Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Official Report 519KB pdf

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Climate Change and the Scottish Parliament

Under agenda item 4, we will take evidence from the Scottish Parliament on its work in combating climate change. As a public sector body, the Parliament is required to follow the duties set out in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 and to report on its work to reduce its carbon footprint.

We are joined this morning by Sir Paul Grice, the Scottish Parliament’s chief executive, and Victoria Barby, the Parliament’s environmental manager. I welcome you both. Members have a series of questions for you, but I will begin with a scene setter. How would you characterise the Scottish Parliament’s performance in these areas to date?

We are very pleased with what we have achieved since we set out on this road a number of years ago, with strong support from the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body and the wider Parliament. With a few exceptions—just undershooting in areas such as waste—we have hit all the targets that we have set.

The key point is that we are right on track for hitting the 42 per cent reduction in our carbon footprint by 2020. I am always a bit anxious or nervous about sounding complacent, but we are pleased with where we have got to so far, and we are keen to kick on from here.

What are the biggest challenges that you have faced to date in trying to hit those targets? Have you any examples of the innovative working that has helped you to achieve the progress that you have made so far?

Electricity consumption dominates in terms of carbon footprint. There has not been one single thing, but that is a big area for us, which has required not only investment in technology, such as LED lighting, but behaviour change through persuading us all to remember to switch things off and that kind of thing. That has been an area of challenge.

Waste has been a particular challenge, although I think that the numbers are impressive: we have achieved a 72 per cent reduction, and we are aiming for 90 per cent. The point about waste reduction is that a lot comes down to behaviour. We are trying to reduce what we use in the first place, which is about changing the way in which a lot of us behave, and that is always a challenge. Over the years, we have had tremendous support from members and staff alike, but nonetheless that is a challenge for us as we move forward.

When you set out on a programme like this, inevitably you do the stuff with the highest returns first. For example, we put LED lighting in the car park, the payback on which was perhaps a couple of years. However, as we move forward, we are having to look for more and more challenging opportunities.

Those have been the two biggest challenges, and I think that they will continue to be so.

11:30  

On the subject of energy consumption and lighting, it has long been a bugbear of mine that parliamentary committees sit during the daytime in rooms with bright lighting and the blinds drawn. We are told that that is largely to accommodate television coverage. Is the Parliament starting to look at that? To be blunt, television technology will have moved on. Is there not an opportunity to use cameras that cope better with lighting sources? Surely you will appreciate that the situation does not look good.

I have a light in my eye now.

The LED lighting that we now have has reduced energy consumption. There is a tension that has existed throughout the life of the Parliament. You are right that both the committee rooms and the chamber are, at one level, like broadcast studios. By far the largest number of people who view your work as parliamentarians, which is vital, will view it through webcasting and on TV, and we need the best quality for that. Therefore, there is a tension—more so in other rooms, such as the chamber, as you know yourself—and I am trying to strike a balance.

You are right that as we put in new cameras, they are able to work with lower light levels, but the reality is that broadcasters prefer blacked-out rooms, whereas we try to strike a balance. Eventually we will have to do more than put in LED bulbs and replace the lighting, and we will look at the issue at that time. I am afraid that I cannot offer you an immediate solution, but we are trying to strike a balance. Putting in LED lighting has at least reduced the energy consumption of the lights that we do use.

Thank you. We will move on to reporting procedures, with Claudia Beamish.

Good morning, Victoria and Paul. You have a carbon management plan, which covers buildings, travel, decision making and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. When was it last reviewed? Do you have any comments to make on it?

It has been in place for about five years and we review it annually and take external advice on it. For example, the Carbon Trust was enormously helpful when we set it up, as were organisations such as Zero Waste Scotland and others. I want to spare Victoria’s blushes, but we have always felt that it was right to have on the staff a technical expert, such as her and her predecessor, David Fairhurst, to guide us.

We review the plan annually. The carbon plan brings everything together for us, as you neatly described, and it will be continued. Whether a complete revision of it is needed, I do not know. At the moment, as long as we are on track to achieve the target, we will continue with the annual update. To my mind, there is probably a case for standing right back when we get close to 2020 and starting again, just to make sure that we are not missing new issues that we might want to address.

