Chamber and committees

So, last year, 45 per cent of practices had some access—

Okay—I will leave it there, convener.

Thanks, convener; it will be quick. It concerns something that we have not touched on yet, which is the cost of drugs to treat people with mental health problems.

I read recently that there has been an explosion in the use of antidepressants. There are now up to 1 million adults in Scotland who are on antidepressants, which almost gets us to the one-in-four figure that we mentioned earlier. There is a huge cost to all that, and I wonder whether you have done any analysis of that.

The Scottish Government has been talking about having a national smart card for well over a decade, but nothing has happened. When Humza Yousaf was transport minister in 2016, he published a report that said:

“The passenger is the end user of smart ticketing and it is critical that they see benefits in a consistent experience across Scotland from multi-modal smart ticketing.”

Nothing has happened since then and the minister has just announced yet another talking shop. Why has nothing happened and, to go back to my original question, when will we see smart ticketing?

We need a base load, and nuclear power should form part of the mix across the UK. The minister has not mentioned nuclear at all. What lessons has she learned from the German nuclear phase-out, as a result of which that country is burning more coal than anyone else in Europe?

I did not hear most of that, but the language was not helpful.

Audit Scotland has said that the SNP’s

“climate change governance arrangements”

are missing

“core elements”.

It did a report on how well the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals and noted:

“we have found that some key elements of good governance are missing from the Scottish Government’s climate change governance arrangements or are used irregularly and inconsistently.”

The Scottish Government’s heat in buildings strategy will fail to meet its 2030 climate target. The Scottish Government itself admitted last week to “falling short” of its own climate change laws by failing to set out how its emissions-cutting targets are compatible with infrastructure investment. It has not published an assessment showing how those investments will impact targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

To me, the Prime Minister’s recent announcements were a dose of realism. We are still committed to hitting net zero by 2050, but Rishi Sunak wants to give the public a little more time.

The SNP says that it is in lockstep with the EU. It loves the EU and everything that it does, so why the outcry over bringing our own ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars into line with Europe’s? What is that about? You would have thought that SNP members would be happy about that. The move to push back to 2035 the date by which a new boiler has to be replaced by a heat pump, if appropriate, is also just common sense.

Speaking of being in line with Europe, I note that in July the EU passed a law that requires fast recharging stations for cars and vans every 60km—that is 37 miles in real money—along its main transport corridors by 2025. How about we fall into line with Europe on that? People would be falling over themselves to buy electric vehicles if we did that.

There have been some interesting contributions. In some cases, they were more heat than light. That was not so with Maurice Golden, the award-winning green giant who makes a lot of sense on environmental matters, although I do not agree with him on everything.

Mr Golden spelled out the long list of SNP failures: biodiversity, peatland restoration, woodland creation and renewable heat—I could go on and he did. He also reminded us that those missed targets are a symptom of failing to build a circular economy. We used to call that “reusing things”. There is nothing new in the circular economy; we have just forgotten how to do it. Whether a Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill will make any difference remains to be seen. Alongside Mr Golden, I have my doubts.

We heard from that strident defender of the North Sea oil and gas sector Douglas Lumsden, who reminded us that we need that sector to be strong because we do not want to have to rely on imported oil and gas. That is about energy security.

Mr Lumsden and I visited a couple of power stations recently. We were in Peterhead yesterday, where there are plans to build a power plant that will store its own carbon emissions before sending them off to St Fergus. Peterhead power station, which can produce enough power for everything north of Dundee, is the only non-nuclear power station north of Leeds. Scotland is pulling its weight in wind power and hydro, but we could do a lot more in helping towards the base-load.

We have yet to see a plan from the SNP to hit another of its targets: cutting car miles by 20 per cent by 2030. That must involve dramatically improving public transport, as Alex Rowley said, and making it cheaper so that people have alternatives to the car. We keep being promised a road map, but we have yet to see it. When the minister makes his closing speech, perhaps he will tell us what will be in that road map. I do not think that he will, but we will wait and see.

Scotland added just 169 electric vehicle chargers between October 2022 and August 2023, which is nowhere near enough—we are not getting there.

I have not even touched on homes, but that issue was mentioned by Kate Forbes and Edward Mountain. Improving a home’s energy efficiency is a good thing, but it can be ruinously expensive.

The UK actually has a good story to tell when it comes to cutting our carbon emissions, and we should celebrate that. Instead of creating division, the Scottish Government should seize the opportunity that has been presented by the Prime Minister to set more realistic goals that bring people with us.

Pointless fights and made-up gripes will not save the planet. Pragmatic politics might.

I was going to come on to Ms Forbes’s excellent contribution earlier. It was one of the more positive contributions from the SNP. She was quite right to say that we need to bring communities with us. That is spot on; I completely agree with her.

However, I go back to those missed targets. The Climate Change Committee said:

“Despite the scale of the challenge in the 2020s, Scotland is still not delivering on key milestones such as energy efficiency in homes and peatland restoration.”

It further noted that the

“trend of failure will continue without urgent and strong action to deliver emissions reductions”.

It is fair to say that this has been a mixed debate. I was interested to hear John Swinney strike a conciliatory tone during his contribution. He appealed for consensus. Well, there has been some consensus. We all want to get to net zero. I would like to get to net zero by 2050, and so would the Prime Minister. That has not changed, but the debate has been used by some as an excuse to simply bash Rishi Sunak. It could have been a more positive debate.

Douglas Lumsden was right: the SNP has no reason to crow about the issue, because its record is appalling. To date, it has failed to achieve eight out of 12 of its emissions targets.

In light of the Prime Minister’s announcement, is the cabinet secretary preparing to change the Scottish Government’s plans?