Meeting of the Parliament 14 March 2023
There is no question but that the cuts in support for bus companies will hit rural areas harder, as those are the more heavily subsidised parts of our network scheme.
What frustrates me is that, nearly four years after the Parliament passed the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, the Government is still dragging its heels on giving councils the powers secured in that act and, more importantly, the resources that they need to deliver publicly owned local bus services in order to start to put passengers, not profits, first.
If we want to see evidence of this Government’s lack of commitment to a just transition, we need only look at the way in which it and Glasgow City Council treated Glasgow’s taxi drivers when introducing the low-emission zone. They have failed to support drivers adequately to make that transition, which will force many out of business or into unmanageable debt.
If we want a just transition with regard to our buildings, which are the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and account for a quarter of emissions, we will not get that by cutting the energy efficiency budget by £133 million. Instead, we should be tackling the issue of why poorly designed schemes—including the area-based schemes that are administered by local authorities—are not being utilised, given the shocking levels of fuel poverty in Scotland and the knowledge that insulating our homes properly cuts not only fuel bills but fuel use and therefore emissions.
We need more clarity and certainty for our councils, home owners, landowners and—crucially—supply chains through the early publication of future regulations for heating and energy efficiency. That regulatory framework needs to sit alongside an effective enabling framework, learning from effective retrofit examples from across Europe. For example, in Europe, one-stop shops are emerging that provide end-to-end management of the retrofit and installation process for the home owner, from access to information on options to getting quotes and engaging in contracts.
Even in areas such as energy production, where we have made good progress in cutting emissions, not only have we not seen a just transition, with many of the supply chain opportunities going overseas, but we see that that progress is now under threat because of the long-term decline in the number of council-employed planners. In my region of Dumfries and Galloway, eight of the latest 11 wind farm projects that were taken to the Scottish Government’s planning and environmental appeals division resulted from a failure to decide the application locally within the required four-month timescale, primarily due to a lack of planning staff.
The clock is ticking towards our net zero targets, but the Government lacks a clear plan for the urgent actions that are needed to meet those targets to ensure that we play our part in stopping the climate crisis from becoming a climate catastrophe. Our councils are key to meeting those targets, but we need to start to give them the powers, the support, the resources and the respect that they need to help us to deliver that greener, fairer Scotland that we all want to see.
15:27