Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2019
To be fair, Colin Smyth has at least shown himself to be agile enough to amend his speech in the light of circumstances.
We are in the midst of a climate emergency, and business as usual will not do. In its new report, which was published last week, the Committee on Climate Change said that Scotland should set a 2045 target for net zero emissions of all greenhouse gases. This Government has been and will continue to be a world leader on climate change. As such, we have embraced the CCC’s new report in full, acting immediately to amend the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Bill not only to set a net zero target for 2045 but to increase the targets for 2030 and 2040.
It will not be easy to meet those targets; it will require difficult decisions to be made—Parliament needs to be prepared for that—including on the Government’s policy on air departure tax, which was deferred to ensure that it was not devolved in, as the UK Government admitted, a defective state. To protect rural communities, we must find a solution to the Highlands and Islands exemption before we can take on the tax, and the Scottish Government will continue to work with the UK Government on a solution.
It has been a long-standing policy of this Government to reduce ADT by 50 per cent and to abolish it when resources allow. However, we have always sought to balance the economic benefits that the policy can bring with the impact on the environment. The Air Departure Tax (Scotland) Bill itself placed a duty on ministers to consider the economic, environmental and social impacts before setting the rates and bands and to keep the matter under review. Following the First Minister’s declaration of a climate emergency and the new emissions reduction targets for Scotland, we are committed to looking across the whole range of our responsibilities and increasing action, where necessary, and we have come to the conclusion that the economic benefits that we have sought through our ADT policy are not compatible with our new emissions reduction targets.
The Government has not taken that decision lightly, but we have recognised that it is an important first step towards meeting our tougher climate targets and rising to the climate challenge.