 Thank you. Good afternoon. The next item is portfolio questions, and the portfolio is TransportNet0 and Just Transition. I would remind members if they wish to ask supplementary, that they should press the request-to-speak button during the relevant question, or enter the letters RTS in the chat function if on line. Question number one, Cllw Caffsturet. Thank you. To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with local authorities i creu'r busul, i'r bwysig o'u bwysig o'r rhainref sydd gwaith gyda Iesweth Ffnorene. Mae Ffnorene Hyslwn, y Ffnorene Gwyrdd associateic acid yn defnyddio'r transport o'r pernau cyfle i gydag i ddeithasio i gweld gwysig o'r busul i'r rhainref sydd gyda Iesweth Ffnorene a'i ddadu dwy'r busw pwysig o'n bwysig i'r vwysig o'r bwysig o'r rhainref sydd gyda Iesweth Ffnorene Gwyrd services leading up to Christmas and additional carriages on busy services, as well as an expanded boxing day service, which for the first time will cover five perth in sterling. The majority of bus services in Scotland are operated on a commercial basis by private companies, and as such, the promotion of these services is a matter for individual operators to consider. However, we are aware that bus operators run seasonal timetables. I thank the minister for that answer. The festive season is indeed an extremely busy period for Glasgow City Centre and people flocking from all over to enjoy our local hospitality and retail businesses. Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Bus Alliance, Glasgow Taxi, Nighttime Economy, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport and ScotRail have teamed up to launch the Choose Public Transport campaign. Does the minister welcome the campaign and agree with me that choosing public transport during this busy period will free up travel routes, avoid congestion and cut down on travel frustration? What can be a very stressful time of year? I do indeed welcome the Glasgow Choose Public Transport campaign. It is a campaign that shows how collaborative work between all the public transport operators can send a strong message to encourage people in Scotland to switch from the car and on to public transport. I am especially pleased to see ScotRail not only join the campaign but they are also using all our available digital channels, including various social media, to promote public transport during the festive season. To ask the Scottish Government how it is supporting Aberdeen's journey to net zero through investment in bus infrastructure. We are supporting Aberdeen's journey to net zero through investment in bus infrastructure, including from our bus partnership fund, which is up to £12.2 million awarded to the North East Bus Alliance to date. That is an able work to begin on the development of the rapid transit system and on bus priority measures, on key transport corridors and in the city centre. We have also supported the acquisition of 59 battery electric buses, 25 hydrogen buses and their supporting infrastructure to operate in the city. I thank the minister for the answer. Aberdeen rapid transit is a key transformational project to provide a cross-city route of bus priority measures to provide fast, reliable, accessible transport from my constituency of Aberdeen Donside to the city centre, similar to Edinburgh's tram network. It is a key measure to improve journey times and improve air quality throughout the city. Can the minister provide an update on any recent engagement that Transport Scotland has undertaken with Aberdeen City Council and Nestrans regarding this infrastructure project? As I have just referred to, we are funding the development of the rapid transit strategic case through Transport Scotland's bus partnership fund. As such, Transport Scotland maintains regular engagement with the North East Bus Alliance and last met with Aberdeen City Council and Nestrans and officials to discuss the development of their strategic business case in September. A further meeting with officials is scheduled to take place next week. I was really pleased to see first hand from my October visit to Aberdeen and how the bus gates in the city centre are already delivering for the millions of bus passengers that travel through the city every year. During my visit, I met with the leaders of the council and members of the partnership who presented to me the city centre master plan progress since 2015. That included presenting on the city centre and the South College street bus partnership fund projects, as well as the Aberdeen rapid transport and on-going corridor studies. The new bus gates in Aberdeen, which has been sneaking through with an experimental traffic order, have made a complete dog's dinner of Aberdeen city centre and have been a disaster for businesses with many people now avoiding the city centre altogether. Would the minister agree with me that a huge change like this should be done properly with full consultation, taking businesses and citizens with us? The local authority should not ruin people's livelihoods simply as part of an experiment? The member has expressed his views, but it is quite clear that the process was properly carried through in a transparent way. Indeed, traffic orders are precisely the way that local government makes changes, as he will know, because I understand that he was a former councillor. Early feedback on the operation shows that bus journey times have been reduced by 25 