 I welcome everyone to this, the 21st meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2023. The first item on our agenda is a declaration of interest, and I invite Graeme Simpson, who is joining the committee in place of Craig Hoy, to declare any relevant interests. Thanks, convener. I have no relevant interests to declare. Thank you very much indeed. I will take this opportunity to place on record my thanks to the contribution that Craig Hoy made to the work of this committee over the last two years. A gender item 2 is a decision for members of the committee to agree or not to take business in private. I ask members of the committee if they are agreeable to taking a gender item 4, 5 and 6 in private this morning. We are agreed. Thank you very much for that. Our principal item on the agenda this morning is consideration of the Audit Scotland report, how the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals, governance and risk management arrangements for net zero targets and adaptation outcomes. I might just use the shorter title for the future of the meeting. We are pleased to welcome three witnesses from the Scottish Government this morning to give us evidence on that. I am pleased to welcome Roy Brannan, who is the director general net zero. Alongside Mr Brannan is Kirsty Burge, who is the director of energy and climate change in the Scottish Government, and they are joined by Phil Reigns. Phil is the deputy director for domestic climate change in the Scottish Government. We have quite a number of questions to ask this morning, but before we get to those questions, Mr Brannan, can I ask you to make a short opening statement? Thank you, convener, and good morning, committee. Thanks for the opportunity to come to speak with the committee today on the report prepared by Audit Scotland. As you say, I am joined by my colleagues Kirsty Burge, director of energy and climate change, and Phil Reigns, deputy director of domestic climate change, who have the day-to-day responsibility for climate change oversight activity. The twin challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss require not just active and determined leadership, but all the experience and focus that the public sector can bring to governance, planning and delivery. That challenge has a threefold element in Scotland. It covers mitigation, reducing carbon emissions in line with the targets, just transition, ensuring that we pursue climate change policies that minimise impacts on the most vulnerable but maximises the benefits of the transition, and adaptation, helping Scotland adapt to the lockdown impacts of climate change. The report by Audit Scotland clearly sets out the journey that we have been undertaking to develop governance and risk management that is right for a programme of work that continues to evolve. It noted how we have made significant improvements in our programme approach over the years and rightly noted the ways in which we can further improve. We welcome those recommendations and we have committed to implementing them as soon as possible. Indeed, as I hope the discussion today will demonstrate, we have taken important strides already. We have built on the existing governance of the climate change programme and are developing streamlined, more clearly presented sets of roles, responsibilities and relationships at all levels throughout the programme. We have matured the approach to risk with clear processes around risk identification, escalation, action and monitoring. We have put in place a new programming secretariat to drive forward those improvements. As always, we are happy to attempt to answer any questions that you have on aspects of the governance and risk activity from the Audit Scotland report. If we can't, we are happy to follow up in writing. Thank you very much indeed, Mr Brandon. That sets out some helpful parameters that we will be guided by to ask our questions this morning. Can I ask what impact, if any, has the joint review of budget had on matters related to climate change on the Scottish Government's governance and risk management arrangements for meeting its net zero targets and adaptation outcomes? I will start now and bring Kirsten on that. The joint budget review settled on three things that we are going to do differently at the end of the process. One is to strengthen how climate change is recognised in the budget, and you saw that from the text that was included in the budget for 2324. The second is to look at an improved taxology for future budgets, so working across the piece on every line identifying what those lines will contribute in terms of emissions reductions. The third area, which is still in development, but will undertake a pilot at the tail end of this year, is to develop an assessment process of policies. I think that you perhaps heard from Alison Irvine, the major infrastructure session, that TS has already introduced a policy check, if you like, on climate change impact as part of their process. We are looking to develop that further so that, as we go forward over the years, every policy will go through a similar framework. Kirsten? Maybe I would probably just one thing on that and bring fill in as well. So far, you will be aware that our assessment, our carbon assessment of the budget, has focused on the capital budget. We are looking to bring in an assessment of the revenue budget as well, so it covers all of the budget. On the pilot, taking a step back, and we talked about that in the Infrastructure Committee as well, working out how we do the carbon assessment of policies is something that Governments across the world are looking at. We are seeking to improve how we do that on an on-going basis and how we assure that throughout the different levels of the Scottish Government. But Phil, I do not know if you want to come in on that. The only thing I might add is that this is about embedding the way that the priority placed upon climate change, apparent in the policy perspectives and indeed from the programme for government that got published this week. It is about embedding that in the way that decisions get made through the governance chain regarding budgets, so that the information is there, it is apparent, it is there for Parliament as well to consider as part of the decisions that they make, to make sure that when those decisions about budgets are going forward, both the internal ones that ministers might need to consider in terms of thinking about what they wish to propose to Parliament, as well as Parliament's own consideration of it, that information is there in a way that makes sense. So all these three things are there, very much from the Fraser-Vallander report that underlay it. So it is about embedding it within the governance structure that exists within the budget process right the way through to this building. Thank you. You actually mentioned that there it says in the report about embedding climate change considerations into the financial and policy decision making processes and obviously the DG for net zero has to work with all the other DGs to ensure that climate change is considered in the activities that they lead on. So can you tell us about the work that you're undertaking as the portfolio accountable officer to ensure that climate change is considered in each of the Government directories by the other portfolio accountable officers? Yeah, so there's quite a bit of overlap here because it is one of eight DGs that I sit on the executive team and so that kind of scrutiny and cross-collaboration for instance and DG economy work on the national strategy for economic transformation, there is quite a bit of connection and overlap on terms of just identifying how different policies are taken forward in relation to climate change. On the global climate emergency board for instance we have directorate spending from the Exchequer sitting on the board, we have all the directors of all the sectors sitting on the board and we also have directors from DG economy sitting on the board. So there's quite a bit of insight and scrutiny on the activity that's been taken forward in relation to climate change work. On the budget, then the budget is by necessity developed as a group of directorates with ministers, and then collectively with executive team and then with cabinet. So that process, again climate change will feature as part of that process as we run through it. Could I ask as well at what point the DGs have involvement in announcements so the likes of the First Minister's programme for government was announced on Tuesday so what involvement do you have in that and one specifically I was kind of looking at there's obviously a huge carbon footprint with housing so there's an announcement for an investment of 750 million to support the delivery of affordable homes, there's also 25 million to provide homes for key workers and invest in 60 million to acquire empty properties for uses of affordable homes I don't know if that 25 and 60 is included within the 750 or not but do you have involvement before those announcements are made in what the carbon footprint would be do all the director generals get together discuss it and is there minutes of all the meetings? Yeah so we're venturing outwith governance and risk of climate change more generally how government operates but I'm happy enough to try and answer that. So DGs and their directorates provide policy advice to ministers in developing those elements of policy that ministers want to take forward and that's what the culmination of that is the PRG. Okay I do have more governance questions but I'll come back in and then. Right thanks I mean Mr Brandon you mentioned taxonomy which is the classification of spending isn't it into kind of high medium low carbon impact and so on and Mr Reigns you mentioned the Fraser of Allander Institute I mean when I so when I look at some of the commentary of the Fraser of Allander Institute they are quite critical of your taxonomy they say these classifications are very broad for example all health spending is classified as neutral spending regardless of the underlying activity this risks misclassifying high emission activities as beneficial or carbon reduction activities as harmful it is not known what emissions impact to spend classified as high low or neutral emissions actually has I mean that's a fairly fundamental criticism of the model that you're using so it says that so they say both the high level carbon assessment and taxonomy carbon assessment of the capital budget methodologies are in our view unable to provide an adequate level of scrutiny and transparency how do you respond to that so that's why we undertook the GBR and that's what the work that Scottish Exchequer colleagues in collaboration with climate chain colleagues are taking forward to develop that methodology and mature it so that it covers both resource and capital and that works in their way so when can we expect to