Chamber and committees

Yes—that is why it is important to have a crofter around the table.

With any such change, whether in the environmental space or in any other space, people will have their own thoughts about how they want to manage the situation, and they will be supported through any decisions that they want to make. I will not go into the HR side of things, which will be looked at by the overarching board. That process will be very carefully managed. Obviously, people will have terms and conditions, and they will have options. However, I get what you are saying about loss of expertise. We want to prevent the loss of expertise. Maybe I should add a fourth test—whether we will be able to retain that expertise. That is a really important question, which I will take away, because it is one that we need to be mindful of in the course of the reforms.

You asked a question about better data, better information sharing and better performance of functions. I think that that is one of the opportunities of bringing the organisations together. Let me take SEPA, for example. You said that SEPA has a regulatory role. Yes, it does, but it also has an advisory function. NatureScot issues licences, but it also has an advisory role and helps us to set policy. It works very closely with other organisations in providing that advice. Those bodies are not just the environmental cops—they are so much more than that. Therefore, I do not see that as being an issue.

I did not write down your third question, because I was listening too intently.

That is exactly why parliamentary scrutiny of our plans is really important. I have introduced our proposals as they stand at the moment. However, during the parliamentary scrutiny period, members who have previous expertise or who gain insight through their investigations of the functions of various bodies might come to the view that the proposals could go further.

The shadow board and the CEO of the overarching body will be responsible for all non-day-job activity—that is, facilitating the merger and what that will look like, and the creation of the new body.

It is a very important question that you have asked me, convener, and it is an important point that has been made by our wider stakeholders, too. There are a couple of things that I want to say about it. The day-to-day services and the functions that SEPA, NatureScot and Zero Waste Scotland are carrying out right now will continue as normal, because we cannot take our foot off the accelerator in any of the things that they do. Moreover, the public and stakeholders will expect the same level of service. That is why the shadow board will be created.

The other thing that I want to say is that the core functions of each body and what they are doing now will not necessarily change. It is not as if anything that is being done now will be diluted. The model for Zero Waste Scotland, for example, and its approach to its business are very different from those of NatureScot; Zero Waste Scotland’s work has very much an economic growth aspect, and I see that continuing and its culture and approach remaining the same. What will be very interesting in bringing these organisations together—and what might well be a real bonus—is the knowledge sharing that will take place across all of them with regard to different models and approaches. However, the day-to-day functions and services will continue as they are.

By bringing together an overarching body, we will be able to look at where there is duplication and examine where, from the public’s perspective, there might be a little bit of confusion about which body to go to for a particular service. I am thinking of, for example, the various activities that SEPA licenses, and, in particular, the partnership working that it does on rivers. Such pilots are already under way at the moment; I can think of one near my own area, on the Dee and the South Esk, where SEPA, NatureScot, and local farmers and river trusts are all working together on a whole catchment-scale project. That is the sort of thing that I think could be—to use a term—mainstreamed.

There have already been moves towards closer working. It is perhaps a source of frustration for people when they are not sure whether to go to SEPA or NatureScot on, for example, water quality. If somebody wants to do something associated with their river trust, who do they go to? The one-door approach will benefit many of the stakeholders and, in particular, people who want to do large-scale and complex things with, for example, rivers. That is definitely one of the big potential wins in what we are doing.

We want day-to-day functions to continue throughout the process, which is why the shadow board will be important.

I would not have put forward the proposal to merge the three organisations if we had not done quite a lot of work to answer those questions. There have been others—I will not go into the internal thought processes and the back and forth on that—that did not meet that test.

09:45

First, I will give my thoughts on what you said about the committee’s remit. To a certain extent, that has always been the case. In session 5, I remember sitting where the convener is sitting now, as convener of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, with transport, the economy and housing—all the biggest sources of emissions—being covered by other committees. One of the big differences compared with that time is that, from the Government’s perspective, action on climate change is now a goal of the whole Cabinet, because climate action is one of the First Minister’s four priorities. There has always been recognition that that is needed, but there are now processes in place for each cabinet secretary with responsibility for the emitting sectors that are mentioned in the climate change plan. For the first carbon budget, which covers the next five years, about 40 per cent of the actions in the climate change plan relate to transport, because there are big opportunities to decarbonise the transport sector, as it is one of the biggest emitters.

