 I'm very grateful, Presiding Officer, on a point of order and by way of advisement. I know we are slightly earlier than the schedule, time for the commencement of this debate and I understand that there are members still making their way to the chamber. I am aware of that fact, Mr Whitfield, and it's probably an opportune moment to remind members that almost every item of business in the Parliament is follow-on business and that all members should bear that in mind and ensure that they are available as required. The next item of business is a debate on motion 10597, in the name of Mary McCallan, on climate emergency, ambition and action. I would invite all those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press their request to speak buttons now. I call on Mary McCallan to speak to and move the motion up to 15 minutes, cabinet secretary. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. The First Minister, representing Scotland to an international audience at New York climate week last week, set out very clearly how events at home and around the world this summer have been a stark reminder that climate change is not a far off threat. The twin crises of climate change and the degradation of our natural world are affecting lives right now and people are losing everything up to and including their lives. We have seen drought in Africa, wildfires in Europe and Canada, truly horrifying events in Hawaii and Libya, storm Freddy in Malawi and flooding in China, Pakistan, India, South Korea—the list goes on. Our thoughts, our heartfelt sympathies, are with each and every single person who has been affected. Of course, all of that has been happening whilst biodiversity loss continues apace. As the First Minister said, the global south has been paying the price for the impacts of climate change for decades. We were one of the first countries to declare a climate emergency and our climate justice fund and funds for loss and damage are helping right now some of the poorest people in the global south to adapt and to prepare themselves against those impacts that cannot be adapted to. All Governments need to ask themselves at this critical juncture, are they moving with the urgency that this crisis demands? Because the time for talking is over, what we need now is action. When times are challenging, as I absolutely admit that they are, Governments must not turn their backs, they must work harder, and that is what this Government will do. In contrast, the Prime Minister's decision last week to renaig on the UK's keen at zero commitments is an unforgivable betrayal of future and current generations. The Climate Change Committee has been clear that action by UK Government is interlinked with Scottish targets, just as action in Scotland is crucial to UK Government targets. Despite that, we were not consulted on last week's announcement and as such we will now require time to consider the very serious impacts that it is likely to have on our plans. However, it is not just Governments that the Prime Minister has pulled the rug from beneath. It is the huge proportion of the public who, time and again, in opinion polls, have expressed their concern about climate change, who want Governments to have plans to deal with it and who are desperately crying out for climate leadership, and I'll give way. Graham Simpson. I'm very grateful. In light of the Prime Minister's announcement, is the Cabinet Secretary preparing to change the Scottish Government's plans? Given that it has been not yet a week since plans were announced that we had no forewarning of, I am very much in the position right now of assessing their impact on them. That includes trying to get detail of what exactly is the UK Government are planning to do. I'll certainly undertake that work before I look to see how it affects what Scotland will be doing. I'll make some progress just now, but I'll be happy to let Douglas Lumson in later on. However, I do have significant concerns about the lack of leadership and what it risks in terms of that once-in-a-generation opportunity to capitalise on Scotland's renewable energy potential. If the UK Government takes us out of the global net zero race, the economic damage, the lost opportunity will be catastrophic. Of course, let's not forget that this is on top of the damage that it has already done with a decade of austerity, with the hardest of hard Brexit pursued during a global pandemic and, of course, last year's disastrous many budget, which people in this country are still suffering because of. It is all so familiar, Presiding Officer. Preparing Scotland's climate plan in the aftermath of the Tory U-turn last week is deja vu for where we were last year when we had to prepare the Scottish budget in the wake of Liz Truss's reckless reign. Scotland deserves so much better than having to pick our way through policy disasters of the UK Tory party. After successive UK Governments, Labour and the Tories have squandered hundreds of billions of pounds of Scotland's oil and gas revenues, only investing a fraction in Scotland, it seems that they are now intent on sabotaging our energy future. I thank the cabinet secretary for giving way. I am just trying to understand in terms of devolved matters, such as decarbonising buildings, why does the announcement last week make any difference to matters that the Scottish Government should be getting on with already? Douglas London shows an incredible lack of understanding of how governance works in Scotland. Can I point him to funding, consequentials, supply, chains? Can I point him to the internal market act, which, of course, this Parliament rejected, but was foisted upon us anyway? All of those are factors that mean that the actions that the UK Government takes have a real implication for Scotland. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for giving way. By way of illustration of the dilemma that Douglas London raises in Parliament today, does the cabinet secretary recall that, when the deposit return scheme was argued against by the Conservatives, they argued that we should wait in Scotland for a United Kingdom scheme? Is it not clear from the Prime Minister's statement last week that there shall be no United Kingdom Government scheme? Hasn't Scotland been led up the garden path by the United Kingdom Prime Minister? The answer to Mr Swinney's observations is yet again that he is absolutely right. I cannot pretend that, as the person in Government with my colleagues who we are collectively responsible for rising to Scotland's climate ambitions, I cannot pretend that they do not have an impact on us. As I said, we are now very carefully considering the extent of it. The UK Government may be happy to turn its back on billions of pounds of investment in jobs, skills and R&D, but I want to put one clear message on the record today. Scotland's message to investors in a clean, green future is clear. We value you, we welcome you and we will do everything that we can to provide the stable, long-term and evidence-based environment in which you can flourish. I hope that this Parliament will agree that the Prime Minister must reconsider his ill-judged approach. This week is Scotland's climate week, an initiative that has been delivered annually by the Scottish Government since 2016 to celebrate action by national and local government, public sector, businesses, communities, organisations, families and individuals. This year we will focus on travel and heating two of the areas where change by individuals could collectively have the most impact to areas, ironically, that the UK Prime Minister has reneged on in recent days. I am looking forward to visiting and learning more about how this is happening across Scotland, including with Keep Scotland Beautiful and Fountainbridge Canalside Community Trust's heritage and climate action activities this week. I know that my colleagues across government are likewise taking part, and I encourage members from across the chambers to do so as well. The theme of this climate week debate today is climate emergency ambition and action. In the time that I have left, I would like to set out what Scotland has delivered so far. With humility, I accept that we have not always met our climate targets, but in the past week it has been really galling as we do all that we can, as we strain every sinew to deliver a just transition to net zero, to have to listen to some of the Conservatives. I should say that some of them have seen sense in our not-supporting Douglas Ross, but it has been so hard to listen to them because Scotland has ambition that is often rightly narrated, but we equally have action, and I want to take us through that. In terms of our budget, Scottish budgets have demonstrated our commitment, and in this 23-24 budget alone we have included over £2.2 million of investment. In energy, under this government, Scotland is becoming a renewables powerhouse. We have launched the world's largest floating offshore wind leasing round through Scotland, which will deliver an initial £750 million in revenue. Beyond that, developers have also committed to investing an average of £1.4 billion in Scotland per project, which equates to around £28 billion across the 20 projects. I will take one last intervention, and then I must make some progress. I appreciate that, cabinet secretary. Will the cabinet secretary commit to looking at the issue of green manufacturing? We have had opportunities at BiFab, Macro Hanish and Lost. We urgently need to see green manufacturing of our fantastic offshore wind, but we also need to see the recycling and repurposing that is brought to Scotland because we are missing out on that opportunity at the moment. Cabinet secretary. I agree with Sarah Boyack that green manufacturing is absolutely essential, and I am sure that much of that £28 billion investment in the supply chain will draw that out, and we will certainly make sure that we do everything that we can to do that. She is absolutely right about recycling parts as well. I know that renewable parts and others are helping to lead that as an industry in and of itself. Also in energy, we are investing £100 million in renewable hydrogen projects over the current Parliament and have awarded an additional £15 million to support a hydrogen hub in Aberdeen. In transport, since launching the young person's free bus pass in January and all the Tories are chatting amongst themselves, they might want to listen to some of this delivery. We have seen a new card holder every single minute. Along with similar schemes for older and disabled people, we are supporting more than a third of the population, with 3 million journeys every week. We are helping people to cut costs and make sustainable travel more attractive. In rail, the Scott rail peak fairs removal pilot will help to make rail travel more affordable and accessible. We know that poor air quality has a negative impact on all our health, but we also know that the very young, the elderly and those with existing health conditions are particularly vulnerable. The Scottish Government is absolutely committed to tackling air pollution, and our low emission zones are one of the key ways in which we have done that. We have introduced them via just transition principles as well, with over £10 