see that for the for this budget coming up okay okay okay I've got more questions on related areas to that but I'm going to turn to Colin Beattie who's got some things to put to you Colin I do have some specific questions for you but I'd like to ask you a more general one to begin with a lot of the work that the Scottish Government has done is fairly well developed in terms of climate change and you know a huge amount has been done if you like on that side of the balance sheet the other side is how are you going to afford this where's the money coming from in a different committee I was one of the witnesses referred to a wall of private finance because clearly the government doesn't have all the money that's needed to to affect this that wall of private finance has to be tapped into it has to be shown that there are viable projects which will give a good return on their investment how are we tapping into that how are we communicating with this wall are we doing it through the UK government are we doing it directly how are we going to compete how are we going to be competitive against the rest of the particularly developed world which which we'll be looking for exactly that same money those are the strands activity that both dg net zero and dg economy are working on in terms of invest investable propositions effectively and if I use some of the examples in transport because that's where it's more recent I guess we managed to secure a good level of private investment in the transformation of the bus fleet to low carbon fleet by pump priming with Scottish Government money and similar piece of work now under way on electric vehicle charging points and I think that's where we need to see the use of public money being much more in that frame going forward and I know Gregor Irwin dg economy has clear bits of work under way to identify those markets that are available and looking for a home to invest in and the challenges that we face hydrogen is a good example of that where we think we've got a good marketable proposition then to present those two things together going back to the budget I think it's 23 24 was the largest on record in terms of spending climate change 2.2 billion but it is still short of what it will require to transform society level of a country of Scotland size and that's that's well recognised and I think Mr Beattie I think you're absolutely right the key thing is to make marketable propositions to have the right engagement with investors and then to match those two up so that hopefully we can start to produce a kind of clearer pathway for some of these interventions that are going to require much more than public funding but Kirsty I don't know if you want to say any more of an investment yeah I mean it's it's it's absolutely critical as you say that we lever in private sector finance and we do it in a range of ways so for example the Scottish national investment bank has a really important role to play what happens in practice is that for for projects and investments which aren't on their own commercially viable as Roy says there is a role for some public sector money to come in and leverage that and I guess the role it plays is it sends a signal that the government is really serious about this sector and we will do what we can with our levers to ensure it develops so for example in hydrogen and that can help leverage in public sector private sector money so Scottish national investment bank is an example of that the work that Scottish enterprise and the enterprise agencies do to support investments is another example and and these investments will will almost always unless it's in the very early stage of sort of technological development require co-investment by the private sector as well so so in the areas where you know we see there are there are significant new market opportunities Roy has mentioned hydrogen there will be the parts of transport carbon capture and storage industrial transformation also in in decarbonising our building stock there's a range of levers so as a Scottish national investment bank enterprise agencies and then as we talked about in the infrastructure investment committee we have a number of funds industrial transformation fund for example that we run ourselves and there's sort of core funding from the Scottish government and we work together with private sector investment I've seen various figures given for the money that's going to be needed to fund this transition and all of them are eye-watering what seems to have been done so far is relatively compared to that quite small we're going to have to tap into huge sums of money billions and billions over a period there is going to be competition for that money from everywhere how well developed are our links into private finance to ensure that scotland receives its fair share of funding in terms of this and that we can produce enough viable projects because some of these projects are not necessarily profitable but nevertheless need done and that would imply public funding as opposed to private funding how is this all being brought together is is a group who are working on this maintaining these relationships and contacts developing them and ensuring that there is a pipeline yeah so if i'd known we were we're going to cover this off i probably would have invited dg economy along gregar because that's exactly what his remit is is to take effectively the challenges that i have in getting us to net zero marketable propositions and then engaging with investment community to go what can you do and how can we work together to make a proposition that will allow us to deliver both on the journey towards net zero but also that investment that we need so that's his principal focus as a dg economy and his team are focused in on identifying those marketable investable propositions whether that's in scotland or whether that's in other areas i mean one area that we are we know we're going to have to work quite hard on and that we've already got work on the way it falls under cursed his remit is the heat and buildings transformation so heat and buildings transformation is significant we've got a large amount of properties that we need to transform over the piece for that for heat and buildings to contribute their portion off the journey towards net zero and we've got to find propositions that will be acceptable to homeowners and others and a marketable proposition as we start to move the transition in terms of energy efficiency and low emission heating systems so again we're probably ventured quite far away from the governance and risk of the audit scotland report but i hopefully it gives you some confidence that that's the piece of work in the link up between that cross collaboration piece between two dgs effectively as part of the et i'm sure some of my colleagues i'll have questions in this also let me move on to more specific the audit general support talks about the director the deputy director network as a key climate change governance body a key climate change governance body and that it has responsibility for delivering on policies within the climate change plan update but it operates informally no minutes of the meeting is there a reason why there's no minutes of the meeting and how a decision is taken how are decisions recorded how are decisions communicated so this is the journey i've been on since i came into the post the gce board set up in 2019 was very strategic in nature and my background as you know now is is around delivery so my focus as i came in was to try and reorientate both the gce board and the structures supporting it to focus much more in the programme the building blocks what we need to do what we need to measure and then how do we assure ourselves that that's in place and the audit scotland report was a timely insight into how mature we had got to that point since then we have revised the terms of reference for the gce we've established a new governance framework that more clearly sets out the roles of all the individuals involved in climate change delivery including the role of that dd group which we no longer see as a pivotal part of the governance structure but support to the gce board and i'll say a bit more about why why we've done that and then as well as that we've also developed the risk framework for the climate change programme to be held by the gce board set aside that we are a very well developed risk process at the dg family level recognising that this gce board needs to have an oversight of those climate change risks that flow through the programme so the governance framework now has all the different boards that flow directly up to gce so we're effectively streamline it by taking out the dd network and using that as a support mechanism only to the gce board so the board on transport for instance transport climate change transformation board their reporting mechanisms will flow to the gce board and it will be for the gce board to assure on a regular basis the activity of each of these sectors so that's what we've done in the interim period between the reporting now and speaking to the auditor general earlier what i've agreed to do is for the team to engage on an ongoing basis now on those artifacts as they are developed so that Audit Scotland can continue that process of just assuring that we are working through those recommendations in a timely fashion but what's in people's hands that they produce no minutes a keyboard no minutes we do now produce minutes which are provided to the programme board was there any logic behind not producing minutes and meeting informally it took the form as providing support for the gce programme board but we recognise as Roy has been saying that the formality of the procedures very much strengthened by the Audit Scotland's recommendations is something we did need to revisit and we have revisited and in part of looking at governance and looking at programme management is sometimes an exercise in what you might think of as gardening we have been trying to find ways to rationalise and make more sense of the the the governance structures there and avoid unnecessary duplication as well as formalising the processes for those bits which are still there and i think just to add to that again it comes back to the journey that we've been on with the the establishment of these structures the gce board when set up was a direct response to the former First Minister's climate change emergency at the time but also in a very strategic space so what is it that needs to happen we're now we're now past that point so we've climate change plan update we know what needs to be delivered and the the process now has been to move that much more in the delivery space and that's flowed through to artifacts that for instance very early on in my tenure in 2020 establishing a dashboard that we could take to the executive team in delivery mode so that they could get sight off those building blocks across