Chamber and committees

You said that the board responded

“positively to the escalation framework.”

What do you mean by “positively”?

I have a final question on a topic that has been covered before. We talked about financial sustainability, and you say in your report that there is a

“risk that the board is not financially sustainable in the short term.”

Rebbecca McConnachie talked about that as well. I want to understand what happens if that continues. If the board remains financially unsustainable, do we escalate it even further?

The Government likes to put warm and fuzzy titles to things when it wants to sound good. We have the wellbeing economy. Nobody is really sure what that is, but there is a cabinet secretary with it in his title. We have heard from him already. He is not here now, but he was on a bit of a whinge-fest earlier and, not for the first time, I found myself worrying about his wellbeing.

We have the circular economy, which is just not chucking things away and reusing as much as possible. There is a bill for that, which I suspect will cost businesses a good deal.

Here we have the green economy. Whatever we might think that is, according to the Government motion, it thinks that it is doing quite well at it, but ministers should not be so quick to pat themselves on the back.

I want to focus on two areas of interest to me, and they are both areas in which the Scottish Government should be doing better—transport and trees. Given the storms that we have seen this week, those are two things that can be linked, and they must surely be part of the green economy.

The cabinet secretary has come back. I was just saying that I am going to talk about transport and trees.

Good.

The cabinet secretary needs to read the SPICe paper, which shows that the total budget from the UK Government has actually gone up. That is the reality.

I will tell you what is a bit rich, Deputy Presiding Officer—it is the cabinet secretary bringing to the chamber a debate about the green economy, when the Scottish Government has cut the total green economy budget completely. It has gone—it has been cut to nothing. The cabinet secretary is shaking his head; he obviously has not even read his own budget. The figure is zero. What a nerve the Government has.

The Government has absolutely no chance of hitting its target of cutting car miles by 20 per cent by 2030. It does not even have a plan for doing that; it has no idea how to do it.

If there is a green economy in transport, it should focus on making public transport better, but the capital budget for Strathclyde Partnership for Transport has been cut to nothing—that is another zero—which is jeopardising key projects throughout the region, such as the upgrade to the subway system and a new station at Hairmyres in East Kilbride.

I will move on to trees while I still have time. I am a hugger of trees, occasionally. I am a member of the Woodland Trust and I am the species champion for the ash. Earlier, I asked a question about the forestry budget. The enormous cuts in the woodland grant budget will torpedo Scotland’s chances of meeting climate and nature targets. Scottish Forestry faces a cut in its grant budget of more than £32 million.

The Scottish Government has increased its woodland creation targets every year, but the amount of woodland that is actually being created has fallen in each of the past five years, so the gap between ambition and reality has grown year on year. The creation of more than 14,000 hectares of new woodland has been approved for the current year, but the reduced funding will support the creation of only 9,000 hectares.

Alastair Seaman, director of the Woodland Trust Scotland, said:

“The Scottish Government must remember that warm words won’t stop climate change or restore nature. We need investment in new woodland—and fast—if we are to have any hope of a strong economy”—

a green economy, we might say—

“and a healthy landscape in the years to come.”

I have not even touched on issues such as energy—on which ideology will get in the way, as it always does with this Government, but it will not keep the lights on—insulating homes, electric charging and missed environmental targets, which are all areas where the Scottish Government needs to do better.

I support the amendment in Douglas Lumsden’s name.

I am pleased that the cabinet secretary is doing well.

Let us look first at transport and what the draft Scottish budget says about that, which the cabinet secretary was somewhat in denial about.

As we heard from Douglas Lumsden, there have been a number of cuts to the transport budget. The Scottish Government has cut the total transport, net zero and just transition budget by £29.3 million in real terms. It has cut the total rail services budget by £80 million. It has cut the just transition fund by three quarters. It has cut support for sustainable travel by more than 60 per cent in cash terms. It has also cut the future transport fund by more than 60 per cent in cash terms—in 2023-24, it spent £99.4 million on that fund, but, in 2024-25, it will spend only £36 million on it.

To ask the Scottish Government how the spending proposals in its draft budget will help to achieve woodland planting targets. (S6O-02990)

I thank the minister for that answer, but she neglected to say that the Scottish Government’s target is to plant 18,000 hectares of trees per year. It is now providing funding for half of that, so the answer to the question is that the draft budget will not help to achieve the woodland planting targets—that was the answer that the minister was searching for.

If Scottish Forestry’s woodland grants budget is going to remain lower after 2024-25, which it will, how will resources be split between native woodland creation, commercial forestation, agroforestry and trees outside woods, given that there is not enough money to fund more than 9,000 hectares of planting?

Should the police not be investigating whether the activities of the message-deleting Covid cabal were in breach of the Inquiries Act 2005?

Yes, but we are trying to understand why you arrived at the conclusion that it was not value for money to continue with the Glen Rosa, as opposed to another option. Figures are therefore quite important in that regard. I completely accept that, if you were to go out and procure, you might arrive at a different figure, but you have based your assessment on something.