million previously having been funded through the LEZ support fund and a further £5 million having been recently allocated. Equally, Scotland's LEZ taxi retrofit fund is the most generous per vehicle in the UK, and over 300 taxis have taken up funding for retrofitting. I know that Labour keeps flip-flopping on low emission zones, but I would just ask them to reflect why they think that it is appropriate to condemn the people of Glasgow to poor air quality and perpetuity. On active travel, we have record investment with the £23.24 budget, serving almost £198 million allocated to active travel, which we will invest in infrastructure projects, behaviour change initiatives and improving access to bikes. No doubt my colleague Patrick Harvey will wish to reflect on some of that later on. In our natural world, we are investing record levels with more than 75 per cent of all the tree planting across the UK that is happening in Scotland. I want to take a moment to look at heat in buildings. The Scottish Government already provides grants for clean heating systems, at the level to which the UK Government has just increased under its own scheme. Our Home Energy Scotland scheme also provides higher grants to those in rural areas as well as interest-free loans. Just by way of example, we have provided £37 million to the City of Edinburgh Council to help to deliver a major programme of energy efficiency improvements in Westerhales. Over the past two years, that funding has helped to upgrade over 900 homes, both private and social, rented. That is at a time when the UK Government is proposing to remove energy efficiency obligations on landlords. The new path to net zero by the Prime Minister's book is keeping tenants in cold, damp, drafty homes for longer, and that is unforgivable. We have always said that our ambitions in Scotland will need to consider the actions of the UK Government in this area. That includes funding and reserved powers. Again, that is the work that I am currently undertaking. I want to take a moment to mention the Just Transition Fund, because we are not just talking the talk when it comes to our commitment to fairness. We are already acting through our £500 million 10-year Just Transition Fund, which the UK Government has regrettably refused to match, but which I have had the real pleasure of being involved in in this portfolio, including in a visit to Aberdeen last Friday, where I saw how just £5 million of that fund was investing in different projects developing net zero skills in the north-east. There was so much enthusiasm for that work, Presiding Officer, and it really was an antidote to the rather depressing backward steps that we were seeing displayed from the street outside Downing Street. Of course, we are working with partners. I want to work with local authorities in particular on climate change, and our new partnership framework and climate intelligence service will help us to do that. I want to acknowledge the work of the net zero committee in its recommendations on climate intelligence service. I think that it is an excellent proposal, and it is one that I will be very glad to help to take forward. Looking forward, we know that a Just Transition Fund will require a truly national effort from all sectors of our economy, including significant private sector investment in net zero and climate resilience. Those Just Transition Plans that we have produced will help us to do that. I want to let you know that I am receiving valuable feedback from our Just Transition Plans and the discussion papers that have gone alongside that. I will consider it my personal responsibility to ensure that fairness is at the heart of how we pursue net zero. However, unlike the UK Government, who cynically have presented their backward steps as somehow being in support of ordinary people, I find it hard to believe that that is the Prime Minister's primary objective. This Government will continue to get on with the challenging job of rising to what the climate emergency demands of us and doing it in a way that is fair. We will do that via the Just Transition Commission and with others working across Scotland. I would encourage the UK Government to go back to the drawing board and join us in a four-nations basis in partnership, myself and my colleagues in the Welsh Government will very shortly write to the UK Government asking them to respect the four nations of the UK, to come together with us and to revise our approach to reaching net zero because it is a collective mission that we cannot fail in. Thank you. I now call on Douglas Lumsden to speak to and move amendment 10597.1 up to 11 minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I move the amendment in my name. Protecting the environment is a top priority for people up and down the UK, therefore it is crucial that we recognise the importance and understand the scale of the action that is needed on climate change. Central to this will be our journey to net zero and the tremendous amount of hard work that will be needed on our energy transition to get us there. The debate on climate change has often been stuck between two extremes, but it is important to bring everyone with us as we forge ahead in achieving our net zero aims. At COP26, we welcomed world leaders and industry to Glasgow to discuss this important matter. When the UK took on the COP26 presidency, only 30 per cent of the world was covered by net zero targets. This figure is now at around 90 per cent. The public want change, they want to do their bit to work towards net zero. Individuals and businesses are all thinking about what changes they can make to their lives and