Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 28 October 2020
I congratulate Gordon Lindhurst on making what was probably the most entertaining contribution that I have ever heard him make in this chamber. I also congratulate the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee on its energy inquiry and its subsequent comprehensive report. It made for fascinating reading. I also want to praise the Royal Society of Edinburgh for its report of last year, “Scotland’s Energy Future”, which, in itself, followed a two-year inquiry. A lot of work has gone into this.
First, I want to talk briefly about two of the RSE’s 10 findings, which are around housing. It said that enforcing higher standards of energy efficiency in new-build housing and infrastructure should be a regulatory priority and that building regulations around energy efficiency, and their enforcement, should be regularly reviewed to ensure that they are more responsive to research and development and are consistent with policy targets. It went on to say that reducing Scotland’s energy demand could play an important role in meeting many of its energy goals and that improved energy efficiency will be key to achieving that. It said that reducing demand for energy could assist in significantly reducing Scotland’s carbon emissions and that improved energy efficiency would require substantial investment and faces a serious obstacle in Scotland’s ageing and varied housing stock. It is right about that.
Members will know—unless they have not been paying attention—that I chaired the tenement maintenance working group, which was a cross-party group, although it was not a CPG. Crucially, it included experts in the field and, last year, we produced a set of recommendations aimed at dealing with a property condition ticking time bomb. Nearly a fifth of our housing—467,000 homes—is pre-1919, and 68 per cent of those have disrepair to critical elements. We called for three things to be done. First, there should be regular building inspections; secondly, there should be compulsory owners associations, so that there are bodies that take responsibility for maintaining properties; and, thirdly, we should establish building repair funds. There was a lot of detail behind all three recommendations.
The issue that we were dealing with is exactly what the RSE was talking about in relation to Scotland’s ageing and varied housing stock. Dealing with property maintenance is essential, and improving energy efficiency is part of that. I have seen at first hand, as part of work that was done by the Local Government and Communities Committee when I served on it, the difference that that can make. We visited Dundee, Lewis and Harris, and saw how retrofitting not only has health benefits—physical and mental—but keeps the bills down.
I want to briefly touch on electric vehicles, which the committee also wrote about. Michelle Ballantyne will have more to say on that, and she speaks from first-hand experience as one of the growing number of MSP converts to electric cars—there is a bit of a Tesla army in this place. The UK and Scottish Governments have introduced quite stringent and challenging policies, but I just say this: if we want to persuade people to ditch petrol and diesel cars, we are talking about them using electric vehicles—or hydrogen vehicles, but electric seems to be winning that battle at the moment. However, as we have heard already, there are challenges with the charging network—I see you asking me to close, Presiding Officer, and I am going to do so. We need to make things reliable and we need to make it easy for people to use an electric vehicle.
Once again, I congratulate the committee and my good friend Mr Lindhurst.