We have also applied for the Carbon Trust triple standard. That will give us good verified data and text to show that we are meeting the target in our plan and talking about the right data.

How has the Parliament found the experience of fulfilling the reporting requirements under the Climate Change (Duties of Public Bodies: Reporting Requirements) (Scotland) Order 2015?

To go back to your answer to my previous question, have you been able to share with other public sector organisations what is obviously quite a lot of good practice?

To answer your first question, as the committee may know, we volunteered to the Government to take part in the process a year early and we found it to be satisfactory. It is a good discipline and the organisation is very happy with it. Now that we are into the formal process, it is good that we have had that year.

Victoria Barby networks a lot with other organisations and when I have been invited along, I have spoken publicly about what we have done and shared not only what we have achieved, but our challenges, which is important. That has been very well received. Because we are a high-profile public body, people are always interested in what we do.

I listened to some of the earlier evidence, and I would underline the point that the convener and others made about having to have the data. We persuade people by having good information and being candid about not just our achievements but where the challenges lie. That is the approach that we have tried to take, and we are always very happy to share our experience with not just the public sector but the private sector and third-sector organisations.

I know that it is early days for the mandatory reporting, but have the reporting mechanisms been comparable with those of other organisations?

I will let Victoria Barby answer that.

It is really helpful that there is now an online system, because we can now enter the data directly. The data is pulled through from the previous year’s submission, which also saves my time because I do not have to add in all the different data. It is good that we can use the Carbon Trust standards as part of the verification of that data, which means that we are not duplicating by having additional verification from other organisations. However, I do find that, because the template tool is designed to cover different public sector organisations, our data sometimes does not quite fit and we cannot quite answer as many of the questions as we would like to and as we could do if we were a bigger public sector organisation. However, the template is designed to cover everybody, so we can accept that.

Lastly, are you considering doing any peer-review assessment in relation to the mandatory targets?

No, not this year but we might do so in following years. We have used the Carbon Trust standard, which is probably better than having a peer review.

You touched on the issue of sharing best practice with other organisations. Has any work been done on physical collaborative working with neighbours, perhaps around district heating and that sort of thing?

That is a really interesting idea and it is something that will be in a future plan. Our approach would be to work with the City of Edinburgh Council, which has, or is just about to, set up a company within the council to promote district heating. We would certainly be interested in that, although it is obviously a long-term plan. However, district heating is something that has been on our radar for quite some time. It is not something that we are a big enough institution to lead on, but if the council is interested in developing a scheme, we would certainly want to be part of discussions on that. Then, it would just come down to what the business case was. However, in principle, district heating is something that I am very interested in.

Other areas of collaboration principally involve collaboration with the City of Edinburgh Council around transport and other issues. We work very closely with the council on getting people to and from the Parliament building. So, yes, collaboration with our neighbours is key.

We will come on to transport in a minute, but we will move on now to procurement.

Hi, both. First, I should declare an interest in that in my previous role with Zero Waste Scotland I worked with the Scottish Parliament on the Parliament becoming a flagship zero-waste zone and, most recently, on supporting the sustainable procurement work.

It would be helpful if you gave an overview of your sustainable procurement vision for the Parliament. Specifically, how can the procurement strategy open up to include disruptive or circular economy businesses, which tend to be small microbusinesses that get left out of procurement because they are inevitably deemed to be a higher risk by those who are doing the procurement? For example, there are microbusinesses out there that offer an LED lighting service, which we have mentioned, that would mean, in the case of the Scottish Parliament, that the LED products would be owned not by the Parliament but by the microbusiness. I would like to hear more about integrating that sort of procurement into your sustainable procurement strategy.

I will make a few points and then maybe invite Victoria Barby in. First, we see procurement as a central and integral part of our approach, underpinned by our responsible procurement strategy, which dates back to about 2009.

More recently, we have a sustainable procurement matrix, which guides us through any procurement, for example by asking whether we need to buy it—a bit like reduce, reuse, recycle, the first thing to ask is whether we need to buy something at all. Therefore, that is embedded right from the beginning of the procurement process.