businesses that are more sustainable. Government should be working together to put in place the vision and ambition that is required. That is why our Prime Minister, again, pledged that the UK will be net zero by 2050. I will take Kate Forbes. I think that the member would share my views that net zero is a huge opportunity for the Highlands and the North East, and yet we heard multiple businesses last week say that in moving the goalpost and reducing the ambition, it means that the investment goes elsewhere. How does that serve our communities? I will cover some of that in my speech, but yesterday I was just at Peterhead power station hearing about the carbon capture project. That is a huge investment and means lots of jobs to the North East, and that is exactly the investment that we are looking for, and it is exactly the investment that the UK Government is bringing to the table. Government should be working together to put in place the vision and ambition that is required. That is why our Prime Minister, again, pledged that the UK will be net zero by 2050. I am grateful to the member for giving way. He says repeatedly that Governments should be working together. That is the message that the UK climate change committee told us all, UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments, that we needed to work together more effectively. We have tried that in the past and had the door closed in our faces. Just days after that, just days after that meeting, the UK makes unilateral announcements without any prior indication to us, to the Welsh Government and without publishing any detail with them. Is that what working together looks like? That is rather a rich Government for Patrick Harvie. It is so often that this Government forges ahead and does not involve anyone else. That date is achievable in no small part because of the investment that we receive from the UK Government in our transition away from oil and gas towards renewables. The North Sea transition deal will invest up to £16 billion to reduce emissions and secure 40,000 vital jobs in the sector. That is a fund that is often forgotten about by members of this Government. As I said earlier, the Acorn carbon capture cluster project recently got the go-ahead, a huge boost for the north-east, real investment and a project that will help us to meet our emission targets, while also delivering jobs in the area. As I said, I was up Peterhead yesterday learning more about how there could be a new power station up Peterhead that would send its carbon emissions to St Fergus to be stored deep underground. No cliff edge, no switch to importing oil and gas from abroad, supporting British business to provide British oil and gas to British British businesses. Only the Scottish Conservatives understand the need for this industry to be supported and for the Government to work hand-in-hand with the industry to move towards net zero while protecting jobs and livelihoods in the north-east. If the member is so sure that only the Scottish Conservatives understand how to approach net zero, how does he reconcile that with save the children who have called the Prime Minister's decision a betrayal of children's futures? What does he say to save the children? I was quite interested in the Cabinet Secretary. I did not mention the businesses up in the north-east that see that this Government is turning their back on that industry. We need the oil and gas industry to make that transition. If we kill off the oil and gas industry, there can be no transition. Many of the people I speak to in the north-east would love to make the switch to an electric car but are concerned at the cost of replacing their current car and the lack of charging stations throughout the country. Scotland would be required to install 4,000 chargers per year to reach the Government's own target of 30,000 by 2030. Latest reports note that Scotland currently only has 2,487 chargers and in rural areas accessibility falls further. Quite simply, the EV charging infrastructure in Scotland is a joke. Last week, the Prime Minister brought us into line with the rest of Europe in terms of limiting the sale of petrol and diesel cars, a move that has been widely welcomed by many Scots who want to do the right thing but are also facing the pressures on their family budgets. I know that the SNP Green focus is on the central belt, but many people in rural Scotland live off the gas grid and have oil-fired boilers. They would love to move away from this expensive fuel on to a more renewable and eco-friendly solution, but the costs remain prohibitive and the technology not yet matching the conditions in which they are living. More help will be required from this Government to find solutions for those older off-grid properties. What about the UK Government's investment in all of that? The Treasury holds the purse rings. Douglas Lumsden is either being very naive or is ignoring the fact that Rishi Sunak is ripping up those climate change promises that will have an impact on budgets here. Let's be truthful about the impact of that on Scotland as a whole and our change to net zero. The promise is 2050 but net zero still remains. That is the key promise there. Once again, we are talking about the Scottish Government not getting their house in order and not putting their plans in place. The SNP Green Government, so all that climate credentials— Sorry, Mr Lumsden. Can we just ensure that we are treating other members with courtesy and respect and hearing whoever should be standing up and speaking while they are doing so? Thank you, Presiding Officer. This SNP Green Government, for all its climate