Do not touch a button. The microphone will come on for you.

Good morning and welcome to the ninth meeting of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee in 2023. Today we have received apologies from Monica Lennon and Ash Regan. I welcome Collette Stevenson. Mercedes Villalba will also attend later, as a substitute. When she joins us I will have to pause to ask her whether she wants to declare interests before she asks any questions. Technically, that is the first item on the agenda, but it will come at the correct moment.

Therefore, we will move to agenda item 2, which is to make a decision on whether to take items 6, 7 and 8 in private. Items 6 and 7 are consideration of the evidence that we will hear today on the outcome of the 15th United Nations biodiversity conference of the parties—COP15—and Scotland’s deposit return scheme. Item 8 is consideration of a draft report on the United Kingdom Energy Bill. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Item 3 is an evidence session that forms part of our scrutiny of the outcomes of the 15th UN biodiversity conference of the parties, otherwise known as COP15. Members have received papers on the subject.

Last week, the committee heard from a panel of experts in biodiversity policy. This week we will hear from the Scottish Government on its views on the outcomes of COP15 and about how the targets that were agreed at the summit will be embedded in the new Scottish biodiversity strategy.

I welcome Lorna Slater, the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity. Thank you for attending today. I also welcome Matthew Bird, who is biodiversity team leader, and Lisa McCann, who is head of biodiversity, from the Scottish Government. I believe that you wish to make a brief opening statement, minister.

I am pleased to open the debate on the committee’s inquiry. I thank the many people who contributed to the inquiry, especially the councils and their local partners from business and the voluntary sector who hosted the committee on its four visits, to Stirling, Dundee, Aberdeen and Orkney.

I also thank my committee colleagues for their marathon efforts on the inquiry, which lasted for more than a year. Not only did the committee take a lot of evidence, it covered a lot of bases. It looked at everything from the intricacies of multimillion-pound green finance deals to whether tree preservation orders are fit for purpose. It was truly a multipolar inquiry, informed by expert opinion from a variety of disciplines.

By the time that I joined the committee as convener in September last year, the bulk of the evidence had been collected. I therefore saw my main role as ensuring that we kept on top of the mountain of evidence that we had accumulated and came up with a report that was less a compendium and more a succinct call to action—to separate the wood from the tree preservation orders, as it were.

I hope that we succeeded. I think that it is a truly excellent report with a small number of clear general messages, interspersed with some more granular recommendations. I know that the report has been welcomed by local government, which I expect will be keen to hear what the cabinet secretary says in response today.

On that note, it is perhaps a little disappointing that the Scottish Government was not able to reply to our report before today’s debate. If it had done so, we might have been able to push the discussion on a little further today. However, I look forward to hearing what the cabinet secretary has to say. The committee embarked on the report while recognising the importance of local government as a layer of democracy closest to and most rooted in our communities, and the heft that that gives when it comes to preparing for net zero, for instance, in taking place-based planning decisions that truly reflect local needs.

Another strength of councils is their unique convening power—the power to get different interests round the table and to be a catalyst for positive change in climate change and, indeed, all other areas. On that note, it is important to stress that our report is as much about those partnerships as it is about local government itself.

The committee agreed the report unanimously, in the spirit of consensus, which is important. I hope that that constructive spirit can be sustained in today’s debate, with a pragmatic focus on the question: where do we go from here? I propose that against the backdrop of our headline finding that we are unlikely to make Scotland net zero by 2045 unless we have a more empowered local government sector that has better access to skills and capital. The sector will need to play a full role in this energy revolution, and it must have a clear understanding of the specific role that the Scottish Government wants it to play in some of the key delivery areas.

This is not a counsel of woe; good progress has been made in many areas. The committee was inspired by the work that many councils are carrying out with their local partners in the business and voluntary sectors in areas such as electric vehicle charging, reuse, recycling and renewable energy. The report has case studies on those.

However, overall, councils feel underpowered and they are struggling to deal with the pace of change that the net zero transition requires. To paraphrase the evidence of one council leader, it is hard work for councils to think strategically about their carbon footprint when they are wondering how they will fill potholes and keep schools open. That is a real problem.

This is not simply the debate that we are all used to having about council funding, hugely important though that is. In the report, we call on the Scottish Government to provide additional support to councils in future budget cycles, to help them to contribute to national net zero targets.

There is also a knowledge and skills gap, as councils themselves recognise. The net zero transition means that unprecedented and often highly technical demands are being made on local government’s resources and skill sets.

Where do we go from here? I will set the scene by mentioning four key recommendations, knowing that other committee members might want to expand on those or other ideas in their speeches this afternoon.

First, the Scottish Government needs to provide a comprehensive road map for delivery of net zero in key areas that also gives councils more certainty than they have right now about the roles that they will have to play and the leadership that they must provide. That applies in several areas, but I single out heat in buildings as one area in which progress most needs to be made and where councils are least sure of their role and least certain that they have the right tools and resources for that role, whatever that turns out to be.