per cent as a direct result of the bus gates in Aberdeen city centre. In the past 12 weeks, more than a million passenger journeys on the bus have been quicker and more reliable. The two main operators in the city, stagecoach and first bus, are reporting passenger number increases by 5 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. That looks like a successful delivery of a plan to improve transport in the city of Aberdeen. To ask the Scottish Government following the first meeting of the national smart ticketing advisory board what progress has been made towards introducing a national smart ticketing scheme. The first national smart ticketing advisory board meeting, which includes a number of transport industry operators, was held on November 28. I have charged members to advise me on how Scotland could collaboratively improve smart ticketing consistency, accessibility and integration between modes and regions and identify the best technological standard for schemes in Scotland. It will report in six months outlining how it will do this, building on the many operations that are currently available and also due shortly. The plan will look to build on the successful collaborative national smart ticketing enhancements to date. For example, universal smart cards are now accepted across all modes and 98 per cent of Scotland's buses accept contactless payments. I thank the minister for that response. The Scottish Government has been talking about having a national smart card for well over a decade, but in Ireland it has had one since 2011. The Transport for Ireland LEAP card covers multiple operators, offers capping and smart discount features. It sold its five millionth card over two years ago, so it is doable and we should get on with it. How long has the minister given the board to complete all their work? I accept that there is an update in six months, but what is the final deadline for this? I would expect to get the operational plan for delivery within the next six months. I emphasise that rather than a national smart ticketing scheme Scotland currently uses a single smart card platform already, but it hosts regional ticketing schemes across Scotland, and it is compatible with 2.5 million smart cards in circulation in Scotland. It can be used for both concession and commercial smart tickets and is available on bus, rail, tram, subway, sun ferries and domestic air. However, I recognise the point that the minister is making about how we make sure that it can be on a national basis like a smart independent island. The minister says that a contactless payment is available on most buses now and that smart cards can be used across different operators. Is she optimistic that bus patronage will increase through this kind of easier ticketing? Those initiatives were introduced before and during the pandemic, so it is difficult to isolate their impact on bus patronage because of the on-going impact of Covid on travel, particularly reduced bus travel. We meet regularly with bus operators to understand the initiative's performance, but they are reporting that contactless payments now generally make up a vast majority of sales, and some operators only see cash payments to less than 10 per cent. The support for that has come from a smart pay grant fund that the Scottish Government introduced to help over 10 million contactless payments that have been provided since 2018. The point about does it encourage people? I think that it can, and all I am saying is that it is very difficult to measure because of the difficulty and comparability of data, particularly on buses because of the Covid period. 5. Colin Beattie To ask the Scottish Government what conclusions it has drawn following COP28, including what has been learned as a result of the conference. COP28 has now concluded, notably with a $700 million landmark loss and damage fund and a pledge to transition away from fossil fuels in our energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner. Those are exceptionally hard fought and historic agreements, and I want to pay tribute to everyone whose campaign is so determined for this progress. It was disappointing that there was not a stronger resolution committing to a phase out of all unabated fossil fuels, but we must now all work together to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees in the terms that were agreed. The First Minister and I participated in very many engagements, arching ambition in tackling climate change and meeting with global south partners, and we will publish a report of our achievements from COP28 in due course. Despite noise from Westminster, Scotland has shown itself willing and able to engage positively with the international community regarding the existential crisis that is climate change. Can I ask the cabinet secretary how the Government intends to ensure that Scotland's voice is heard internationally and that the views of this country on climate and nature are not mistaken for the embarrassing intransigence of the Westminster parties? Colin Beattie is absolutely right that the Scottish Government and Scotland generally is held in very high esteem on the world stage with regards to our climate change plans, our interactions, Scotland's renewable abundance and our commitment to climate justice, as well as to human rights and international co-operation. We really can make a significant difference if we consider that £2 million that Scotland pledged at COP26 for loss and damage, helping to break a 30-year impasse on this important funding, has now reached more than $700 million, which I think demonstrates what small countries can do when they apply themselves. By engaging positively and at an international level, we will continue to ensure that Scotland's voice continues to be heard, and I personally will not only do that, but I will seek to elevate the voices of other people who are too infrequently heard, be that women, young people and people from the global south. I have three members seeking to ask a supplementary. I intend to take all three, a supplementary, Brian Whittle. