Chamber and committees

However, is the problem not that that comes at the expense of other targets? For example, shifting two lanes of traffic into one lane of traffic increases congestion, which increases emissions from vehicles and so on. Are we looking at this holistically enough?

It is all very well to say that there has been a 5 per cent increase in the use of bus transport in one city. However, at the same time, there might be other issues that are by-products of some of these measures. You do not have to go very far from the Parliament building to see the effect that the low-emission zone has had on roads such as Abbeyhill, which it would previously have taken five minutes to get up, but it now takes 15 or 20 minutes or even more, because people are circumventing the traffic reduction measures. Glasgow is the same, and I am sure that Aberdeen has suffered in a similar manner.

We can pick and choose success measures when it suits us, but are we doing that at the expense of the bigger picture?

Are we not looking at this in completely the wrong way? Should the target not be to reduce emissions from cars, rather than to reduce the number of miles driven by cars? I say that because I am going to make a point about the types of cars that we drive in a moment. Surely the goal is more important than the means to the end. If the point is to reduce emissions, why is the target not a 20 per cent reduction in emissions from domestic car use? That would surely be a more sensible target. There are particular interventions that could deliver that in an easier way than simply setting a very specific target that will not necessarily meet the objective that it is trying to achieve.

That is interesting. I am looking forward to seeing any work that you do on electric vehicles, given what I would call the dire situation in Scotland and across the UK. We need only to look to Norway, which is not far away, where 89 per cent of all new cars sold last year were electric, compared with 24 per cent in the UK. Indeed, only 6 per cent of all vehicles in Scotland are electric or hybrid, compared with more than 40 per cent in Norway, and so on. We also need to look at charging stations and all the issues that go along with that. I am looking forward to that piece of work.

One thing that has struck me during this morning’s session is that you have talked a lot about demand management measures and the carrot-and-stick approach. Some of those measures are not just unpopular—I would argue that they are perhaps punitive and discriminatory. What analysis do you think would need to be done for the Government to be able to consider some of those measures, some of which are reasonably harsh, given that many people who drive a car already consider it to be quite an expensive and punitive thing to do, even if they do it out of necessity?

There is something that I really do not understand. I am not here to support the Scottish Government. However, if I was sitting here representing the Government in this session, I would be saying that it spends more than £1 billion on rail services and that it has publicly subsidised and nationalised two services. I would highlight that the Government heavily subsidises the bus industry, with around 60 per cent of private operators’ revenue coming from concessionary travel or direct grants from national or local government, and that it has numerous concessionary travel schemes that target the young and the old—although those might be people who do not own cars anyway. I would also note that it invests in subsidised ferry services and it invests hundreds of millions of pounds in active and sustainable travel.

However, despite all that Government action, we are going in the wrong direction on the target. The fundamental question is, what on earth does the Government need to do to drive the modal shift that would meet it? I cannot see how it can do that.

I am sorry, but I want to push back on that. The essence of your report is that you say that the point of the target is to reduce the number of miles driven by the general public in their cars, with a view to reducing emissions. It is the emissions reduction aspect that seems to be driving the target and the so-called strategy. Is that right?

I will pick you up on something that was just said, Auditor General. Audit Scotland is calling on the Scottish Government to have a national conversation, but your report says that there has been enough talk and that we need more action, so that call contradicts the essence of your report.

It is good that you mentioned that, because I am just about to come on to that issue.

I will take a step back and ask a more fundamental question about an issue that I have been grappling with throughout the session and when I read your report. What is your understanding of the point of the target? The target is to reduce the number of miles driven by domestic cars in Scotland. What is the point of that? What is the Government trying to achieve by reducing that figure?

Let us say that a million miles were driven by combustion engine cars and that was reduced by 20 per cent in the way that the target seems to suggest. It is assumed that that would reduce emissions. That assumption underpins the strategy. However, if we went in the other direction and 1.5 million miles were driven by electric or hybrid cars, instead of a million miles being driven by combustion engine cars, there might still be a reduction in emissions, even though the mileage that was driven by the public would have gone up.

I would have some sympathy if the Government simply dropped the target, provided that it did so for the right reason. If it was trying to reduce emissions and could demonstrate that other policies would achieve the same result, the target in itself would perhaps be irrelevant.

Realistically, given that we are sitting here in the Parliament, I have to ask which Government in its right mind, particularly coming into an election year, would implement punitive measures such as national charging or road tolls, or start rolling out national measures—rather than doing things at a local level and blaming the councils—by introducing primary legislation that imposes expensive measures on drivers. Surely that would be political suicide for any Government in any jurisdiction. The measures might help to meet the target, but they are very unlikely to happen.

Can you talk me through exhibit 1, on the block grant adjustment, just so that we can get our head around this? A Barnett-determined block grant is allocated to the Scottish Government, but that is not what we actually get, due to adjustments based on devolved taxation. Can you, in very simplistic terms, talk me through how we get from the block grant allocation, through a net adjustment up or down, to what the Scottish Government actually gets?