Chamber and committees

To bring all that together, if we accept that there are funding gaps—for social security, the figure is not too distant from being a very big funding gap, and we have spoken about pay deals—and if the Scottish Government is to make such policy choices, which I accept are not yours but those of ministers, it will have to look at making savings or cuts in other areas, will it not?

Thank you.

I am now going to ask you about ScotWind; other members might have questions about it, too. I do not know whether you have seen the letter that the Auditor General wrote to the committee on 18 December, but I will quote from it. He says:

“It is not clear from our papers how the ScotWind monies have been used in each of these financial years and whether this is consistent with the earlier intentions, expressed throughout 2022, for this money to be invested in addressing the climate and biodiversity crises.”

What is your response to that?

It would be useful if you could give us that written consolidation.

It is fair to say that some of the ScotWind money went to fund pay deals. Is that correct?

I am going to ask you about net zero next. I will read paragraph 18 of the Auditor General’s report to you:

“The Scottish Government’s target of achieving net zero by 2045 is also placing pressure on its finances, and will continue to do so ... The Scottish Fiscal Commission estimates that, in order to meet its climate objectives, the Scottish Government will need to invest an average of £1.14 billion of additional capital spending annually until 2049/50. However, the Scottish Fiscal Commission has also forecast that the capital funding that the Scottish Government receives will have fallen by 20 per cent in real terms by 2028/29. This will place significant pressure on other areas of capital spending.”

Do you accept that analysis?

It seems a pretty obvious approach, though, does it not? If you are going to reduce spending, you might as well look at the impact of doing so. I am surprised that it has not been done before.

You accept, therefore, the potential risk that bringing in the levy could mean a loss of trade, if you like, for parts of Scotland.

Will you give us a bit more detail on the invest to save fund that you mentioned?

Yes—thanks a lot, convener. Permanent secretary, you have mentioned child poverty a few times. I draw your attention to a correction that the First Minister had to make to an answer that he gave to the Parliament on 27 February, on the Scottish child payment. In his original answer, he said:

“the Scottish child payment ... is helping to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.”—[Official Report, 27 February 2025; c 18.]

In his correction, he says that it is

“estimated”

to be

“helping to keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty”.—[Official Report, 27 February 2025; c 121.]

That is an estimate, and the term has gone from “poverty” to “relative poverty”. Is it fair to say that we do not actually know how many children have been helped?

Thank you.

In debates such as this, we often get bogged down in arguments about oil and gas versus renewables, net zero versus no net zero and, as is the case with the Government motion, nuclear versus renewables, but it is not as simple as that. The truth is that there is more common ground than people—even Mr Lumsden—would like to let on that there is. This could have been a positive debate about renewables, because there is a good story to tell on that. Instead, it is a dial-the-clock-back-50-years debate against nuclear, so let me tackle that one first.

The SNP Government’s view—we have known about it for years, so we do not need a debate about it—is that Scotland should not build new nuclear because the electricity that is produced is expensive. However, that does not consider the cost of intermittency—the wind not always blowing—or of transmission. Scotland has the most expensive transmission network in the UK, because lots of wind power is generated in rural areas, very far from where it is needed. Stable, predictable and geographically concentrated nuclear is much more straightforward to transmit. Wind energy is available only 45 per cent of the time, and it requires back-up from gas. Nuclear is available 90 per cent of the time and is therefore more reliable.

Germany, Austria and Belgium have seen their carbon emissions rise after the decommissioning of nuclear plants. The advice from the National Energy System Operator—NESO—to the UK Government on how Great Britain can achieve green power by 2030 included contracting more offshore wind capacity, increasing battery capacity, the delivery of carbon capture and nuclear power. The Climate Change Committee has previously suggested a target of 10GW of nuclear by 2025.

I do not often agree with Keir Starmer, but he was right when he said:

“This country hasn’t built a nuclear power station in decades. We’ve been let down, and left behind.

Our energy security has been hostage to Putin for too long, with British prices skyrocketing at his whims.

I’m putting an end to it—changing the rules to back the builders of this nation, and saying no to the blockers who have strangled our chances of cheaper energy, growth and jobs for far too long.”

Hostage to Putin—is that what we really want?

I mentioned Germany, which is a great example of why countries should not phase out nuclear. Germany now burns more coal than anyone else in Europe in order to cover its electricity needs when the wind and sun are down. German industrial and domestic electricity prices are some of the very highest in the European Union—they are about 30 to 50 per cent higher than prices in France, which gets 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear. German industrial competitiveness is suffering from persistent high electricity prices, which have been caused by the nuclear phase-out. The motion that is being debated is an example of why we need a change of Government in Scotland.

Let me turn to renewables, because that is an area in which there is some positivity.