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. At COP28, we saw a declaration by 24 countries, including United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands, to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050, and that was discussed recently in the Parliament. Can I ask the Scottish Government if the Scottish Government has completed any modelling on investing in nuclear as part of a mix of renewables to support other net zero policy aims, including district heat networks? I thank Brian Whittle for his question. He will know that the Government's policy is of no support for nuclear under current technologies. We consider that it never presents value for money to bill payers nor to our environment. Instead, our focus, domestically certainly, is on a future energy system that is balanced across storage and unleashing that exceptional renewables potential, which I referred to in my first answer. Given the commitment to the just transition that the cabinet secretary has rightly made, can she tell us what the Scottish Government will do now to ramp up activity so that we have a just transition for households that are currently living in damp, inefficient homes, and we are seeing energy and heat going through the walls and the roost of those houses? What will the Scottish Government do in practice to tackle that just transition when we have the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis? I thank Sarah Boyack for that question. I think that one of the most tangible and practical examples that I can point to is the heat and buildings bill, the consultation on which the Scottish Government has just opened in concert with my colleague Patrick Harvie. That will look to regulate both energy efficiency within Scotland's homes but also energy systems. We know that energy efficiency, although often overlooked, is one of the most important ways in which we support households to lower bills and to have warmer homes. Couple that with changes to the way in which we heat our homes in the name of climate change, that bill presents, I think, a very ambitious approach to decarbonising our buildings. However, I can assure Sarah Boyack and the chamber that it and all of our climate measures will be taken hand in hand with our communities. When the cabinet secretary was meeting world leaders, did she tell them about her Government's home energy scheme, that only 164 heat pumps have been installed in the first seven months of the programme, that it takes an age to get any money, any grants out of home energy Scotland, that many households just give up because it takes so long to get the money out? Did she tell the world leaders that and did she tell them how she's going to fix that? I didn't need to narrate what Willie Rennie has to world leaders because more often than not, world leaders are approaching the Scottish Government asking for our advice on how we have managed to lead the way so successfully on a number of fronts. I would say that whilst in a system like the decarbonisation of buildings, which is vast and complicated, there will always be issues to overcome and the Scottish Government will always seek to do that, including by supporting home energy Scotland to support people on the ground. I would say that Willie Rennie's narrative doesn't support what I see in my role that I'm privileged to hold within Government, nor in my constituency, where many constituents are approaching me having taken advantage of Scottish Government schemes to change their heating systems, which I would remind the chamber consists of support up to £7,500 and more in rural areas. Question 6 has been withdrawn. To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions it has had with Transport Scotland in relation to the showhead flyover junction in Coatbridge. I am aware that the member has raised concerns about the performance of the junction with Transport Scotland and that its contractor, Scottish Road Partnership, is reviewing whether potential alterations would assist the movement of vehicles at the junction. I understand that Transport Scotland wrote to the member earlier this year regarding his concerns. I thank the minister for that response. I am sure from those conversations that she describes with Transport Scotland that she will be very aware of the issues with the junction. She might also be aware, as she said, that I have raised those issues in the chamber. Since improvement works were completed some years ago, the junction has been a scene of a great many road traffic accidents with varying degrees of seriousness. The junction is well known locally, and many people report avoiding it, despite it being a main transport route connecting to the MA and other larger towns. I have had several discussions