Assuming that we get through to the actual point of procurement, there is all sorts of guidance along the way. Alongside that, one of the things that we have found helpful in addressing your point about smaller organisations is the successful meet-the-buyer events that we run. One of the big challenges for smaller businesses is just being aware of procurement opportunities—smaller businesses do not necessarily have the departments that bigger companies have that look out for those opportunities.

We will continue with those initiatives and, again, if members know of particular businesses or others who are not finding or engaging with us, that is really good feedback for us. What we would do is bring them in informally. As you know, the procurement process gets rather formal rather quickly and that is not something that we can change. Therefore, we try to have informal front-ends so that businesses can come in to have informal discussions with colleagues in either facilities management or procurement. Often, we can give them guidance on how best to pitch for the business.

We can also listen to them. A critical issue that is not easy to resolve is how to package up procurement. Obviously, there is always a drive to get better value for money and, as accountable officer, I have to do that and, sometimes, we do just get economies. On the other hand, we are absolutely committed to trying to give as many businesses as possible, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, an opportunity. There is a balance to strike, so we have structural decisions to make and we can do a lot to encourage businesses to get involved in that process.

We are finding that the procurement matrix, which is a government tool, puts a really helpful discipline on us as we go through the steps. It also tackles issues such as the living wage and others that come off the back of the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014.

That is our basic approach, but Victoria Barby might want to add a bit more to that.

We are looking at adopting a more circular economy approach for certain contracts. The audiovisual contract is a hiring-in system rather than purchasing, and we are also going to look at whether we can hire furniture rather than purchasing it and discarding it.

For the first time in our annual report, we have started to measure some of the environmental impacts that the supply chain is bringing in to the Parliament and how they are helping us to reduce our environmental impact. I hope that we can do a bit more of that and, perhaps, start considering measuring scope 3 emissions from procurement.

We will now move on to adaptation and resilience.

I have a couple of questions about the planning process when you make decisions. First, on climate change, what sort of evidence do you see of changing patterns in the past five years or so? How can you take into account future patterns, whether they might be more recent demands on air conditioning or the demands of winter and people travelling into the office?

My second and more general question is on cost benefit analysis. What budget allocations do you have for that? Is there a limit on value for money? Is it about achieving targets at all costs or offsetting elsewhere?

I will take the final point first and invite Victoria Barby in later.

We always do a cost benefit analysis on any investment and, yes, there is a fixed amount of money, so we cannot go after targets at any cost. The phrase that is often bandied about is “low-hanging fruit” and obviously we want to do what will deliver the greatest benefits. Because we started early and we have, I hope, been energetic and vigorous in our approach, we have got through a lot of those low-hanging fruit and are starting to look at things such as self-generation of electricity. The committee will know better than I do that the return on, for example, photoelectric cells tends to be longer than it would be if we put LED lighting in the garage.

The way that I look at it is that we need a mix, so our programme of investment in environmental measures will have a mix. Some things will have a very rapid return, but we just have to accept that, subject to persuading the corporate body, some things will have a longer payback.

We need that mix, partly because if we are going to hit long-term targets, we need to make the investment, but also partly because I am conscious that the Parliament has a leadership role. We are dealing with public money, so we have to be thoughtful, but sometimes we need to be bold in order to demonstrate that things can be done.

At the end of the day, what we do is driven by the money that we have available. There is certainly more that we could do but, like every other organisation, we have to live within our means.

11:45  

I am very keen on this area. For example, we have a 25-year maintenance plan that helps us to look past the normal planning horizon. The idea is to constantly look ahead to what is necessary and what is affordable. One thing that has helped us is that technology has changed. Often, things come down in cost or deliver greater effectiveness—again, as you know, lighting has changed out of all recognition over a short period of time. Revisiting such issues is a constant process. We have a portfolio of investment and a structure, with colleagues led by David McGill, who is sitting in the public gallery, which has responsibility for managing that process across the organisation. We always have a pipeline of projects coming forward.

Victoria Barby might want to pick up the first question.

On climate change adaptation, we have had training from Adaptation Scotland. Our environment and sustainability performance board received the initial training about adaptation, and we will move on to the next stages that are set out in “Five steps to managing your climate risks—A Guide for Public Bodies in Scotland”. When we have worked through that, we will produce a climate change adaptation plan for the Parliament.

