Chamber and committees

At the moment, we are bound to the previous climate change plan, which is in action. I am not going to put anything partial in the public domain, because that is a really tricky situation to put yourself in. A lot of people are relying on a credible climate change plan that is informed by CCC advice, our different approaches to the various emissions envelopes that we want to put forward and the new five-year carbon budgeting process. If you were in my position, you would probably feel the same. I do not want to put anything in the public domain that is partial or unfinished or has not been deliberated on. Obviously, I work with all my Cabinet colleagues on this, because it is not my portfolio that makes all the delivery commitments to reduce emissions—it is a cross-Government approach. If I were to put anything out there that was not fully informed by the CCC advice or the secondary legislation that we will bring forward, it would be partial and probably subject to a great deal of change, so I will not do that.

However, I want to leave you with the fact that the work on the climate change plan never stops. It is an iterative process. The climate change plan is a living document that is being worked on by me, my officials and my colleagues all the time, as we look at potential areas for getting the most emissions reductions possible in a fair and just way with the available budget. That process never stops. Obviously, the key moment is aligning it with the advice from the CCC, which we analyse. I will not put forward a climate change plan in draft form to the committee or wider stakeholders until we have run through all that advice and discussed with Cabinet colleagues what that means for their individual portfolios and all the different sectors in society.

That would be a matter for the committee. The committee has its processes for the scrutiny that it wants to carry out—

Yes. The committee is part of the Parliament, and the committee has its own process. However, I believe that the process for scrutiny of the climate change plan provides a minimum of 120 days. I hope that you appreciate that I want to get the plan to you as soon as possible.

Yes, I will. You wanted a short answer—yes, I will consider that. We will look at that.

The convener wants me to be short and sharp, so my main takeaway is that we must be honest about what gets us the largest reduction in carbon emissions with the budget that we have and for which there is agreement and appetite as part of a just transition. I am having a conversation with my colleagues in the Cabinet—with regard to land use and transport, for example—about which areas we can accelerate and go further on, within our limited budget, that will make the biggest difference. Maybe we have tried to do too much and the process has been too piecemeal. We are looking at which areas we can we bring our limited resources into in order to have substantial change.

Land use, transport and construction. A lot of work has been done in the housing area, around energy performance certificates, for example. A lot of work has been done on construction. There is also peatland restoration and work on the skills for that. We have been doing reasonably well on peatland restoration, and that is the big-ticket item with regard to carbon sequestration. We are in the position that we are in not because there has not been enough money associated with that work—£250 million over 10 years is a lot of money—but because we have not had the capacity, in the form of a trained workforce, to do that work. We need to look seriously at that area, which comes back to the point about embedding work across portfolios.

Yes.

We are proposing a couple of mechanisms. First, as I said in my opening remarks, we will still have annual reporting, which will be important. Instead of annual targets, we will have annual reporting on the progress towards the five-year carbon budget ambition.

The bill will retain our current rhythm of reporting on greenhouse gas emissions and on where we are with the climate change plan and how that has been embedded.

Reports on the climate change plan will be unchanged. When we were taking forward the bill, we were clear that we wanted that aspect to be retained completely as it was in the 2009 and 2019 legislation. Under the 2009 act, ministers are required, each year, to lay before the Scottish Parliament

“a report on each substantive chapter”

of the most recent CCP.

We are also required to lay in Parliament a report on emissions reduction every year, indicating the percentage by which the net Scottish emissions are lower than the baseline. That has happened every year, and it will continue to happen every year—nothing in the bill will change any of that.

Your point about how important that is is not lost on me at all. A five-year carbon budget is not about waiting five years before reporting on it and then saying, “Oh, we have not managed to make progress on that.” Work is also taking place to embed those actions more deeply in every portfolio in Government.

I was listening to your evidence when it was suggested that an approach would be to report on key performance indicators in the climate change plan. I am open to considering anything. Work is under way on our having sectoral envelopes in the climate change plan. Obviously, Ms McAllan or I will be reporting on them every year, once the finalised climate change plan, as consulted on, is available.

That checking in on how we are doing every year, with Parliament scrutinising how we are doing annually, and being able to ask me or Ms McAllan questions on that, is fundamentally important. Perhaps changes will need to be made; things might need to be accelerated or there might be blockers to things happening. Conversely, achievements might have been made in certain sectors due to innovation that we did not anticipate. Whatever the position, we are able to report on which sectors are doing particularly well and which ones perhaps need some other assistance and support.

Well, we are nine weeks into the new UK Government, and the conversations that I have had, which have been mainly on energy, have been really positive. We have not had any disagreements. I am keen to find out from the UK Government what it is doing in other spaces. I would like to know what it is doing on heat in buildings, what its plans are for the gas grid and what it might be looking at on aviation, et cetera, and the targets there, because that will make a difference.

It is early days, but I am having conversations with the UK Government every week.

I guess that the legal lever is the fact that if we do not correct our action year on year, we will come up against the five-year carbon budget and the section 36 requirement. In terms of parliamentary scrutiny, if we are missing targets or if the annual reports show that we are not taking the action that we are supposed to take, we will have to commit to accelerated action. I will bring in Phil Raines—no, Norman Munro. Can I bring in the lawyer? [Laughter.]