the seven sectors and the progress on those outcomes and those indicators so it's Mr Beatty it's a journey that we have been on the DD support board network was in effect a a mechanism to support the gce at that point it didn't have a formal role where with the new governance framework i've formalised that so that we've now got the boards for each of the sectors reporting directly into gce so is the auditor general incorrect in that this but this boat this deputy director network is responsible for delivering on policies within the climate change plan update is that no it's never had that no no it's not incorrect they were for instance it is correct so i mean for instance and i'll bring filler on this so perform the key role informally the the development of the climate change plan if you like the development of the sectoral changes the DD board would have heard oversight and strategic intervention on those policies as they then were considered by the informally i'm happy to come in a bit on this so so policy obviously gets delivered at all levels in government you know and it will discuss it team level will discuss it at divisional level with deputy directors and at director level so i think the so so and the policy gets scrutinised as you go up the chain so for example in the development of the climate change plan the starts and teams goes through units goes through deputy directors through the deputy director network and then goes to the gce board and at all levels that policy is is scrutinised so i will discuss with my deputy directors what we're doing in the sectors i'm responsible for and then the papers with quite a lot of detail then go into the gce board so there is substantive scrutiny through the gce board of what comes up through the deputy director network you know that said and we agree that we should probably have been taking minutes from that and because that increases that transparency it's another layer on top of the papers that go up so we you know we we accept that but as rhai says and where we're moving now is it's you know it's i guess formally acknowledged as that kind of working group that helps support the analysis and the papers that go to the gc board is it fair to say that that unsatisfactory governance issue that's been highlighted here by the auditor general no longer exists that's correct so it will be it will be a supporting group to the gc board so the gc board if the gc board want something to be developed in strategic terms then we'll get the dd network to to discuss and evolve that first but in terms of the reporting on activity across the seven sectors towards net zero you'll get a streamlined approach from the sectors to the gc board through a monitoring framework and then in turn from the gc board to the cabinet subcommittee on climate change so let's move on to another governance issue the auditor general has made multiple references to gaps on climate governance linked to adaptation both in his report and in evidence session in 18th may the what progress is the scottish government making to address gaps in governance and capacity linked to climate adaptation ahead of producing the next climate adaptation programme i'll bring kirsten in a minute on that so that the climate change adaptation is now one of the three key pillars of the climate change programme that will be overseen by the gc board so the climate change mitigation adaptation and just transition as a set of moment statement i think it's fair to say and auditor general is right that adaptation not just in this country but across the world is always lags behind the focus on mitigation when i came in i stuck it on our dg risk network risk register quite early on in in 22 and escalated that through the internal governance processes to the corporate risk register to give it more focus we've had deep dives on adaptation at et level and at cabinet subcommittee if i remember rightly but we need to again formalize the responsibility for delivery of those changes that are going to be required on adaptation across all the sectors so transport for instance of published recently are their kind of approach to adaptation over the next the next climate change adaptation plan period as we go into the development of the next climate change adaptation plan which we will start in the end of this year start 24 as we have to staturally to do that will include and this is the hard bit is working on a monitoring and evaluation framework where nobody has done this anywhere else at the minute a robust monitoring and evaluation framework so you need to be able to identify again on flooding for instance what what is it that you will that we will do you can have a general statement that says we will we will do everything we possibly can to to transform the country to safeguard ourselves across flooding but trying to get that more specificity into that process of what we will do by when is the work of the next climate change adaptation plan but just to put something in here the order general report also identified key challenges in terms of workforce capacity and capability and that climate change is competing with other areas for funding and staff how are you addressing that so last year as a as an et with the new PEMSEC we went through a process looking again at our resource resourcing needs as a government lined to the priorities of government with the budget available and that resulted in a in a break if you like on workforce recruitment at that stage until we all had gone through a process of workforce planning and from the DG family recognising that we were establishing as a completely new DG family in 2021 bringing different directives together expanding we then at the start of tail end of last year started this year did workforce planning as directorates so Kirsty for the deck directorate identifying the staff that she would be required to deliver on the government's programme with the budget available that workforce plan was then presented to et ratified and those are the numbers that we are now working to between now and 24 is the first data point and end of the parliament so as a DG family we are due to increase slightly in a couple of key directorates so in deck we will have increased by about 100 staff since 2022 to 24 and that's recognising the programmes that we have in heating buildings and other activity that are key to delivery of climate change in Scotland we have established a whole new directorate because again that's a key tenant of our transition to energy transformation so as a DG family we are one of the DG families which will grow recognising the challenge of climate change in our need to deliver but over the longer term the trend is to become more efficient and reduce our headcount so that it is fit and right for the size of organisation the budget the pipeline of activity and the resources that we've got it appears on that you've still got a bit of a challenge ahead of you but let me move on I'm conscious of time the variety house agreement which is signed recently between the Scottish Government and local government it sets out how both parties are going to work together to deliver shared priorities including climate change what impact if any will this new agreement have on the Scottish Government's existing governance and risk management arrangements so it's a good area to pick up on so that they for some time we've been doing quite a bit of work with the seven cities alliance now eight cities alliance on the transition to net zero so establishing a kind of pathway to work together on key things like EV infrastructure like fleet procurement the chief executive of Aberdeen city helped to develop that further beyond the cities to a proposal that would bring in coslasolus and local authorities more generally and we see the development of that co-working if you like on climate change delivery as being a kind of front tenet of the new variety house agreement so there's been early discussions with our colleagues on what a framework would look like in that space one of the early wins that we will take forward which was already going ahead ahead of verity house was an intelligence climate system which would gather data on a on a regimented basis across all 32 local authorities so we've got consistency of approach in terms of data sourcing and we've agreed to to kind of co-take that forward so i see it as a really helpful way to to kind of formalise some of the activity that we'd already established so we knew that we can't do this as national government alone it needs other public bodies not just the ones i look after but local authority and i think the verity house again it just gives us a stronger foundation on which to drive that forward at a political level but kirstedron if you want to say any more than that yeah no i think the only thing i'd say is i think we're in a fairly good place actually in in terms of our experience with working with local government because we've recognised for a long time local government obviously has a huge role to play in climate change but it's also a newish role because it's not the kind of you know it's slightly different functions so for example we've worked really closely with local government to develop local heat and energy efficiency strategies where local government will set out you know what what areas are most appropriate for development of heat networks and we've been working with them on on transport to provide you know to you know working to provide charging infrastructure for example so i think i think this is actually an area where we're building on some some strengths okay let me let me just again i'm conscious of the time let me just briefly ask you about the other general's report again talks about the cabinet subcommittee on the climate emergency and he states it's unclear what the role of the cabinet subcommittee is what is the role of the cabinet cabinet subcommittee on the Scottish government's governance and risk arrangements for net zero targets and adaptation and outcomes so the cabinet subcommittee was set up to to look at and take decisions on those aspects that come forward from the global climate emergency board on our journey to connect to net zero so for instance over the course of the last year we have taken the agricultural reform programme to the cabinet subcommittee taking a steer from the committee on how that would develop into the legislation that will go forward now we've taken forward transport we've taken forward adaptation and we're now in the process of taking forward the work of the new plan so the new plan and the work that the policy teams are developing will goes in front of the cabinet subcommittee if i ask you to summarise just in a very brief sentence of whatever what their key function is they're taking decisions on the journey to net zero and then ratified by the full cabinet in due course why isn't it clearer i mean i'm i'm preferring to