Our procurement process also includes sections about adaptation and about encouraging contractors and suppliers to ensure that they are building adaptation plans into their procurement processes.

On resilience planning for significant events, have you had any engagement with the national resilience centre?

Yes. We have a well-developed resilience planning process, and we feel that the work of the centre fits naturally with that. We work closely with the Government, the emergency services and others to learn lessons, and we are conscious of the expertise that exists out there. We also run exercises from time to time. All of that fits well into planning for eventualities that could disrupt business here.

Some technological changes are also important in that regard. For example, one of the greatest vulnerabilities for servers is water ingress. Most organisations put their servers in the basement, because that makes sense. However, that approach makes them vulnerable in terms of resilience—I note that you heard evidence earlier about greater and more concentrated rainfall. As a result of such issues, we are looking at storing more data in the cloud. That has a lot of benefits but one of the key ones is that it gives us more resilience. That will continue to be our approach.

A number of members have questions on transport. We will start with David Stewart.

You will have gathered from the previous evidence-taking session that transport is a major source of emissions in Scotland—it accounts for around 28 per cent of emissions. Do you have a system for assessing the costs of climate emissions that are associated with staff commuting patterns? If so, what are you doing to try to reduce the emissions?

There are two aspects to that: commuting to and from the place of work; and business travel, which mostly concerns committees visiting other areas.

You will be aware that we have a well-established system for committee travel. As you know, when you go out on evidence-taking sessions, the clerks support you in considering the most effective way to do that, taking into account environmental considerations.

The issue of commuting to and from work is a more recent addition to our strategy. We felt that we should begin with the things that we can control within the building. Victoria Barby will correct me if I am wrong, but commuting concerns scope 3—that is, indirect—emissions. Many of the issues relate to behaviour. It is not for me as the chief executive to dictate how people get to and from the workplace, because that is something that they do in their own time. What we must do is persuade people and, hopefully, lead by example.

We have done a number of things. First, we provide excellent facilities—they have been recently upgraded—for people who want to cycle, walk, run or otherwise get here in a way that requires changing facilities. We have provided guided cycles into work; I benefited from one recently when I discovered cycle paths that I did not know existed, although I thought that I knew Edinburgh well. Victoria Barby told me the other day that we will also try guided walks to work. We are wrapping up such initiatives in a general plan that includes encouraging people to use public transport, helping them to understand public transport better and working with the City of Edinburgh Council.

We need to provide good choices for people. We should not dictate to them but encourage them, raise their awareness and make such choices attractive and easy. That ties in with the healthy living initiatives that we are looking at. Last year, we took part in a cycling to work competition, and I am pleased to say that we came top—I think that we got 15 per cent of colleagues cycling.

We use a range of forms of persuasion and encouragement and we provide good facilities. We are doing pretty well but, as with any behavioural change, a continuous process will be required. So far, I am encouraged by the results that we have had.

I know from experience that you have a strong home-working policy, which I presume has helped to reduce emissions dramatically.

We support flexible working and the use of technology such as iPads and videoconferencing. Flexible working has huge benefits more broadly for the organisation in relation to effectiveness and morale, but you are right. That ties back to the convener’s point about resilience. A key bit of resilience planning is dealing with people not being able to get to work because of transport disruption. A flexible policy on where people can work from provides resilience, so there are benefits on all sides.

Aviation is a major source of emissions. Do you have a policy on staff flying in the UK when solid rail alternatives are available?

We encourage the use of rail, but we cannot dictate. I am a great fan of using the sleeper if I am down in London, but that does not suit everybody. Training it both ways—up and down—in a day is a lot of travel in a day. We encourage people to use an alternative to flying—principally the train—when it is available, but we are not at the point of telling people that there is only one way for them to travel. Our preferred option is that people look first and foremost at travelling by public transport, certainly in the UK, but I am not persuaded that we should tell people that they must travel in that way.

The first question to ask is whether people need to make the journey. If they need to do so, they should consider the best transport option. Ideally, we would expect people to travel by bus or train but, if they need to fly because the timeframe means that there is no other option, that is fine.

