Sorry but, before we go back to Ash Regan, my problem is that that is chicken and egg. You do not want funding to be ring fenced, and you will give an assurance that it will be paid in the right direction provided that it is for the long term; however, surely the Government will just come back and say that it wants it to be ring fenced and that it will be for the long term. Is that an oversimplification?

I am sorry, Ash. I jumped in—I apologise—so back to you.

That will be the issue of interest and the challenge. We have not always got that right. I know that Highland Council was subsidising all its EV charging points so that people got very cheap charging across the council area. Some people felt that that was wrong. Similarly, we have seen that in other services that we provide, including hospital television, where people have been charged through the nose because we have attracted private finance for that provision.

My concern is how we balance that and how we let people who are benefiting from a service know that it might cost them something in return. Unless we do that, we will not take the communities with us.

I see that you are nodding, Councillor Macgregor, so we are not disagreeing.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence session following our inquiry into the role of local government and its cross-sectoral partners in financing and delivering a net zero Scotland.

The committee reported to the Parliament in January after a major inquiry that lasted over a year and which ranged over a variety of issues relevant to local government. On 14 March, we held a debate in Parliament to highlight the conclusions of the inquiry. We received a response from the Scottish Government on 20 April and agreed to invite back the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and its partners in sustainable local governance to share their views on the response and the way forward.

I am pleased to welcome Councillor Gail Macgregor, environment and economy spokesperson, COSLA, and leader, Dumfries and Galloway Council; David Hammond, representative of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers and head of sustainability, corporate property and transport, North Ayrshire Council; George Tarvit, director, Sustainable Scotland Network; and Silke Isbrand, policy manager, environment and economy team, COSLA. Unfortunately, due to an accident at the weekend, Silke Isbrand is joining us remotely. I hope that you are fully recovered and fit—I would not say fighting fit—for this session.

I thank you all for accepting our invitations. We are delighted to have you here.

I think that Councillor Macgregor wishes to make a short opening statement.

Everyone is ducking.

One of the issues that came up in the Highlands is that none of the services was included in the initial vaccination programme, so people in the services were completely excluded from it.

Does the member believe that local GPs’ contact with patients who had not gone to vaccination centres led to our achieving a 98 per cent rate with the first round of vaccinations? We never managed to achieve such a high rate again.

I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, to share our assessment of the Scottish Government’s air quality improvement plan.

As a committee, we agreed that requesting an announcement was important because it sets a strong precedent that improvement plans should be looked at differently from a typical affirmative instrument.

To give a bit of context, the plan is the first to be considered under the new post-Brexit arrangements for environmental law in Scotland, and it follows an improvement report issued by Scotland’s new environmental watchdog, Environmental Standards Scotland. The focus of ESS’s investigation was how nitrogen dioxide levels were being managed by local authorities within the current system of local air quality management and how they were being monitored.

ESS recommended a number of steps that the Scottish Government should take to speed up the tackling of air quality at a local level. The improvement plan has looked to address ESS’s recommendations through making guidance to councils and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency more robust.

We are broadly satisfied that those actions represent a step forward and hope that the guidance provides local authorities with the clarity that they need in undertaking their stewardship of air quality. However, we also have a number of concerns.

If we expect local authorities to deliver the necessary improvements to air quality, the Scottish Government must ensure that they are funded accordingly. A lack of resources means that councils may continue to struggle, which risks hindering realisation of the improvement plan’s aims.

Councils also face unprecedented staffing challenges. Without enough planning or environmental health officers, the Scottish Government will not be able to achieve its ambitions on air quality. Our report calls on the Scottish Government to set out how it will increase uptake of those professions.

We are also not convinced that updated policy guidance will ensure that SEPA delivers the desired approach to the monitoring and enforcement of local air quality standards, and we are unclear whether the agency has the relevant powers and resources to undertake its additional oversight role to full effect.

The committee also chose to take the opportunity to consider wider air quality issues. I would like to set out briefly some of our key findings.

First, we assessed the effectiveness of the Scottish Government’s cleaner air for Scotland 2 strategy. We found that, although the strategy has ambition, there has been a lack of progress in implementing some of its key promises to mainstream air quality across policy agendas and deliver a modal shift towards sustainable forms of transport.

We also looked at low-emission zones. We found that LEZs were a significant development in tackling air pollution in our urban spaces but that they were not a silver bullet on their own. Instead, a wider package of interventions must be looked at to combat air pollution, particularly in more rural areas, where LEZs were unlikely to provide a solution.

Finally, we looked at best practice in tackling air quality. We were encouraged by the idea of establishing a programme of continuous improvement to make incremental progress towards achieving the challenging 2021 World Health Organization guidelines. Our report calls on the Scottish Government to set out those pathways as part of its upcoming review of the cleaner air for Scotland 2 strategy.

In conclusion, Presiding Officer, the air that we breathe is essential to our wellbeing. By tackling air pollution, Scottish people can enjoy a better quality of life with reduced health risks. We hope that the implementation of the Scottish Government’s air improvement plan will help to achieve that aim. It is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. We therefore recommend that it be approved by the Scottish Parliament.

Will the member give way?

Will the minister take an intervention?

One reason why vaccinations worked so well in the Highlands was that general practitioners were allowed to deliver them, which went against the GP contract. Will the minister commend GPs for delivering vaccinations, and will she support their doing so again if we ever face a pandemic in the future?