the other general's report i'm sorry i'm unclear about why that's unclear as a cabinet subcommittee of the of the cabinet full scottish cabinet and that's his role might just add there was a paper that went before the programme board at the last programme board which sets out very clearly the roles and responsibilities for every part of the governance so where there was any lack of clarity before we've now got that formally written down there are clear terms of reference and there are clear roles and responsibilities for every chain and what roi said i guess with regard to the cabinet subcommittee is is presented there as that okay i'll leave it at that i think committee i think graham simpson wants to come in on this cabinet subcommittee point graham yeah um so i was looking to see if i could find any minutes for the cabinet subcommittee and i couldn't find any do you do you know if they're published i don't think they are published is the reason why they're not published don't know so we do take minutes from the cabinet subcommittee absolutely as we should that you know that the work that comes to cabinet subcommittee is policy work in development and we have a we have a very extensive we might come on to this we have a very extensive reporting framework on climate change and both mitigation and adaptation and again you know as work goes through the various levels of government both official level and the political level you know we publish things to an extent so similarly you know we don't publish cabinet minutes immediate after cabinet similarly with the the this is a sub cabinet committee and just to be absolutely clear we take very clear minutes from that they are just not put in the public domain because it's considered that this is this is policy and development yeah but this is an important well according to you an important committee you know we as parliamentarians need to be able to scrutinise that it's work and we can't do that if the minutes aren't published what will you go away and reconsider this well it's it's not for me to reconsider it i think that's just the mechanism of how is it for how government and cabinet works so cabinet secretary that so i think that's one that we'll take away as Kirsty says policy and development has always been in that space where until a formal decision is taken by cabinet then it is policy and development and in a case of the activity that goes forward into the cabinet subcommittee just now there is a bit of iteration back and forward at the present time because that's what we're developing is is a policy that will finally be go to cabinet and decision to be taken on it who chairs this committee it was miss mcallan okay and how many members are on it it's uh from memory i think we have eight eight cabinet secretaries not all the cabinet it's all the cabinet secretaries with sector responsibility but i can we can send the details in off of the establishment of the committee and who's on the committee and relevant ministers we might add as well yeah which makes it slightly different from cabinet okay i mean it is but obviously we've got the cabinet we've got the Scottish government has cabinet subcommittees in the number of different areas and we as i understand it follow the procedures which are you know the same ass or at least very similar to the way in which other cabinet subcommittees operate can i bring it back to something which you do have control of you've mentioned in response to Colin Beattie's early questions that partly i presuming light of the audit scotland report you've reviewed the governance arrangements and the balance of responsibility between what was formally and what is described in the audit scotland report as the engine room which is mr reins committed the deputy director network uh to say that uh now there had been a kind of shift and it was very much the uh well you keep referring to it as the gc board but i presume that's a global climate emergency board if i understand it correctly so two things arise from that for the committee i think one is could you send us a copy of the new governance structure as it is now constituted and secondly um let's say coming on to something which appears to me you would have control over um in light of that changing governance structure i i understood the implication was you wouldn't be publishing in answer to the direct question the minutes of the deputy director network but would you be publishing the minutes of the gc board the global global climate emergency board no because it falls into the same category so it's it's a board that is well it's not in the same category i mean i so i understand why the cabinet doesn't produce its minutes later on that same day and that there are year-long rules about when and and how cabinet minutes might be produced i get that but this is a kind of operational strategic body which might be in mr simpson's words accountable to us as parliamentarians for the decisions that it's taken what i mean it's i think there is quite a distinction between a cabinet and a cabinet subcommittee and this gc board so i think i think we're probably not going to agree on that in the sense that the development of policy goes through the global climate emergency board heads up to cabinet subcommittee and then decisions taken on how that policy either policy comes back for further development so it's like any other mechanism of government there are meetings and organisations and boards held which are in that development space i think where i think where we we are in a very transparent spaces in terms of the monitoring and impact of the outcomes of the work of the organization so we publish on an annual basis in may this year a 310 page report on each sector and their progress toward delivery of the the outcomes and indicators in the climate change plan update and that's the that's the kind of public facing element of how is government undertaking its business how is it progressing towards climate change annually we also are subject to the impacts of the review of the climate change targets in our climate change committee report on our progress made towards that the transformation of the board as we move into more delivery focus i suspect that we will produce artifacts through that process which will aid and enhance that level of external public scrutiny but the actual day-to-day work of the board and its development of policy is like any other part of government where it's it's those minutes are not formally published it's not like a board which is is delivering on only outcomes well i mean i hear what you're saying mr brandon but i reflect on what this committee was told when we took evidence from the Auditor General and he said this and this is what's in connection with the deputy director network which it seems to me to be a kind of lower level than this gc board he said that um there ought to be some formality and he goes on to say all that requires an additional level of formality minute taking is one of those fundamentals so question one is is there a minute taken of the gc board but and question two is but you are refusing to publish that i'm not refusing to publish it i'm just i'm just citing how government operates in that space where you're developing policy minutes are produced as at the end of every gc board and they are a record of that development of policy but the policy development including the production of the next climate change plan quite rightly has to go through the governance structure of clearance by ministers that's just that's just normal course of business in developing a policy and so we then get to see none of that is the that's that outcome isn't it mr brandwells what is what comes out of the end of all of that is the production of the artifacts that will guide us towards net zero in this case development of policy in the climate change plan will be the consultation on the climate change plan which everybody will have an opportunity to comment on as it passes its way through parliament and that includes those monitoring those monitoring reports i mentioned that cover the sectorial progress towards their journey to climate change so if committee members i mean we're happy enough to the ports public but happy enough to to send in the details of that but that report published in May by sector 300 pages gives very detailed articulation of how each sector has progressed over the previous year or its journey towards climate change and we do a similar thing on climate change adaptation okay we are a bit pressed at times so i'm going to invite willy coffee to put a question to you thanks for watching good morning row and colleagues i just wanted to shift the discussion slightly to the kind of public behaviour public participation element of this journey to net zero would you agree that probably one of the biggest nuts to crack is the problem of it making the transition with heating buildings particularly in residential homes and is it possible for you to give any kind of indication at the moment of how we're doing in that regard there must be two and a half million residential homes in scotland how many of them have got net zero heating systems so i'll bring kirstie in on this because this is the single biggest programme that kirstie is responsible for but just coming back to that general point on behavioural change in societal transformation that in a nutshell is probably the hardest thing to undertake as we head on our journey to net zero how we move ourselves how we heat ourselves what we consume what we make what we make of our land and marine based assets how we protect them all of that is not just about interventions of ev charging or it's about behaviour change as well so that's quite a big step change and that's a that's an element that is difficult to measure it's difficult to kind of move the dial on but that's the journey that we're on and that's the the work of of this gc board global climate emergency board and the work of all the teams across each of the sectors but specifically coming back to heating buildings as one of the key sectors in terms of emissions but also its its contribution to our journey to net zero the team are now wrestling with both the policy how do you do it and the delivery what do we do now to try and support those that are most in need to be able to make their homes more energy efficient to move towards zero emission boiler systems heating systems and then how do we establish a pattern that you can ramp that up and build a skill base in behind it so that we can get to a million homes by 2030 sorry Kirsty I probably said too much the pun you go and I expect we'll probably be back at this committee talking about heating buildings because this you know it is it is one of our biggest biggest challenge buildings accounts for 20 percent of of scotland's emissions and you know we have done a fantastic job in scotland i think of of reducing emissions