Sadly, flying is still often the cheapest option. We have got better at booking far in advance, but the sleeper, which is a great way to get to London, is still pretty pricey in comparison with an easyJet flight in the morning. I have encouraged staff to know that I will support their choice and that we will meet the cost.

Other airlines also provide such services. [Laughter.]

You talked about asking whether a journey is necessary. How important is videoconferencing for the Parliament’s staff? The committees are geared up for that as a way to reduce the need for witnesses to come to the Parliament.

Videoconferencing is important. It is great that we are sitting in the room that is the premier videoconference suite for committees. I do not know whether members have had a chance to use the other videoconference suite, which we recently relocated from the ministerial tower to Queensberry house. I use videoconferencing quite a lot and find it a good way to have discussions and conduct business. Perhaps we could do more with it.

It is in the nature of a Parliament that a lot of people want to come to us, so we must strike a balance. That personal engagement is still important, but the first question is always, “Do I need to make that journey?” Videoconference technology is now well established. We all remember the days, a few years ago, when we would lose signal and things would break down, but it is now pretty robust. We have invested heavily in good videoconferencing facilities. I apply exactly the policy that you would expect of asking whether the journey is necessary. If it is—there are often lots of good reasons for having face-to-face contact—that is fine but, if not, we have good facilities throughout the Parliament. Those facilities are now integrated in all the digital meeting rooms.

With respect, that is fine for that type of videoconferencing, but parliamentary committees generate a lot of travel miles through witnesses. Do we make any assessment of the travel patterns of the many witnesses who come to parliamentary committees? Bearing that in mind, could we do more to provide videoconferencing facilities in committee rooms for parliamentary committees to make use of during meetings?

I will happily take that away and have a look at it. I would need to talk to the clerks who organise meetings to see whether we could do more. In terms of facilities in committee rooms, this room is the permanently adapted one and we also have mobile facilities. If there is any evidence that committees are being frustrated because of a lack of equipment, I will happily take that away. As I said, my sense is that, at the moment, the facilities meet demand, but I would not want a committee ever to feel that people who would prefer to use videoconferencing had to travel because we do not have enough facilities here. I am happy to take that point away.

Is it not really about changing mindsets? There will always be people who want to come to Parliament to give their evidence, which is perfectly understandable but, especially as we are the environment committee, we could be more proactive in pushing the option of videoconferencing where appropriate—clearly, we could not have eight witnesses feeding into a committee at the same time by videoconference. It would be welcome if you would think about that issue.

It is a really good point and I will happily take it away, if I may, and write back to you when I have had a look at it.

That would be appreciated.

Kate Forbes and Emma Harper have further questions on transport.

To add to the question about videoconferencing, what, if anything, do you do to encourage the same good practice in constituency offices that you promote in the Parliament building? Skype for Business is great, but when an MSP is meeting bigger groups in their constituency office or trying to meet MSPs elsewhere—for example, in the Highlands—what facilities might there be to facilitate videoconferencing?

I think that the answer is that some of the basic equipment that we give members supports a degree of videoconferencing. However, you raise an interesting line of thought, and I would rather take it away and come back to you with what we currently have. I will also take up your very fair question about what more we might do, especially for members living in areas where the population is dispersed, to allow them to communicate. If I may, I will take that away and come back to you, not just on what we are doing but on what we might do in the current session.

My question is also on videoconferencing. The other committee that I am a member of is not keen on videoconferencing at all. Is it worth exploring a way to educate members on how far videoconferencing has come? It works great for the national health service and reduces travel miles. It might help some members if they had a wee demonstration of how well it works.

I do not mean to be cheeky, but you are obviously in a great position to reassure others, member to member. However, you make a great point. A lot of folk are still thinking about what videoconferencing was like 10 years ago, when there was poor bandwidth. You are right that a lot of people probably got frustrated and have not gone back to it. I will talk about that to all the lead committee clerks, who are obviously the way in on the issue. I take your point that we should maybe just get people to try it. I have been involved in some videoconferencing sessions with six or seven people, and the convener is correct that it reaches a point where discussion just becomes impossible. However, particularly when one or two people are involved, it is very good. You are right that a lot of people may have preconceptions about videoconferencing, and your idea of a demonstration is excellent. There is also just speaking to colleagues to encourage them and tell them that it works.