credentials, seemed to be completely forget about rural communities and the challenges that they face in terms of heating their homes and travelling by car for services. We have seen throughout Scotland rural bus services being withdrawn and councils unable to assist due to lack of funding. School building plans being pulled back due to a lack of reasonable funding model from the Scottish Government, guard and waste uplift removed because councils cannot afford to do it anymore. People want to do the right thing, Presiding Officer, but this Government is failing them—lack of funding, lack of focus, lack of support and lack of ideas. This debate is titled Ambition and Action, but this Government has failed on both counts. Eight of the 12 targets set by this devolved Government not met warning from the oil and gas sector that jobs are at risk, lack of funding to local government to increase recycling, improve public transport and build better buildings. The Heating Building Strategy failed into meeting targets, Audit Scotland saying that SNP climate governance arrangements are missing core elements. This is an SNP Green Government that is all talk and no action. It sets targets, goals, strategies and host conferences but achieves very little. The public want to do the right thing. They want to recycle more, use public transport, make their homes more efficient, work in smarter ways that reduce their impact on the environment, and they want a Government that will work with them to achieve that. They do not want a Government that seeks to impose impossible targets, thought up by extremists. They do not want bands to be imposed that are impossible or hugely expensive for households to meet on unrealistic timeframes, such as the proposal in August from Patrick Harvie to downgrade the EPC rating of homes that had the potential of stopping people selling their homes in a few years' time. The announcements from the UK minister last week are a welcome step in recognising that we are all on this journey together—government, industry, families and households. It is only by working together that we will achieve the aim of reaching net zero by 2045 in Scotland and the rest of the UK by 2050. It is right that Scotland is ambitious in its plans, and it is right that we take action to achieve that ambition, but we cannot push forward without it being a partnership. Simply imposing targets and sanctions will not achieve our goals. We need a realistic plan that people can buy into and bring everyone with us. The devolved Government motion today predictably tries to knock the UK Government, so let's look at that UK record. The UK has halved its carbon emissions since 1990 to only 1 per cent of global emissions figures. Compare that to China, for example, that it has seen its figure increase to 30 per cent of global emissions. Earlier this month, at the G20 leader summit in New Delhi, the Prime Minister committed to $2 billion to the United Nations Green Climate Fund, the single biggest commitment of this kind that the UK has ever made. The fund was set up under the United Nations climate change negotiations to help to provide the finance that is needed by poorer countries to help them reduce their carbon emissions, develop cleaner energy sources and adjust to a warming world. In addition to that, the UK Government has committed £11.6 billion to its international climate finance programme from 2021 to 2026. I am encouraged by this programme. The UK is a world leader when it comes to tackling climate change, and it is important that, as a country, we continue to take action to help to mitigate its effects at home and around the globe. I am also encouraged that, by 2030, the UK is expected to produce enough offshore wind to power every home, quadrupling how much we currently produce to 58 gigawatts and supporting up to 60,000 jobs. Oil and gas producers will contribute 20 billion worth of investment towards this by developing various offshore wind projects and investment, which is equivalent of building 15 Queensferry crossings. The public want to do their bit, so this devolved Government must really start being honest with the public. They need to be honest about when comprehensive electric charge and infrastructure will be in place. They need to be honest where the £33 billion will come from to decarbonise our buildings. They need to be honest about how someone in a tenement flat will heat their home when they cannot buy a gas boiler. They need to be honest with local government on where the funding will come from for their decarbonisation projects. They need to be honest with real passengers when Scotland's railway will be decarbonised. Presiding Officer, the journey to net zero has to be made. On that, we can all agree, but there will be an impact on people's lives and an impact on people's wallets. It is time for this devolved Government to have an honest conversation with the people of Scotland, because, as our Prime Minister said, we do not reach net zero simply by wishing it. I welcome today's debate and I move the Labour amendment in my name. We agree with the Scottish Government motion that we need ambition, leadership and consistency, but we also need investment not just from Government but from businesses too. The Tory rollback last week came from nowhere and was incredibly badly timed given the global climate talks that were on-going. It has been rightly condemned by businesses who had invested on the basis of targets that have now been unceremoniously dumped. Also by environmental campaigners, some of whom are Conservative MPs too who knew that this was the wrong message to send to other countries