with Transport Scotland, including on-site meetings, and minor changes have been made over the years. I am very grateful for their collaboration and their continued support with that. Can I ask the minister what further discussions she can have with Transport Scotland to make improvements at the junction and thereby enhance driver confidence at this site? The member might understand that I do not personally have full information about the exact details of the junction and the exact details of the problems that the Scottish road partnership the contractor is already reviewing. However, I will ask Transport Scotland to laze with that contractor to give an insight to the member as to what the current state of that review of the potential alterations is at and, if that needs a potential site visit with Transport Scotland, the operator and the contractor and the member, I am sure that that can be arranged. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the next steps of implementation of 20 millonaire speed zones across Scotland following the October meeting of the multi-stakeholder 20 millonaire task force. The Scottish Government is committed to implementing 20mph speed limits on those roads where it is appropriate to do so by 2025. The task group agreed to support local authorities to expand 20mph speed limits where appropriate as the optimum route to implement at their November meeting. As a result, work is now under way to establish a delivery subgroup with a communication toolkit being finalised to be used at the local level. I have found that the traffic engineers within the council are fairly opposed to 20mph speed limits even where people have come forward and made the case. Therefore, my question is what we are going to do between now and 2025. I noticed that there was 1.4 million given to local authorities and 107,000 to that went to five. When I asked the five council, they said that there was a consultant's report that was sent to Traffic Scotland. How many more millions will we spend between now and then? Will the cabinet secretary give guidance to local authorities that where communities are asking for these safety measures to be put in place, that should at least be considered? The 20mph speed limit is something that local authorities themselves have said that they want, but the pace and scale and the time that will be taken in each local authority may vary. I say that there are already trailblazers in this area, particularly in the Highlands and the Borders and in the Highlands experience, which is going to be used for other local authorities to learn from. It is proving successful. Indeed, communities that do not have the 20mph limit in their local community are asking for that to now be implemented. If the cabinet secretary and I trust local authorities to carry out their duty, there may be some road engineers that might personally not be in favour, but local authorities will know the appropriate roads to make 20mph or not. I think that listening to their communities will get a resolution and the implementation of something that every recognises has benefits, particularly those communities that are experiencing lower speed limits. Councillor Scott Arthur, Labour Councillor in Edinburgh, was quite clear on the safety measures that this has brought in that have saved the numbers of injuries on roads already in Edinburgh, which are way ahead than many other communities in implementing 20mph speed limits. Can I welcome the progress that has been made across Scotland in rolling out 20mph, not just in 5mph, but in the Borders and the Highlands, and the fact that all councils now have a very detailed plan for how they are going to implement 20mph roll-out across their areas, getting us closer to that target, ensuring that all appropriate roads are 20mph by 2025mph? Given that the Government has not decided to go down the route of changing the 30mph default speed limit to 20mph, how will the minister ensure that there is consistency between councils and adequate resources to get the job done and ensure that communities that need 20mph to create safer streets can do that, and we can move forward together? We will watch and learn from the Welsh experience, but our experience will be quite different because we are working at the position of asking local authorities themselves to identify the appropriate roads to introduce to 20mph limit on. In terms of consistency, yes, we want consistency, but we also want local authorities to be able to be in control of their own schemes. That is the balance that we have to face. We know from what we have heard that there are some local authorities that are well ahead, Edinburgh, Highlands Borders, and the member has expressed that the introduction in Fife is progressing as well, but they will go at different speeds to get to 20mph. We have to recognise that that is the result of giving that choice, that option to choice, that local authorities will designate those roads themselves. I just conclude the portfolio questions on transport net zero and just transition. I just want to remind members of my declaration of interest, which showed that I was a councillor at Aberdeen City Council at the start of this parliamentary session. I am sure that that is now on the record. There will be a short pause before we move on to the next item of business to allow front bench teams to change positions should they so wish. Thank you.