Hansard

I thank members across the chamber for their contributions to the debate and, indeed, their forbearance.

On the issue of good governance, I have been in this Parliament since 1999 and I served as deputy convener of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, and anyone who knows me will know that I take our processes very seriously indeed.

I am engaging in the process around this expedited LCM only because I feel that it is important to do so at this time. We could have delayed the process and waited until the new parliamentary session, but that would have taken time, and there is a requirement now to provide confidence to bus manufacturers on our policy direction and to give them reassurance with regard to when the procurement of fossil fuel buses will end. The bill says that that will happen no earlier than 2030. Mark Ruskell makes a point about whether it should be before that, but I think that that provision allows us time to make the preparations. Importantly, regulations will come before Parliament through the affirmative procedure, and that will allow the necessary scrutiny that everybody wants.

The Confederation of Passenger Transport has been generally supportive of similar proposals in England, stating in its Commons stage briefing on the bill that the industry supports the transition away from fossil fuel and continues to make progress in that regard. Of course, the progress that we are making in Scotland is in advance of that in the rest of the UK, with 14 per cent of our public service buses in Scotland being zero-emission vehicles, compared with a Great Britain average of 8.1 per cent. However, there is more to be done, and I have spoken with local authorities about their positions.

I would point out to Paul Sweeney a very important distinction: the Scottish Government is not a procurer of buses. We do not order buses. It is the operators who order buses, and we provide support to them. On that point, at the bus manufacturing panel that I attended, I spoke with the UK Government about the Procurement Act 2023, which reflects a lot of the principles that we implemented in 2016 and other measures that we have taken.

On the investment that we have put in, we have put £150 million of capital into zero-emission buses. That intervention is to provide certainty and confidence in future demand, and ensure that all areas of Scotland are included so that that transition can take place.

I say to Douglas Lumsden that this has been done in co-operation with the UK Government. We saw the opportunity. At one point, the UK bill process would have finished earlier, but our recesses are different from the UK Government’s recesses, so it has taken a bit of co-ordination. I particularly thank Simon Lightwood, the UK minister, who has been very helpful in that co-operation. It is a good example of co-operation when we want to do something collectively with the UK Government. I would like to see more of that rather than less, which would be for the benefit of all.