and undermines the political commitment that we all need to agree together, because climate crisis is a now issue, not something to address in a decade. It will be too late then. As the cabinet secretary said in her opening remarks, we are already seeing communities devastated across the world and, even in Scotland, unprecedented levels of forest fires and more land in communities vulnerable to flooding. However, notwithstanding the warm words in the Scottish Government's motion, it has also failed to deliver because it is not enough to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk and that is critically joined up thinking, co-ordination and investment. The Scottish Government motion does not acknowledge its failures to date or the missed opportunities. It fails to reference the insufficient progress in homes and buildings, transport and land, all of which are mentioned by the UK climate change committee. Crucially, it also underplays the significant powers that it already has, which it is simply not using. I agree that we need our Governments to work together, and not just the UK and Scottish Governments, but we need to see our local councils central to this action, empowered and funded, to enable them to do that key work in our communities to support our constituents and businesses, to deliver the just transition that we need in every community in Scotland. We need more joined up thinking briefly. Brian Whittle, I was at a business meeting this morning and one of the key messages that come across there is that just transition has to be demand led. I wonder if she would agree with me that the Scottish Government has got this the wrong way around and we need to create the marketplace so that business can service that marketplace. I agree that we need to create the marketplace and that actually is a role for Government that both the UK and Scottish Governments should be leading on, because using procurement, influencing supply chains, giving confidence to the sector, for example the EV sector in the UK, but also in Scotland there is much more that we can be doing, so Government and business, working in partnership, is critical. I have just taken an intervention. We need to see action on key issues now. For example, the reduction in hundreds of bus services, which cut people off from access to jobs and vital services. We have also got horrendous levels of fuel poverty, with an estimated 38 per cent of our households living in fuel poverty. Today, the Fraser Valander Institute has published research that highlights that the Scottish Government has not included in the analysis on the impact of the transition to net zero that we need to make actions to tackle low-income workers who must not lose their jobs. That is not acceptable, so we need to be raising salaries, we need to be creating jobs and we need to have a fully joined up just transition. Scottish Labour has been constructive in this Parliament. We have worked with local authorities to deliver benefits to our constituents. My colleague Alec Rowley has been promoting the need for passive house standards and all-new-built housing, essential to lower people's fuel bills going forward. That builds on the amendment that I secured in the 2009 climate act to require all-new homes to include some former renewables. Twenty years ago, the then Aberdeen Labour Council were ahead of the game when they established Aberdeen heat and power, delivering affordable heat to over 50 tower blocks today. In Edinburgh, the solar co-op delivers solar panels across schools and council buildings. This summer, I saw the partnership work that has been done in Clydebank to deliver a low-carbon heat network, which will lower bills. We need more of all sorts of those initiatives, but across every local authority in Scotland, that needs support, funding for our councils and investment for them directly to share best practice. We make sure that, when we amended the 2019 Transport Act, we gave the councils powers to increase the number of bus services to serve our constituents. Disappointingly, that has not happened and the SNP Government has not delivered on that yet. I am, myself, the wellbeing and sustainable development commissioner bill that I am proposing. Backed up by legal definitions of public duties, it would give us co-ordinated action, it would give us work to support the heavy lifting across Government to get innovation, better use of procurement. We need to make progress now. Insulation is a key issue, and it is unacceptable that the Scottish Government failed to deliver the £133 million that it budgeted last year to retrofit people's homes. I have spoken to the small businesses, and they tell me that I will not take an intervention because I have spoken to the businesses who said that they did not get the support from the Scottish Government, so we do not have businesses across the whole country. We need capacity now, and we would be doing so much more if we were in government. We would be working on our green prosperity plan and implementing our local power plan. We would establish GB Energy in Scotland and give the communities the support that they need now to access local energy production, so we need leadership, certainty, commitment to maximising the benefits of the next generation of renewables and to support the oil and gas sector to transition and crucially deliver a circular economy, not just talk about it. We need certainty, supply chains need to be developed now, green investment, green manufacturing needs to be developed now, and businesses need that confidence so that nobody loses out. We have new jobs created right across