Secondly, and complementary to that first recommendation, the Scottish Government needs to create a local government-facing climate intelligence unit to provide help to councils in areas where in-depth specialist knowledge is lacking. One aspect in which such assistance is most needed is in securing help with green finance deals from institutional investors. Just about everyone agrees that that will be necessary if we are to have any hope of meeting the 2045 target. That is specialised and high-value work. The rewards are potentially great, but the level of financial risk is equally high. We also want the Scottish National Investment Bank to be more active at the interface between local government and private finance.

Thirdly, we call for a review of the Scottish Government’s challenge funding streams for net zero-related projects. We want there to be larger, fewer and more flexible funds, to avoid the needless bureaucracy and perverse incentives that we heard can bedevil the current system.

Fourthly, we call on the Scottish Government to address churn and delay in the planning system, which has a chilling effect on investment in all areas, including renewables. We also need a strategy to address long-term decline in the number of people who are employed in council planning departments.

In some areas, councils could do more to help themselves. An Accounts Commission report from last September found inconsistency among councils in the level and depth of strategic planning for net zero. It also found that, in general, councils were not thinking enough about mitigating measures and addressing residual carbon. That was largely corroborated by evidence from our inquiry.

Many councils need to do more to show their working and demonstrate how they propose to reach their targets. Councils will find that work easier if they can tap into the enthusiasm of their residents. That was underlined by the evidence from the Freiburg council in Germany, which is a global leader in municipal-level net zero planning. The witness was clear that the city’s success was largely due to the engaged and politically literate local population, who constantly kept the council on its toes. To put it differently, the net zero project should not be centralised but should be something that people and groups can shape, lead and deliver.

That would have been well understood by Patrick Geddes, the father of modern town planning, much of whose work was done not far from this building. Long before the modern environmental movement was born, he understood intuitively that the best and most sustainable solutions are usually low-impact ones that are decided locally, not imposed from far away. “Think globally, act locally” is a mantra of the modern environmental movement, but that message was at the core of his philosophy and is at the core of the committee’s report.

I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the conclusions and recommendations in the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee’s 1st Report, 2023 (Session 6), The role of local government and its cross-sectoral partners in financing and delivering a net-zero Scotland (SP Paper 302).

I am grateful. I realise that the cabinet secretary is coming to the end of his speech. My question is a very simple one. Will he give the committee some indication as to when he will respond to the report?

The whole point of the system is to be fair to all parties: to the person who makes a complaint and to the person who is complained about. You have outlined the procedure that you have gone through for the person who is making the complaint and how they can find out about and in due course see the progress of their complaint through the system. That is very important, because it gives you a certain amount of strength to argue your case that you are taking each complaint seriously—I know that you do that, but it lets you prove it.

Although you have to be impartial in how you investigate a case, are you happy that you are giving advice to the person at the sharp end of the complaint about what they can do? After all, it is quite nerve wracking. I had a complaint against me. It was struck off, as it happens, but I can tell you that it is a nerve-wracking procedure because most—I would say all—MSPs want to do the best they can. It is quite daunting when you get a letter, especially if you are a new MSP, which in my case I was. Do you feel that you are doing as much as you can for the person the complaint is being made about and that you are giving them the correct advice on where they can seek support and help.

I will perhaps leave it there, convener. I am sure that it is work in progress that everyone considers to be important, because the process should be fair for all—not just the complainer but the person who is complained about. I welcome your comment that you think that more could be done.

It would be helpful for me to see it. This is one of the things that I feel very strongly about. I do not want to discourage anyone from making complaints, but a speedy and fair resolution is absolutely critical for the person who has received the complaint against them. If someone is informed that there is a complaint against them, I believe that it goes against natural justice if it then takes months to sort it out. The pressure on that individual is huge. I am keen to see that that procedure form is there and there are review dates so that, if a complaint sits there for more than a set period of time, that is flagged up to the next level of management until eventually it lands on your desk with a flag saying, “If I don’t resolve this tomorrow, it might be my job on the line as well.” Is that procedure in place?

I am sure that that is good news. I stress that I am not trying to discourage people from complaining, but I am thinking about the pressures on individuals with a complaint against them.

Convener, I have a question about the advice that is given to people who have a complaint against them. It may be appropriate to put that later in the session.

You will not be surprised that I am asking this question, because I have pushed on it before. Whether or not a complaint meets the requirements to be investigated is quite formulaic under the legislation. I would like some assurance that, when a complaint comes in, the simple tests of admissibility are ticked off on a spreadsheet or a covering sheet and that there is no delay in doing that, because it appears to me that that might have been a failing under the previous system. Is that covered in the manual that is referred to in recommendation 3.4 in the Deloitte report?