Chamber and committees

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I have not been able to connect. I would have voted yes.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I had the same issue. I would have voted yes.

The Scottish Government welcomes industry leaders urging the United Kingdom Government to make Acorn an immediate priority in order to unlock billions of pounds of investment, create thousands of jobs and decarbonise Scotland’s industry.

The First Minister and I have had regular engagement with UK Government ministers and the Prime Minister on the matter specifically, and have impressed on them at every opportunity just how important Acorn is for Scotland’s environmental commitments and economic ambitions. Despite that engagement, there still has been no meaningful progress since July 2023, when the previous UK Government confirmed that Acorn was “best placed”. That delay is entirely unacceptable.

The answer is absolutely yes—more than that, I am already working with the UK Government on it. One of my first discussions with Michael Shanks on the matter concerned some of the funding that might come from GB Energy being put into our community and renewable energy scheme—for which demand is out the door—in order to increase the scheme’s capacity. I said to Michael Shanks, “Don’t reinvent the wheel—we’ve got a really good vehicle for this, and we have more people who actually want community energy.”

One of the great things about CARES that it has taken out much of the difficulty for communities in setting up their own community energy. Previously, a community almost had to have people who were experts in the area to be able to do that. I want more community energy and I want the procuring power of developers to be used. That procuring power is significant, so developers could, in effect, say, “Would you like a community energy scheme? We’ll build and fund it—it’s yours.” I think that, if that were to be the case, a lot of the difficulties would melt away.

I welcome Douglas Lumsden’s support for Acorn. I know that he has given it his long-standing support, and I am sorry that his support, and the support from others on his benches, to be fair to them, did not make a difference when the Conservatives were in office. I know that they tried, and I want to be fair to them on that.

On the £80 million that we have put aside, the business case is already there—it has been set out again and again. The £80 million is for when the Acorn project gets track status, in order to make the early developments to get it off the ground. That is what the industry and partners in Acorn and the Scottish cluster have asked us to do. We have been supportive of them right the way through the tracks process. The business case does not need to be made any stronger than it already is. It is there and it is clear, and it is quite beyond me why the project has not been taken up by the UK Government. I have my own personal beliefs as to why it was not given track status, and it was not because of a lack of a business case.

I thank Kevin Stewart for that particularly incisive illustration, from talking to people who are working in the oil and gas and energy industry, of how important it is that we get certainty here. There is of course an opportunity for the new UK Government to award track status to Acorn, as well as the funding associated with it, in the comprehensive spending review. That is what the letter from industry experts has asked for, and that is what I have been asking for. I have had many meetings with my counterpart, Ed Miliband, and there is a recognition that the Acorn project should be given track status.

However, it is to the Exchequer that I make my plea—and to which we should all make our plea. There is a chance for the chancellor to right the wrongs of what Kevin Stewart has outlined about Scotland being an afterthought and to put in the money and the investment so that we can get the project off the ground at long last.

The thing is, however, that “presumption against” is two words; I will not go into this too much, but behind our energy policy—as well as behind the energy policies of Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems—there is more nuance than that and there is more discussion. It is not about just those two words; it is about what we do and how we support people. It is about the money that we put forward to support people. It is about the £500 million that this Government gives to people in the supply chain to help them to fill their order books with renewables as well as oil and gas. It is about the training programmes that we put in place for people to upskill so that they can take advantage of new jobs if they are worried that their company might be leaving the North Sea because it is not economical to produce there any more. It is about all those things.

I will not, because I feel that it would just take us back to Victorian Britain, where people like me did not do terribly well.

I will set out my stall on some of the things that I think would make a genuine difference. There is no magic bullet—there must be a combination of things. Some members included ideas and reflections in their contributions. Fergus Ewing did that very much, as did Ben Macpherson.

Here are some of my reflections. Decoupling the cost of gas and electricity would be a start. The more renewable electricity we generate, the cheaper it will be, then, potentially, more people will make the decision to heat their homes with electricity or to drive an electric car—to change over to electricity. Companies might locate themselves here, so there would be high-intensity industries that would provide more jobs. As long as the cost is volatile and attached to gas—the geopolitical aspects of that were mentioned by Mark Griffin, among others—there is a false link and people cannot see any certainty. Those things are just for starters.

A social tariff for vulnerable customers would make a difference right now. If it was implemented within this financial year, it would be the biggest game changer for the vulnerable people who have racked up monumental debt that they will never be able to pay back and that is costing the utilities companies lots of money in trying to recover it. We have had good feedback from the utilities companies about the social tariff, we have had a working group that has been working on it for quite a long time, and we are producing a report, which I think was mentioned by Marie McNair. That report will be offered to the UK Government, because we have done the work to show how a social tariff could work, and lots of stakeholders across lots of sectors, including the utility companies, are backing it. It would make a significant difference to people who are in poverty.

On standing charges reform, at the moment, Scotland and North Wales pay the highest charges. The lowest standing charges are in the south-east of England and in London. The last time I looked, we were generating quite a lot of electricity in Scotland. We have been a bit of a powerhouse with regard to energy.

I have already taken an intervention from Mr Lumsden, so I will not bother, thank you.

Standing charges are currently skewed to benefit the areas with the highest populations and with—let us face it—probably the most votes.

I would like to take Willie Rennie’s intervention, but I will mention him instead. I enjoyed his speech—he talked about mental health, which made me think about how the level of debt that is associated with fuel poverty exacerbates poor mental health.

I also want to mention area-based schemes. In my discussions on the budget, I have protected the money that is going into area-based schemes and the warmer homes Scotland scheme. We have increased the money for area-based schemes because they are turning more houses, faster, into the energy-efficient homes that they should be. Again, however, demand is out the door. There is good progress in that area.

I will use my final 20 seconds to say something about the proposed heat in buildings bill, because I am going to be up front with members. I will introduce a heat in buildings bill when I can be satisfied that the interventions in it will decrease fuel poverty at the same time as they decarbonise houses. With the greatest respect to Patrick Harvie, I do not feel that the previous drafting that was done took that into consideration significantly. There are so many moving parts. I will craft a bill that will simultaneously reduce carbon and tackle fuel poverty. Until I can do that, I am afraid that the bill will not be introduced in its form as previously drafted, because it would make people—