Chamber and committees

Good morning, cabinet secretary. There is quite a long timescale for the bill. Earlier, I was relating to committee members a question that I was asked by a schoolboy from Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen. He was asking about legislating for information technology, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and he said that legislation and regulation take far too long. You have already covered what is a pretty lengthy timescale.

This all started in 2022, I believe, from initial conversations in 2018. Cabinet secretary, I recognise that you want to protect the Scottish Parliament as much as possible—as you always do—and our primary legislation in particular. You have concerns here, and I do, too. In some regards, are we going to have to find a way under the devolved settlement, with partners—or even if we were an independent nation—to change, globally, how we frame legislation when it comes to such issues? The baddies—to put it frankly—are able to move very quickly in what they are doing, yet we seem to take forever to legislate and regulate.

:My point about the jigsaw was not entirely about oil and gas in the North Sea basin; it was about the overall picture, which has come up in my questions and in other folks’ questions. I recognise that you are only an advisory body and cannot do the entire thing, but on the point of communication, I have recently seen you on various programmes. To a degree, the communication is fine, and I am not being critical of you, but the public need the complete picture. Frankly, they expect the Climate Change Committee to be the organisation—the neutral organisation, some would say—that provides that message.

This is my final point. You mentioned that your chair, Nigel Topping, was in Aberdeen recently. I knew about that only because he visited the hydro plant on the River Don that is run by Aberdeen Community Energy, which is an organisation that I follow quite closely. It is a pity that some of us did not know about that. Many of us, including elected politicians, might have benefited from accompanying him; people might even have indicated to him where he should visit. I will leave it at that, but perhaps you could take that away.

11:45

: Good morning. The witnesses have said this morning, and it is quite clear from the vision that the CCC has put out there, that a lot of these ambitions are based on electricity being cheaper. You said that earlier, Emma, and you said that a lot of the decisions around that issue are for us as policy makers. Well, neither the Scottish Government nor the Scottish Parliament has any say over electricity prices, so this is obviously a massive risk to take if prices do not drop.

It is also the situation at the moment that electricity prices are pegged to international gas prices. We have seen reports that there has been a 93 per cent rise in gas prices in the past 48 hours. The European benchmark has risen by 33 per cent and the UK benchmark by 30 per cent over the past day.

Is it not about time that the UK Government helped us all to gain that cheaper electricity, so that we can reach our ambitions, by removing the linkage of electricity prices and international gas prices? That question is for Emma, please.

:Can I stop you there? You mentioned 2022. Because of what has happened over the past 72 or 96 hours, we are seeing that volatility again, with a rise in international gas prices, which our domestic electricity prices are pegged to. You are saying that there will be less volatility for those folks who rely on electricity only. I am one of those folks, and I have to be honest and say that my electricity bill has gone through the roof over that period of time.

Surely the only way that we will persuade others to move away from fossil fuels to electricity is by reducing the cost of electricity and not pinning it to international gas prices, as is currently the case. That is logical.

11:30

:I am not one of those rare people—

:I get all that. It is fair to say that all the members around this table have spoken to all or most of those bodies, and I get your point about your remit. However, when it comes to dealing with the public at large, you are the advisers on climate change and the ones who push Governments to meet net zero ambitions, yet you say that we should speak to all those other folk.

The public think—quite rightly—that there is a level of fragmentation and that the jigsaw has not been completed. In an age in which many climate-sceptic politicians are on the go—the number seems to be increasing—surely we owe it to the public to complete the jigsaw so that they can see exactly what is required. Do you agree?

:I did not cut you off. [Laughter.]

:You pointed out earlier that Scotland is somewhat different because there are so many tenement properties. I live in one, so I am never going to have a heat pump. I am also never going to have solar panels, because nobody will agree to have them at this moment in time. And I do not drive, and never have, so I do not get the EV benefit. However, I pay huge electricity bills—as do many others.

In order for folks to move to electricity, we need cheap electricity. I recognise that you are not a policy maker, you are an adviser, and you said that the energy secretary will be listening to us—I wish the energy secretary would listen to us—but surely the Climate Change Committee must have some opinions or advice that it will give to the UK Government, which is responsible for that at this moment, to ensure that folks who cannot have heat pumps, solar or battery storage can get cheaper electricity. That will enable them to make the choice to move from gas to electricity. At the moment, somebody in my situation, in a tenement and with the bills that I have, would not move to electricity from gas.

:In my constituency, it is the majority of folk, quite frankly. In energy-rich Aberdeen, we are the ones who are being screwed, which, unfortunately, has always been the case.

It may well be that the Climate Change Committee does not have the remit to look at every aspect of market reform and all the rest of it, but you are advisers to the UK and Scottish Governments and, surely, because you have talked about all the risks—change at the level of households is one of the biggest risks—those conversations have to include a drive towards cheaper electricity.

:I am glad that we violently agree; we got there eventually.

I will turn to another point that you covered earlier, which is about utilising the North Sea basin rather than importing resources. You talked about the counterfactuality of using domestic supply compared with importing oil and gas, and you said that that is a complicated area. I do not disagree with you on that front. You offered to brief the committee further, which we would welcome. However, the difficulty is that briefing the committee will not get the message about your reasoning on the counterfactuality out to the public.

You may say that this is not in your remit, but surely it would be wiser to utilise resource here, which is often less carbon intense, than to import liquefied natural gas from Qatar. With the current volatility, who knows whether that will even be possible in the future?

Beyond that, what are you and others looking at regarding jobs? Utilising our own resource, rather than importing, would protect jobs here, rather than in Qatar, the United States or elsewhere.