Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 07 December 2021
There is cross-party agreement in the Parliament about the need to transition to net zero in a fair and managed fashion. I agree with many of the headline policies that the Scottish Government has announced to address the climate crisis and with a number of the remarks just made by Fiona Hyslop, but I have genuine concerns about how those headline policies are being implemented and the lack of resource, personnel and budget being dedicated to them. Frankly, I have a genuine question about whether the Scottish Government is more interested in headlines than delivering the transformation that is required.
Those same concerns were expressed today by the independent UK Climate Change Committee in its progress report. It expressed doubts about whether Scotland would reach the 2030 interim targets. It has concerns that there is not enough clarity and transparency on policy, that there is little detail to support the delivery of the policy and that implementation has been lacking.
In the spirit of co-operation, let me try to help the minister by providing some recent examples of what the Climate Change Committee refers to in its concerns. In 2017, the First Minister announced the headline policy of a publicly owned energy company that would tackle fuel poverty, reduce energy prices and help meet climate targets. That remained a key Scottish Government policy for the best part of four years, and £500,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent on feasibility studies.
However, the policy was quietly airbrushed away during summer recess and replaced with a new headline policy of a national public energy agency, which was announced with the ambitious objectives of decarbonising homes and buildings and reducing fuel poverty. So far, so good—that sounds like a good policy, but again, on closer inspection, it turned out to be just a headline. The cabinet secretary confirmed to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee that that virtual agency will be no more than a website with no additional resource, budget or staffing—in other words, a headline policy with no substance has been replaced with another headline policy with no substance. I have genuine concerns about that—the policy intention is good but the delivery is failing.
The same approach has been taken in the Scottish Government motion, which proclaims that
“Scotland is the first country in the world to commit to a Just Transition Planning Framework.”