it's almost almost 50 percent on on 1990 levels but the bit that's in front of us is is the really hard bit and let you say it's going into to people's homes so we've we've stepped up quite significantly in in the building's decarbonisation work in the scotland government as as Roy said we've had quite increase in in our own resources to do that and we will be doing that as well going forward so so currently and we are committed to publishing a consultation for for regulation in this area shortly and that was in the the programme for government you know we estimate currently around around 4 000 buildings zero direct emissions heating system is installed annually in scotland about about half of our non-domestic buildings do have zero direct emissions heating system but you're right the kind of numbers it's so it's not quite 2 2 million but we estimate around 1 million will have to be decarbonised in the course of this decade so so this is enormous and this is also why we've got a significant programme of support for households but also businesses so 1.8 billion of the course of of this parliament to provide support focusing in the first instance on those who can at least afford it through a couple of our our schemes but this yeah this is it's a it's a key area and we're going to have to significantly pick up the pace on building decarbonisation. I mean the the scale of it is is incredibly challenging convener Roy I mean if it's a million by 2030 that's roughly 150 000 a year we need to do yeah that's huge yeah I'm interested in the public perception and awareness of this as well do you think we're doing enough to reach out to the public to make them aware of this and also to particularly to make them aware of grant assistance that's available at the ground level yeah but even if there's some money in the table to help people to make the transition do you feel that they know enough about the choices they can make about the technology I mean where do they go for that advice how do they get it how do they determine whether to make a transition to another heating system and so on could you talk a little bit about that and what the government's doing to try and speed that process up yeah so yeah so you're absolutely right in identifying people understanding what they need to to do and know where to go for for help and advice on that so we published our heat and energy efficiency strategy a couple of years ago and since then and particularly over the last year so we've stepped up our engagement and marketing in public public information campaigns around heat decarbonisation and so we work together with Home Energy Scotland who have a website which is the the sort of the go-to place for people to get information we run television adverts and we run sort of campaigns on on social media and we will just be continuing to to step this up to help people understand where they can where they can go to get help and support to do the two things we need to do one is energy efficiency and that helps keep people's bills down as well and protect people from you know variation in temperature but also to to decarbonise the heating systems which are currently fossil fuels so we do not underestimate the task involved in in helping people to understand this and and helping them understand where they can get information just finally for the public interest there is grant assistance available for both the transition to differentiating system and for home insulation yes do you know how much is available plus plus interest three loans or something like that yes it's all on the heat energy scotland website so i again send you the details but it's really quite helpful in terms of directed people towards what what category an individual might be in and what support would be available and also the new contract for warmer home in scotland which we will launch in the autumn there'll be a big marketing campaign around that so we are quite rightly ramping up that societal consciousness of what needs to happen the consultation that kirstie mentioned when it when finally comes out will again bring that to the fore around how how are we going to decarbonise this sector and what will be in place to support individuals to make that journey that change that's being required finally on that which i know we're pressed for time i mean it's a huge target per year if he's just articulated earlier that you're confident that we can get their year on year towards 2030 and have that target by logging in post so it's decarbonised so it's not all within our control so it is demand led so you know you require people to kind of walk towards that change and we also require the supply chain and the manufacturing chain and a workforce to be able to ramp up to those numbers but that's the kind of strands of work that we've got in place on a programme the scale of heating buildings and i know that the audit general scotland has started to engage now on that kind of programme work and i'm sure we'll be back on that it's to try and look at all those different elements of what it will take to change society in this singular way forget about how we move or what we consume or what we manufacture just in how we live and heat our homes how do we set up a programme and how do we allow that to deliver on the envelope that's required to meet the net zero target okay thanks i'll leave it at that just to continue on the interest of time yeah thank you i will bring you back in willy um just one thing that he didn't mention but um i think is quite important as well is the electric vehicle charging network and um you talked about ramping up when it comes to housing and buildings and so on but you are selling off charge place scotland and kind of withdrawing from that provision why is that maybe this is a question for that cabinet subcommittee mr brannan i don't know because it may be a policy question but why is it that the Government is pulling out from that 65 million pounds worth of investment in ev charge points and just handing it over to the private sector yeah so i don't think that that's a fair reflection of the position and i think allison gave gave you a kind of position on that at the committee on major projects infrastructure where she's cited the fact that 65 million has been invested so far to get us to two and a half thousand public charge points out of the four thousand that's not lost so that is still functioning the transformation is the new strategy in terms of how ev infrastructure is rolled out and the need to use our public finance money in a different way to lever in that private investment and having just travelled across europe over the course of the summer there you can't help but see that investment that's occurring elsewhere on the french road network where you've got large private investors investing quite heavily in solar based ev charging at most of their airs and service stations and that's the kind of model that we'd like to move towards in scotland where you've got a combination of some support left in public funding but principally private investment in the infrastructure that we need to get to which is about six thousand ev charging points over the piece and the new strategy that was published allison mentioned and that approach is a more accurate reflection i feel in terms of that change in policy it's not about selling off the existing infrastructure okay okay i think um it might some of these international comparisons might be interesting actually so it as a committee we might have a look at what other countries do to provide a ev charge points i'm going to bring in charon dowry next but before i do that i just wanted to ask you mr brandy you said at the outset that you welcomed the audit scotland report do you accept all of its findings and recommendations yes i've said that i've said that to the audit general separately from the session here i think that it was a welcome level of engagement and the audit general has indicated as audit scotland they will continue with that focus on climate change given it's such a such an important topic for the country and that will help us and support us and kind of as we develop our processes so the timeliness if it had been a review had been three months later it might have been a different report because a lot of the things that had been identified where we were starting to put in place as we had established the program management office but nevertheless it's been a really good helpful sharp focus for us to look at those recommendations and as i say i'm more than happy for the team to continue to engage with the auditor general's team on those artifacts that we've developed so that they can allow a support mechanism back to us to say that looks fine you've now got an established risk process in place climate change committee are now managing risk more effectively so identifying assessing action and then reviewing on a more regular basis and that flows through all the governance structure that's set out in the new governance framework so yeah okay okay Sharon Dally thank you i've got some more specific questions in governance and capacity and you have touched on some of the areas in your previous answers but i'll go through them anyway so lines of accountability so i don't underestimate how complex it is because it does cut through different directorates but it means that cross-government collaboration is required to progress climate change policies and manage competing priorities so the question would be the extent to which effective cross-government collaboration is taking place to progress both climate change actions and the management of competing policy priorities yeah so i probably refer back to how i articulated the the structure of the global climate emergency board previously so that now includes all the directors that have accountable responsibility for each of the seven sectors it also includes the scottish x checker it also includes health colleagues in in that space and international colleagues so that cross collaboration as we formulate policy in the board as we develop advice to ministers that cross collaboration is happening at that that level of the board with the climate change programme as we move it up into executive team so as an executive team we operate in four different modes one of them has been strategic one of them is an insurance and delivery and one of them an investment again those cross collaboration opportunities occur in those different modes so whether it's strategic we will in fact i think it's next week we are at et on the current state of play on climate change both mitigation and adaptation and that is an opportunity for other director generals and their teams to kind of feed into the development of what we take forward next in terms of that journey towards net zero and the same same way that et delivery scrutinizes how we are getting on and delivering just the things that we've