might be tempted to hop in the car rather than taking the train from now on. However, I say to drivers of Scotland, “Beware: the SNP is coming for you”. The SNP Government is just not saying what it has in store yet. Maybe it is road pricing. It will certainly coin it in on that, at this rate.

It may surprise members to know that I do not always agree with the RMT, but, last week, it produced a critique of the Government’s backward decision that was spot on. It said—quite rightly—that the evaluation of the trial looked at the impact on overall demand and did not assess the impact on demand in peak time only.