I do not want to step into the convener’s shoes, but the committee could call the cabinet secretary with responsibility for delivering their part of the climate change plan to give evidence. I have responsibility for land use, biodiversity, peatland restoration and agriculture, among other issues, but Stephen Flynn has responsibility for delivering, through the next carbon budget, the transport parts of the climate change plan that Fiona Hyslop proposed when the plan was finalised, and Stephen Gethins, the energy minister, has responsibility for the decarbonisation of the energy system and the promotion of renewables, which will help us to decarbonise heat in buildings. I am responsible for delivery of the climate change plan at a high level, but the whole Cabinet and the whole Government have responsibilities, and particular cabinet secretaries will be able to give the committee the information that it needs on progress.

I can talk about how I am monitoring progress. When we put together the climate change plan, there was a Cabinet sub-committee on climate change. I have disbanded that committee because we now have a delivery group. I am taking a project management approach to the climate change plan and to delivery through the first carbon budget, and I will be meeting my Cabinet and ministerial colleagues with portfolio responsibilities for actions in the climate change plan.

From memory—Phil might be able to correct me—I think that the change from the sub-Cabinet committee to the delivery group was not in the climate change plan. We made that decision after the election. We have made lots of changes to the climate change plan, particularly the inclusion of much more information about delivery and monitoring. All those things are really helpful for the committee to know, and they also focus our minds, in Government, on delivery.

The constitution of, and remit for, the new group was something that I considered once I returned to post. I decided that the Cabinet sub-committee on climate emergency had done its job. It had produced a climate change plan to which Cabinet secretaries had contributed their actions. That work is done. We are now focused on delivery.

That was probably the biggest change to the climate change plan. The information was available, but it was not included in the plan, so we added quite a lot more of that to it.

That is why it is important that we get the overarching board in place as quickly as possible and appoint the CEO. Obviously, in all the public service reform work, teams in every portfolio are working closely with Ivan McKee’s team. A number of public bodies will be coming together, and there will be legal and human resources arrangements associated with that. The issues that you have put to me are absolutely drilled into, because it is fundamentally important that not only the people who work in the organisations but the public have confidence in what we are trying to achieve.

No, I think that it is a waste of money. I am going to be honest with you: monitoring absolutely every single overflow takes money away from investment in improving sewage systems. I think that Scottish Water has the ambition to do more monitoring of overflows, but that will be done on the basis of an assessment of what places need monitoring.

Scottish Water makes judgments based on its expertise, and I would not want to see a situation where investment in improving the sewage system in a particular town that has had issues does not happen at the scale that it should because money has been put into monitoring every asset in the whole of Scotland, including the ones that have never overflowed.

Various water companies in England have made decisions to spend their money on monitoring overflows, but I would say that that has been at the expense of investment in improving the infrastructure. I know that the Liberal Democrats have campaigned on this issue, but it is important to be clear that monitoring overflows does not prevent anything going into our watercourses. What is needed is investment in the infrastructure associated with our water treatment systems—many new ones have been planned and built in the past 10 years, in particular, and I advise everyone to visit the ones in their constituencies to see what they do—and to repair or replace sewage systems, some of which were built in the Victorian era. For example, in Perth, right beside the Tay—I forget the name of the road—a completely new sewage pipe and water system was installed.

If Scottish Water spends money on just monitoring everything, that takes away from the action and investment in the outcomes that we all want to see, which are a better sewage system throughout Scotland that is responsive to the different types of weather that we are getting now—deluge, water scarcity and flooding, which are happening side by side, week to week and month to month—and the different climate that is emerging. That is where I want investment, because that is what will make the biggest difference.