got in front of us just now like heating buildings where we did a deep dive with the permanent secretary two weeks ago i think it was on the metrics of that journey to that transformation again that provides an opportunity for that cross collaboration across government and then the third area is in budget so as we are progressing through development of the budget for 24 five and the capital review heading into 24 five at et this week we had a discussion around that that capital programme the development of that capital programme which by necessity has a number of different pressures in it and convening priorities and that's that opportunity for us to formulate that advice to go up to cabinet secretaries in the dfm and fm on the choices that they ultimately will have to make as ministers how often do you have meetings at et it's cyclic so it's on a you know so et delivery probably comes around well that's every thursday et strategic is on a tuesday so it's every kind of four four weeks will go through et strategic et investment so there's a cyclic nature of the how et operates but it's tuesday and thursday that we come together every week so there's enough meetings for people to put points across 100% yeah okay and when we develop sorry when new developments come out then does that get brought up at meetings and one of the things i'm talking i'm thinking about anyway is the heating and buildings so there was reports in the press recently and it was talking about heat pumps and whether or not they were actually whether they're any good for the Scottish climate so is that kind of some of the things that would be brought up when you're having your meetings to see whether you need to progress with it or to do more yeah i mean those are the again a kind of observations that people are unfamiliar with the topic so again my colleague in in health for instance might provide that external view on climate climate change activity heat and buildings not directly relevant in that space so helpful that you get that different perspective and and kind of that allows the team then to take those ideas or or issues and go okay we need to do a little bit more around that is there more that we can find out to evidence why is the right thing for us to do in a particular area so that's why that cross-collaboration is really important and the only further thing i was going to say in terms of frequency so the global climate emergency board meets monthly as we develop the policy on our journey towards net zero and scrutinise activity and then the climate subcommittee meets quarterly so that's again those those two elements and et the linkages are quite strong in terms of activity and transparency to both the upper senior management of the government but also senior politicians in cabinet one of the other questions i did health for minutes taken but you've cannot answer that so minutes are now taken of all these meetings because obviously that would be important for us for scrutinising to make sure that these matters had been raised and then to see what action had been taken on minutes we're always taken for the cabinet subcommittee and always taken for the global climate emergency board the db board was operating in a more informal way okay next question be what the Scottish government is doing to better align climate change governance groups with each other and with wider corporate governance arrangements yeah i think probably my previous answer addressed that so the global climate emergency framework that we've now put in place which we will share with Audit Scotland for them to look at that sets out the roles of individuals on the the board itself but how that then interacts with other parts of the corporate governance including the executive team in the modes that i've just explained here and the last one how the Scottish government is improving performance monitoring and reporting to provide assurance in progress towards meeting net zero goals and adapting to climate change so there's three things to say there on the first is that the start of last year as i've talked about the start transform the approach to how we keep a closer handle on what everybody's doing we developed the dashboard that we're able then to allow et to see in a kind of snapshot progress towards our targets across the sectors but more importantly individual outcomes and inputs that were being undertaken by the likes of transport agriculture etc so development of the new agriculture bill the evolution of that has has meant that we now have a performance dashboard that is pulled together corporately which includes a section on climate change quite comprehensive section and again that is considered by the executive team on a regular basis in performance et so there is scrutiny of that those metrics those met those data points that we are able to measure at those different different parts of the corporate governance structure and then the third bit which is the bit that is being developed on the back of the refreshed framework for governance of the global climate emergency board is a more specific dashboard that will be fed from each of the boards across the sectors so for instance transport would feed in on a range of metrics including kpi's measurable outcomes and indicators on a monthly basis and then reviewed by the global climate emergency board on a quarterly basis and i think go back to the convener's point that's the kind of artifact that would potentially become public because that is an articulation of monitoring rather than policy and development okay thanks you said a few minutes ago in answer to my last question mr brandon that you accepted in full the recommendations and findings of the audit scotland report one of the starkest passages in the report is on page 16 isn't it where let me quote what the auditor general finds the scottish government does not routinely carry out carbon assessments or capture the impact of spending decisions on its carbon footprint in the long term secondly the scottish government does not assess how far the policies outlined in the climate change plan update will contribute to net zero and thirdly the scottish government does not know how much the policies proposed in the current climate change plan update will cost so what was your reaction to that when you read that in the in the report so that was a fair reflection of of the of where we are at the present time and that was again as kirstie had stated at the committee on major infrastructure projects the journey of the climate change plan update coming so quickly after the targets were set in 2019 did not allow before my time but it did not allow an articulation of the linkage between the policies and plans in that update and what it would actually demonstrate per sector in terms of outcomes on climate change mitigation the new plan the development of the new plan by law needs to be in a different space so we need to be able to articulate in the new plan what each policy will deliver in terms of emissions reduction and also it needs to be costed so the weakness that you've reflected earlier in the audit general has picked up on is by dint of the timing that took place in development of that first climate change plan update as we develop the next climate change plan those two bits will be corrected i think the only thing i would add to that actually not and that is that that is exactly why we commissioned the Fraser of Allander work i know that you know they were very clear coming back trusting we've got work to do but they were very clear in the recommendations around what we need to do in relation to spend but also what we need to do in our policy assessment so there are there are kind of three strands on this how do we assess the budget and how do we evaluate policy on an ongoing the carbon impact of policy on an ongoing basis and as Roy said cost cost cost information as part of our climate change plan and to be fair to it's not new information and climate change committee have been saying this for the last two reports i think in fact chris had said in his report in december that the government need to move mr stark needs to move towards a quantified climate change plan as they develop the new plan so it's something that has been up on most on our mind it's not easy as a government as a country to do but that's the that's the challenge ahead of us because that's where you get the transparency on both what the policies will deliver in emissions terms but also what's the totality of the cost of delivering this change societal wide change so what you're saying in summary is that by the time we get the next climate change plan all of these criticisms will have been addressed correct yes right thank you willy coffey thank you again can you know why i wonder if i could just turn briefly to risk management risk assessment you'll be aware of some of the comments in the auditor general's report around this saying something like this details of many of the planned actions to address risks are are vague and do not include intended completion dates or expected impact there's not a systematic structure process in place for tracking actions and so on and so forth so to add three questions here which i'll just roll into the one that's okay convener roi how are you identifying monitoring and reviewing risk so that we can get a clear site that this has been addressed carefully and properly and how do you incorporate long-term impacts within the risk management process so probably two parts of that answer the first is i've talked more generally about how we've set ourselves up as a new gg family and our risk maturity in that family and i think the report refers back to a maturity assessment back in mid june i think it was mere june last year as being novice organised on a seven point scale i think that was a fair reflection at the time of a setting up a new dg family with disparate directives coming in not dissimilar to the rest of government so the maturity wasn't just done on dg net zero it was done on all the dgs families and most of them were in a similar position since that time we which was a in terms of training and capability which was one strand of that maturity we had quite a low uptake of mandatory mandatory training on risk awareness across the whole of the two and a half thousand staff in the family as we sit here today we are above 90 i think it's 91% of all staff in a to c band and scs staff have undertaken that mandatory risk training on identifying assessing actionable responses and then reviewing risk so as a dg family i am comfortable that we are progressing and maturing as a risk approach we talk about risk on a monthly basis the dg assurance process which effectively is my accountable officer process to support me and my duties we talk about risk on a regular basis there the weakness that we had a suspect that's been identified by the order general was that climate change