12:00  

I will pick that up with the committee clerks and suggest that they make that specific offer to all committees and invite any sceptical members to have a go—although perhaps not in a formal evidence session with a witness, where they might be a bit nervous about things not working. Members could, as Kate Forbes has suggested, get used to videoconferencing each other first in a more relaxed environment and thereby build up confidence. A lot of it is about members just worrying that the system will break, and we have to try to reassure people that although it is not perfect and although there is always a bit of a risk with technology things have moved on a long way.

As I have said, I will take that forward with the committee clerks and get them to encourage committees to have a go. After all, we cannot make them do it.

The issue applies not just to committees but to cross-party groups. I am aware that support for such groups is not provided directly by the Scottish Parliament, but there was an issue with the CPG on crofting in the previous session with regard to a request for videoconferencing facilities. Clearly by their very nature the CPGs on crofting and Gaelic rely on people travelling from the west and north-west Highlands and the Western Isles. Although it is not the Parliament’s direct responsibility to provide such facilities at the moment, could the issue be looked at in future to help people who, although they might well want to travel to Edinburgh from, say, Stornoway, might also appreciate the provision of videoconferencing facilities?

I understand the problem. The very important principle with cross-party groups is that they should be kept exactly as they are—as informal groups. If we make them part of the Parliament, they become a different thing; the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee has set very clear rules in that respect, and I have to operate very carefully within them. Even without those rules, however, I would personally be very reluctant to lose the essence of cross-party groups, which is that they are not formal committees of the Parliament. We need to be very careful about that.

However, it is not that we give the groups no support; we will, for example, set up a videoconferencing facility. However, what we will not do—and this is also a resourcing issue—is have broadcast staff on hand into the evening. We could sometimes improve communications between Parliament staff and the cross-party groups, but if we know that there is going to be a cross-party group meeting in this room at 6 or 7 o’clock tonight, we will come in and set it up. We are happy to provide that support, but we cannot have on hand the sort of technical support that, say, this committee gets when it meets.

I hope that that can be a bit of compromise that we work towards. I am well aware of the issue—indeed, I think that you and I might have spoken about it in the previous session, Mr MacDonald—and I absolutely understand and am sympathetic to it. However, we need to strike a balance, and I hope that the offer to set things up is a fair compromise to allow that to happen. As I have said, we cannot pay staff to stay into the evening to support those groups—that is both a practical and a principled point. Again, if any particular groups in which you are involved want to speak to us separately, I am very happy to facilitate discussions with the broadcasting team to ensure that we do as much as we possibly can within the rules.

I appreciate that.

I want to broaden things out by inviting members to ask any other questions that they might have. I will start off. We seem to have an enormous quantity of paper running through this place, but it strikes me that very often it is not generated in here; indeed, we are doing some good work on reducing the amount of paper that we generate. However, we seem to get a lot from external sources. What is your take on that issue, and what thought have you given to how we might tackle it?

We generate a lot of internal paper, it has to be said, but the move to digital meeting packs and the digital Business Bulletin has really helped, and we have a target for a further 25 per cent reduction this session. The approach has allowed us to deliver very substantial savings, too. That is what we can control, and a lot of that is about technology and how we behave.

You have raised a really interesting point about what happens externally. I was aware, from a conversation that I had with you, of the amount of unsolicited paper that comes in to members—to be honest, I had not really thought about that until you mentioned it. I will take that point away.

We need to strike a balance. I do not think that members would thank us for choking off material. Who is to say that that is not something that they want to read? Who is to say that they do not want to read it in paper format?

We might be able to survey members to find out their position. It could be that a relatively small number of organisations generate a lot of the paper. My approach would be to go to those organisations and say, “Why don’t you ask members how they want to receive your material?” I am very nervous about preventing—in any way—members from getting what people think that they need to see. That is the essence of your job.

Absolutely.

Why should organisations not survey members and ask whether they want material in hard copy, electronically or—dare I say it—not at all? [Laughter.] That is maybe pushing it a bit. However, that would at least allow the member to determine whether they still want to receive something in paper format. There are some documents that I still prefer to get in paper copy, but the point is really important and not one that I had thought about until you raised it.

