Meeting of the Parliament 01 February 2024
I welcome the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. It is our role to scrutinise the Scottish Government’s actions to secure progress towards becoming a net zero nation and to check whether it has the resources that it needs to tackle the climate and nature emergencies. We have a huge remit, and in the time I have I can pick out only a few highlights.
Last year I stood up in the same debate and undertook, on behalf of the committee, to hold the Government to its commitment to increase transparency around the carbon footprint of its budget. Some progress has been made this year, with the publication of the climate change and carbon assessment alongside the budget, which we welcome. However, on Tuesday morning, just as we were starting to take evidence from the Government, we were told that some of the figures used in the assessment were inaccurate. Clearly, there is a huge amount of work still to be done for the Government to reliably articulate to the Parliament how budget decisions contribute—or indeed do not contribute—to reductions in carbon emissions.
One theme of our budget work has been funding for public transport, which is a vital component of the Scottish Government’s own ambitions to reduce car travel by 20 per cent. On buses, we heard about grants and funds being reduced to zero, with late notification of that to key organisations such as the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport. We are unclear how such decisions will help to deliver the step change to net zero.
The committee has dedicated much of this parliamentary session to ferry services, as did our predecessor committee in the previous session, so it will come as no surprise that I mention that issue here. It is disappointing to hear that money has not been allocated for work to upgrade the harbour at Ardrossan; it will merely continue to a review of the business case for that harbour. We also heard that no decision has been made to procure vessels through the small vessel replacement programme, although funding has been “earmarked”. We still do not know what the final costs of hulls 801 and 802 will be.
The electric vehicle charging infrastructure has been another theme of our budget work. We were pleased to hear about the delivery of 2,700 chargers through £65 million of funding for ChargePlace Scotland. However, progress through the electric vehicle infrastructure fund is less clear. The fund is to develop 6,000 new charge points over four years. We are now half way through that period. We heard this week that £20 million of the fund has been committed but not yet drawn down, and the fund has yet to deliver any charge points. That raises questions about the effectiveness of spending and the pace of progress under the fund.
Another part of our pre-budget work has involved assessing the budget settlement for Scotland’s environmental regulators. We were pleased to see that both NatureScot and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency have received a real-terms increase in funding for this year. We hope that that will translate into real progress in areas such as habitat restoration and robustly enforcing existing laws and regulations that protect the environment.
Before I make my next point I remind members that I am a partner in a farming partnership. The land concerned has trees on it, but I have not applied for any planting grants in the past 10 years. My point is that the trouble with the good news about SEPA and NatureScot is that it is somewhat undercut by the news elsewhere in the budget. For instance, we need to see an acceleration in tree planting, both for habitat restoration and to absorb carbon emissions, but funding for Forestry and Land Scotland and woodland creation schemes has been reduced, despite setting ambitious targets that have already been missed since 2017. We know that this is a tough financial year, but we question the consistency of decision making and its implications for the Scottish Government’s reaching its own goals. We remind it that forestry is not a tap that it can turn on and off as required.
I turn to the budget allocation for energy. The Scottish Government’s ambitions for the offshore wind sector are welcome. However, we have raised questions about the efficacy of funding for as long as we continue to have somewhat clunky marine consenting and licensing arrangements. The cabinet secretary told us that the decision to kick-start the £500 million fund for offshore wind energy meant that funding for hydrogen energy innovation was not being prioritised in this budget year. We note that, so far, only 7 per cent of the £100 million previously committed to hydrogen energy over the parliamentary session has been allocated, with no additional moneys being made available in this budget.
The Scottish Government has previously committed to spending its considerable revenues from ScotWind leasing on tackling the climate and nature emergency, yet we have heard that the money drawn down so far has been used to support the overall budget, and that that might be the case for the foreseeable future. Again, we appreciate the Government’s financial predicament, but it is worth reflecting on the long-term benefits that ring fencing could afford.
We are at a crossroads in our journey towards net zero—2030 now looks pretty close to us. There are questions about whether some of the decisions in this year’s budget maintain the momentum that we will need if we are to meet our 2030 and 2045 targets. To that end, I add a note of qualified optimism. There will be a climate change plan this year. Some of us wish that it could have been produced sooner. I am told that it will be delivered by November. It would have helped the committee’s budget scrutiny had we had it in our hands, but we are where we are. The plan will set out what the Government intends to do to deliver its carbon reduction targets and details of the associated funds that are needed. Alongside the Parliament’s other committees, we look forward to considering that plan and, I hope, achieving a better understanding of the Scottish Government’s policy choices, which it now thinks it will still be able to deliver by 2045. Indeed, that plan should make our budget scrutiny next year more meaningful.
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