specifically and the the very specific risks from each of the sectors was not being considered by the global climate emergency board in totality although climate change featured both through my risk register the dg risk register and escalated to the corporate risk register through the corporate governance structures appropriately so it's one of the highest for mitigation on the corporate risk register we review that regularly as as we do with adaptation and if i could just touch on the difference between adaptation and climate change they are two different risk scores but they are both in the red category to the top right hand side of the matrix so they are classed they're both classed as high i wouldn't get hang up so much about the likelihood and the impact element they are both high and treated very similarly in terms of that consideration so how have we addressed the weakness and how does it how do we capture the risks specifically across the sectors and then how does global climate emergency board have an oversight of that so the programme management office as i referred to has now put in place a structured risk approach which mirrors what we do in the dge family mirrors what we do at corporate level that approach has now been cascaded through the sectors and their boards those risks are now flowing up to a climate change specific risk register which i have in front of me and again we're happy enough to share that with audit scotland so that they can see site of how those risks are managed they will be reviewed on a monthly basis by the global climate emergency board and then deep dived at a quarterly basis any risks that are highlighted as being in that actionable area and probably one of the first ones and Kirsty's already signalled this that heat and buildings will probably flow up quite quickly to that that kind of position so i'm comfortable now that we have addressed the specific points within the report but we need to now socialise that so that it becomes normal activity as running any major project programme does so that risk is driving behaviour if you like in terms of the right scrutiny that's that's adopted by the senior team and ministers okay can i just use one example that's just to put that in context the example we used before it must be a huge risk that we don't meet the million transition by 2030 it must be on the risk register must be how do people like us and how did the public see the government making progress on that and actions to try to mitigate that how did he see it if we were to ask you another three months how are you getting on with that how would we see that progress being made to try and mitigate it so that comes back to that report that we published on an annual basis which is a it's a kind of backward looking report on the year previous on all activity and for heat and buildings chapter of that for instance i can't remember how many pages are in it but it goes through each of the outcomes and indicators that we are measuring ourselves against in terms of that progress some of the change that's that's requiring is not happening on on a monthly or weekly basis so you know that kind of societal change that we are talking about takes a much longer period of time so you couldn't be the same metric every month effectively if you were trying to monitor it on that basis but what you're trying to capture is the trends what is the trend in a positive way or is the trend in a negative way and the indicators that are going to be developed by the programme management office will try and give us those kind of tell tales of are we seeing a change happening in the right direction is there more at zero emission heating supply chain manufacturers in place do we have more heating engineers now go undertaking courses whatever the indicators are and we've not we've not designed all of them yet but some some metric that will allow us that connectivity between what we need to see happening and the inputs that will require it to happen okay thank you very much i'm now going to call back in graham simpson graham thanks a lot convener and i think i'll just follow on from willy coffees line of questioning because he took a keen interest in heating buildings which i do as well the government's actually going to be legislating isn't it in in this area to force people to get rid of gas boilers at some point so have you done any analysis on what that will cost individuals so i don't i don't think that's a true reflection of the intended policy but the if i just i'll set something out and bring kirstie in so there's two pieces of work on on the transformation in heating buildings one is around new build so we've already had the new build standard in place so from next year new build houses will require within a three-year window of planning horizon to have a zero emission heating system in place so legislation will drive some of the behavioural change the piece of legislation that we are that we are formulating just now that has been considered by by ministers will take it to that domestic level and and private level in terms of buildings what is it that we will use as levers through that legislation which will be scrutinised by through the consultation and by-parliament to determine the appropriate mechanism to try and change that behaviour because it won't happen on its own but kirstie so as we sorry um so yeah so so as i said we will be publishing a consultation on on the bill um you know as we announced that in the in the programme for government um and we will you know set out information on costs and on that as well look there's um the overall transformation to net zero is a really really significant transformation and as we've talked about um there are you know really significant costs associated with that um but um that is what um you know the parliament has signed up to in relation to our climate change targets and we have i can give you the figure for the the assessment of the overall cost of um the net zero transformation in buildings to 2045 we estimate that that is about 33 billion over that yeah that's yeah that that has been public um a few times but how does that translate to individuals i'm not talking about new builds because if we deal with that that is different to 100 existing homes yeah where people will be expected to to do things which will cost could cost a lot of money and that's the legislation that's forcing them to do that well that's that that's the formulation of the policy that ministers need to take forward to address the targets that were set by parliament so quite rightly all of that will be scrutinised through the parliamentary process including how far and what measures need to be taken forward but i think i think you'll recognise that without some form of either incentive and process to change society we won't change alone you know we've seen that in terms of the bounce back on how we move ourselves as a country we we've seen a bounce back from Covid times now where the use of the motor car has has increased again since since pre-pandemic levels so that you will necessarily in each of these sectors have a requirement to do something that both incentivises but also supports but also encourages the change that's required okay so we can't today give us a that that figure that i'm seeking yeah so we'll set that out as as part of a consultation at some point so mr coffey mentioned this million homes by 2030 being decarbonised figure where's that figure come from so that is that is from our i think that was in our heat and buildings strategy so that was the estimate but if you think about it you know buildings count for 20 percent of our emissions it's not that hard to do the the mass you know that we have about 2.6 million homes i think in in scotland so and given our our 2030 climate change targets which is that we need to reduce emissions by 75 percent you know we are going to have to go out pretty hard in all all sectors to make these targets well i suppose going again going back to you know mr coffey gave a very interesting figure of 150 000 homes a year would need to be decarbonised to hit that target yeah have you done an analysis of what that would cost so um so you know we're working through you know the ranges we we need to so the current figure that is in the public domain is is around a million homes by by 2030 and we're doing further you know we're doing analysis as we're working through the policy measures that we that wouldn't need to be put in place to to achieve these and you know doing costing associated with that so there's no no cost uh so not not that i can share now but um you know we will be sharing information as part of the consultation and part of the work on the development of the heating bills policy but but it's not i mean if you again coming back to the tenant point which is is there a calculation between the emissions reduction required in heating buildings and actually what do you need to practically do yes there is fundamentally we need to go from a certain amount of tonnage per co2 in heating buildings to a point in 2030 it's envelope and then you then are able to then calculate what does that actually mean in practical terms and that's where the million homes comes from yeah but that's just a figure i mean it's my problem with all this we you know we come up with sort of figures but what we don't know what it means for the individual and we don't know because you haven't given us any figures what what what the cost of that will be and how much if anything government is prepared to help people with we don't know any of that yeah that's done as part of the consultation the heating buildings consultations that's the development of the policy we've already set the targets is to get the consultation out to set the legislation in front of parliament and society for the parliament to then go okay we accept that's what's going to be required to meet the to meet the parliament's targets and the delivery the delivery plan to do that and and just to be clear you know it is a consultation so it will you know it will set out the scale of the challenge and the scale of the challenge flows from our overall climate change targets to what each of the sectors need to do and it will set out you know clearly what what the scale is in in the different sectors in a similar way to the the 20 reduction in vehicle kilometres you know we will set out the end of the year what the what that roadmap is what that plan is and what the levers will be to deliver that that plan so climate change in any of all countries across the world it's a similar thing so there's a journey to net zero there's a calculation to be done on emissions reduction per sector the key bit thereafter is the plan to deliver that and I liken it to the Queensferry crossing so you need foundations towers deck and cables for a bridge in a similar way to get us to net zero you need those similar building blocks