I discussed the matter with Victoria Barby earlier, and I think that we might start by engaging with members more widely to get their take on the issue. If they support a change, we could help them to go back to organisations. The supply of paper copies contributes to our waste problem, even if we recycle that paper. We are all aware that recycling is fine, but that it is not as good as not having that paper in the first place.

I would want to go into the matter carefully and to try and take members with us, just to make sure that we do not cross the line and prevent people from communicating with them. However, it sounds to me as though this is an area where we could help society and help ourselves to meet our own waste targets.

Within that work, you could perhaps look at how other Parliaments have responded to the challenge. Presumably, our colleagues across Europe will have the same issues with the volume of paper.

I will happily engage with them and see whether we can learn lessons. Indeed, if anyone else has cracked the problem, it would be great to know how they have done that. Again, I am more than happy to keep in touch with the committee about how we get on with that.

That would be useful.

As the Parliament starts to look more at indirect emissions, to what extent have you looked at pensions, particularly pension fund divestment from high-carbon fossil fuel investments?

That is a contentious issue.

Why is it contentious?

I will come back to that. The starting point is that the pension fund is managed not by the Parliament, but by independent trustees, as it rightly should be. We are essentially in the position of the employer, so decisions on divestment—or on anything else—would be a matter for the pension fund trustees.

The matter is contentious because people can usually agree that some areas of investment raise ethical questions, but in my experience one can get into other areas—even fossil fuels—about which there is a degree of contention. That seems to me to be a matter of fact. We live in a Parliament in which there are very diverse views on such issues.

The other point is that all trustees face a challenge in striking a balance between their fiduciary duty to maximise the return to the fund and—of course—their view on what is a proper place to invest.

The formal position is quite clear. The members’ pension fund is the principal fund; SPCB staff are part of the civil service pension scheme, so there is not such a fund for them and, obviously, members’ staff pensions are more a matter for members. The fund is handled by fund trustees, the majority of whom are serving or former members of Parliament. I know that they are very aware of the issue, and that they take very seriously their duty to strike a balance between ethical investment—if I can use that phrase—and the need to ensure that the fund is sufficient to meet the obligations on it.

Are you aware that a lot of good practice is emerging within the public sector on the issue? For example, there has been divestment by pension funds that operate in Yorkshire. There has also been active consideration in respect of Falkirk council pension fund, which serves a number of local authorities in the central belt, about how it can invest more in social housing and less in high-carbon investments. The less contentious bit here is probably the high-carbon fossil fuels rather than North Sea oil and gas. There is good practice on which you can draw and perhaps look at. The Parliament is a significant employer, so you must have some link into the governance structure of those pension funds.

Actually, no. One has to be very careful—as chief executive of the Parliament, that is my position. As members, you are not employed. You are unique. However, we act as the employer because we pay the employer contribution. However, there is a very strict and, in my view, very proper separation from the role of the employer. We have a vested interest in the level of contribution that we have to make, which is to do with the size of the scheme and the trustees of the scheme. You can speak to me afterwards about that. I am happy to write to the trustees with information that they may care to look at, but I need to be extremely careful not to cross the line and to try to tell them how to invest, because they have a strong legal duty, with which members will be familiar. I am conscious that David Stewart, having been a trustee, knows a lot more about the situation than I do. It is perfectly reasonable to draw the trustees’ attention to good practice; I am happy to do so, but I have to allow them to make judgments based on all the circumstances. If you would like me to flag that up, I would be happy to convey the issue to the fund trustees.

Given that you have namechecked David Stewart and he has indicated an interest in coming in, I will allow him to comment.

I will make just a couple of points. I am an ex-trustee, and I sat on the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body last session. I was, in effect, on the employer side, so I have seen the two sides of the matter. The issue that Mark Ruskell highlights was one that I raised in my time as a trustee, and he made some useful points.

The key technical issue is that the size of the fund means that it is still a managed fund, so Baillie Gifford makes the investment decisions. As the fund grows and develops, there is an argument for its becoming segregated, which means that the trustees would have a more direct role in investment decisions. As Sir Paul has said, there is a clear legal duty to maximise the returns for each and every one of us here, and for our family members. There is therefore a tension, and I have looked closely at that issue.