and that's what the team are working through just now with ministers and policy and legislation development are those key building blocks what what is it that we need to do specifically in these areas and that's what mr stark at the climate change committee and their colleagues have been asking us to produce and that's what will be produced as part of the new plan well well quite I was actually going to ask you about that target of cutting car miles I always say miles because that's what we use in this country not kilometres and yeah I mean have there been there must have been discussions about the specific actions that you think need to be taken to achieve that kind of target in what what is now less than seven years on car miles yeah car miles yeah demand management that's the that's the kind of the different policies that will that will be brought forward as part of that development of the strategy will be those things that again putting out to society here are the things that we will need to necessarily do to deliver on that that plan there is no other there is no other bag of things there's no other bag of tricks to do this these are pretty fundamental building blocks that we're going to have to do as a society okay one more question convener I just want to ask you we were we've been asking you about various committees earlier on there's another one I want to ask you about which is the green heat finance task force can you tell us what that does yeah so so the green we talked about the cost of decarbonising buildings and we've also talked about the the importance of bringing private finance into that so so the task force looks at ways in which we can bring public sector finance so that can be investment where the parties who invest get returns but also how people can help smooth the costs of the investments that they may need to make to decarbonise their their buildings so you know things like green mortgages so how do we how do we develop financial products and that help us all manage this transition and manage and smooth the costs of that transition and is this task force achieved anything yet yes well so it will be producing its report and fairly soon another report that we've yet to see so no it will just to so that will be that will be published soon soon what do you mean by soon I expect it next month or so next couple of months if not before specific actions what what kind of thing can we so it said what it does is it's looked very carefully at what the different options are to help finance the transition specifically in buildings look and there will be more work to do coming out of that this is nobody's pretending that this is easy we'd love it as policy officials to be easy so so we will be continuing to work through with with external parties with other parts of the Scottish Government you know parties like Scottish Futures Trust the the First Minister's investment panel to continue to develop the work on how do we how do we bring in as Mr Beattie said private sector investment and how do we you know how do we help smooth this so working with you know financial financial institutions you know banks mortgage providers and others and there's some good examples of that already in the marketplace there's just not enough of them and they're not they're not again socialised to the extent so the task force will will have done that piece of work for us to identify the things that we need to pursue a bit more detail okay well look forward to reading that in the next month or so or so right thank you we've got a final couple of questions which i think willy coffee is going to put to you willy thanks again it's just a query on infrastructure investment plan and we announced it in 2021 there was 4.4 billion set aside at that time it's since been extended to 4.7 billion but we're quite a way through the programme now but according to our colleagues in space the government's only spent about 13 percent of that total allocation that's just to ask you about that roi is that your understanding and what are we doing to accelerate that spend so again return back to the the evidence you heard at the infrastructure investment hearing just before recess i think allison coming gave you a kind of response in that space to say cabinet the capital is under review at the present time some of the schemes where we had capital allocated demand led haven't materialised in the same space as we i think cursed they had said that previously around you know the heat and buildings energy efficiency capital for instance hadn't come forward in the in the planet we'd thought they would come forward in so so that probably is a recognition of a combination of things one less uptake and two movement in capital programmes more generally so if things move to the right or things need to move to the right to rebalance the the capital spend then you'll get that slip in in infrastructure investment and the capital review that's under wages now will take a look and cognise the capital across the piece including on net zero activity so i can come in i can't talk across the whole capital investment plan but just to give a couple of examples from our area as roi said we had some underspend in in heat and buildings the point you raised about the importance of public awareness we've we've significantly stepped up our public awareness and marketing campaigns marketing i providing people with information and we've seen a significant uptick in in the uptake of of the capital spend on the heat and buildings side on the energy side there was and this this does apply across the capital investment you know some of it was impacted by by Covid and supply chain disruption so that that has contributed at least to some extent to that but again we're seeing it we're seeing an uptake as we've sort of come out of of Covid i mean it's it's great i don't want it well i'll call it an underspend and it's 13 percent that's a huge difference i mean is it even possible to catch up because you're talking about substantial amounts of money to catch up in on all that commitment that was in the investment plan in 2021 how in earth do you catch up to that degree with such sums that are available to you as i say i think is as Allison Cummings has set out there that the capital spending review that's been undertaken now in parallel with setting of the budget for four five is is reflecting on what priority programmes and projects are required now to deliver on the government's priorities which are across the three tenants of the first minister's programme for government do you think there's sufficient private and public sector uptake that has happened slow and for the reasons that you've outlined earlier can we accelerate that and get participation ramp it up a bit to make sure that the money's spent where it needs to be 100 percent if we can get and again it's unfortunate that the economy is not here because i think that he would have quite a bit to say on that investor that investor market and actually the effort that's going in to secure through some pump priming for the Scottish government public funds that level of investment that you're going to require to deliver on some of these programmes okay thank you very much for that thanks convener okay thanks i mean i know um mr brandy you've reflected on the fact that we had an evidence session just before the recess on major capital projects which covered some of this ground but i'm asking you as the accountable officer the director general of net zero how do you account for some of those figures that we saw i mean if i you know look emergency energy technologies planned expenditure 180 million pounds actual spend 10 million pounds low carbon manufacturing challenge fund planned expenditure 26 million pounds actual expenditure 750 000 pounds heat network planned expenditure 300 million pounds actual spend 6.4 million pounds and finally the future transport fund uh bus priority investment planned expenditure 495 million pounds actual spend 26 million pounds i mean you're in charge of this what's your reaction to that so i think you know you recognise last year that there was quite a substantial reset in terms of spend to budget the former dfm had undertaken and some of that will be reflected in the pace and scale of how those programmes have progressed the last one that you mentioned in terms of the the bus fund i think we we thought there'd be a greater uptick from and most of these things that you've read are demand led so we thought there'd be a greater uptick from both local authorities and bus partnerships to kind of develop that infrastructure that's required and there's quite some in some of these cases there's quite long lead ins to develop that kind of bus infrastructure projects but i think there's probably a combination of a number of things there and that is the nature of capital programmes more generally so you get movement you get reprioritisation you need to keep your capital programme under review constantly which is what the government has been doing what policy officials have been advising ministers in that space and have been doing so it's not it's not through a an under scrutiny of the capital programme it's a combination of a number of things but on Kirsty's side do you want to say something i mean i can comment so i think some of these figures we're spend to date and then costs over the parliament so to pick up on on one example our emerging energy technologies fund which is 180 million over this this parliament and so we've put out and that's going to be spent on hydrogen and carbon capture and storage and so we have awarded funding for the the innovation part of of hydrogen and we will be awarding you know funding of the larger part of the the hydrogen spend as we as we go forward so it takes it takes time these things are often announced early in parliament and we need to get it right because these are big sums of money so i firmly expect we'll see sort of this this significant uptake in that and and just again to use that fund as an example it was carbon capture and storage as well as hydrogen so on carbon capture and storage we we did need the UK government to move and provide a bit more certainty around the likelihood of business model support for the Scottish cluster so sort of until we had a bit more movement there it was quite difficult for us to really assure ourselves that we were spending that money in the most effective effective way okay well look um on that note i will draw this morning's uh evidence session to a close can i thank roi brannan kirstie burgeon fill range for your time and your input this morning has been very helpful for us um and um it may be that there are a few things that we'd like to follow up with you which i'm sure you will be happy to co-operate with us on so um i would like to close the public part of this morning's meeting and move the committee into private session thank you