It is fair to say that Baillie Gifford, which is an excellent company, is very conscious of the so-called ethical investment side of the matter. I know that the trustees have looked at the issue very carefully, and that questions cropped up at SPCB question time in the previous session of Parliament. I am sure that Mark Ruskell will seek to go down that route—SPCB question time is coming up soon. He has made a fair point, but there are technical constraints of which members should be aware.

You suggest a potential alternative approach. Finlay Carson can go next.

Convener, I hope that you do not mind, but I will jump back to the general question.

You touched on the benefits of spend to save through the likes of the LED lights in the garage, but you also mentioned budget constraints. Are any projects that would result in a significant impact on our carbon footprint being restrained because of the budget within which you have to work?

We could always spend more money—in that sense, we are limited.

I am hesitating, because I do not want to give you a misleading answer. We have a reasonable budget at present. There is good discipline in having a capped budget because it makes you really look at things.

I was talking earlier to Victoria Barby about such issues. There are some technical issues that I would like us to address—around heating, for example—in which we could, with greater investment, gain more efficiencies. However, those would involve quite chunky bits of investment—by which I mean that they would cost more than £100,000. We have to think very carefully about that sort of money. At present, there is nothing in the pipeline that we want to do that we think that we cannot fund. If we do not do something this year, we will tend to do it in a rolling programme. I think that we have a reasonable balance, at the moment.

I hope that David Stewart will not mind my saying so, but if I felt that if we were really falling down in budget terms, or in danger of missing the target, I think that I would get a sympathetic hearing at the SPCB and, ultimately, before Mr Stewart’s colleagues on the Finance Committee. It is hard to get a public sector chief executive ever to say that he has enough money; I am not saying that, but we have a reasonable budget. We have had a good programme of investment, and we should be able to achieve our aims, as we go forward.

The convener mentioned district heating, which is a really interesting area. I imagine that, at a decision-making point, that might need some pretty substantial investment. That would be the sort of issue for which we would not budget. If we hit that sort of issue, it would be a question of working up a business case and trying to persuade the corporate body in the first instance, and then the Finance Committee, to do it. Short of such issues, I think that we have enough resource to keep up a steady programme. The discipline of having to think hard about that programme is healthy.

12:15  

I will wrap things up. We have talked about the 2020 target and your confidence that you are on the right track to hit it, but Scotland has targets that go way beyond that. The Government has, I think, a target of achieving a 68 per cent cut in emissions from business, industry and the public sector by 2027. What work are you doing to look beyond 2020? Can you give us an idea of what targets you are considering for the period beyond 2020?

The first thing to say is that we would be absolutely determined to hit those longer-term targets, too. We have always regarded 2020 as an interim point; it is not the end. We are well on track to meet the 2020 target, and we will exceed it if we can, but we see it as a stepping stone to the really significant targets that lie beyond it. We will meet those targets by continuing to work hard on behaviour. We have talked about transport and how the organisation uses it, and I think that all of us—I include myself—can do more.

As far as achieving a really big step change in the future is concerned, I come back to the point about investment. For example, if we are to generate more of our own electricity and to look seriously at how we generate heat and cool things down in the Parliament, there is no escaping the fact that some of those things will involve pretty significant capital investment. A combination of quite significant investments and continuing behaviour change will be required.

I am confident because we are on a really good trajectory. What encourages me is that we are making progress not just on one thing, but across virtually all the measures. That leads me to think that we have a broad-based approach. I am as confident as I can be that we will hit the more demanding targets out past 2020.

Thank you very much for your time. It has been an interesting exchange. There are a number of items that you said you would look at; we anticipate hearing from you on those, in due course. I would like to think that, in future years, we might be able to have a rerun of this opportunity to discuss Parliament’s performance—in particular, as we look to the longer term. Thank you for attending.

At its next meeting on 20 September, the committee will take evidence on the Scottish Government’s climate change targets from a range of stakeholders and academics. As agreed earlier, we now move into private session.

12:17 Meeting continued in private until 12:53.