our communities, but real action is required now. Ambition and not excuses from the Scottish Government. Using the powers of this Parliament to the max, working with the UK Parliament, hopefully getting a new UK Government that will work with us and supporting our councils to deliver, because we need that change now. Right across the world, climate change is not an issue for the future. It is a crisis now, and we need to address it. Thank you. Members will be interested to know that there is some time in hand this afternoon. I now call on Beatrice Wishart to speak to and move amendment 10597.2. Thank you, Presiding Officer. We are in a climate emergency of that, there is no doubt, and we must all work together. I was quite struck at the beginning of the debate that the public gallery had some young people sitting here. I think that that was a strong indication of how important it is that we all work together to make progress. My amendment calls for an emergency national insulation programme, which would help us to cut household costs, reduce emissions and lower energy demand. At the moment, there is a lack of a qualified workforce with the skills of accreditation to realise that and support other energy efficiency measures. The Scottish Government must do more to ensure that there are enough skilled workers who are able to work across Scotland, including in rural and island areas, to help to decarbonise buildings. In the same way that the Scottish Government motion calls for UK-wide co-operation, my amendment also calls for better collaboration between the Scottish Government and local authorities. We need to reverse the continued underfunding of local authorities. In December 2022, the Climate Change Committee stated that the lack of a co-ordinated approach and strong direction from the Scottish Government was holding back efforts to reduce emissions. We can agree with Labour's motion, which presses for the Scottish Government to take more action to ensure that our targets are met, but Scottish Liberal Democrats will not support the Conservative Party amendment this afternoon. We must be ambitious and act swiftly to tackle the climate emergency and reverse biodiversity loss, which is why the UK Government's announcement last week is deeply disappointing. The UK Government claimed that the reversal is to reduce the burden of costs on households facing the cost of living crisis, and I will say a little bit more about that shortly. I will. John Swinney I am grateful to Beatrice Wishart for giving way. I wonder if she would consider that the approach taken by the Prime Minister last week was a good or a bad example of inter-governmental working between the Administrations of the United Kingdom. At the heart of the debate, I think that it is agreed across the board, there needs to be collaboration across Governments. Does she consider that last week's intervention from the Prime Minister helped the journey to climate change or hindered it? I think that we can agree that it did anything but help. The Prime Minister pushed back the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK from 2030 to 2035. Despite his expectation that by 2030 the vast majority of cars will be electric because of improving technology, but that is not leadership from Rishi Sunak. Nissen is filling the void by announcing that they will push further to produce all electric vehicles by 2030. The Prime Minister risks putting the UK at the back of the queue as the rest of the world races to embrace the industries of tomorrow. No, I want to make some progress. This is not about the politics of long-term grown-up thinking, but more about papering over the cracks of internal Conservative party politics. As one of my Westminster colleagues put it, this is setting the country up for another round of absolute chaos that we cannot afford. UK politics is not the arena to play out those internal Conservative party disagreements, as we have seen continually since before the 2016 EU referendum. Rather, it is a space to empower lives, protect our environment and plan for the future. The Prime Minister made his announcement with the cost of living crisis as his main consideration, and the cost of living crisis should not be downplayed. However, it is the Prime Minister's party that has contributed to inflation and price rises with more barriers to trade with the EU and the disaster of Truss's mini-budget last year. Households across Scotland and the UK have been severely impacted. We have seen the resilience of the public making tough decisions for themselves and their families. We have also seen greater installation of solar panels and consideration of new more efficient technologies replacing old household items. The crisis is driving up innovation. Fund targets and deadlines on the car industry, for example, would have ensured certainty in the sector and for households about when best for them to change from a carbon emitting vehicle to electric. There is more that the Scottish Government can do with the powers that they have. This Government was already failing to meet its climate targets, but the Prime Minister's decision has certainly made that task more difficult. Local communities want to cut emissions and do what is best for our environment. Our council should be best equipped to realise that, and I move the amendment in my name. In preparation for this debate today, I spoke to my children. After all, the world and all its fragile beauty is what our generation will pass on to the next. As elected representatives, we have a moral obligation to do our utmost to ensure that the world that we pass on to them is peaceful, inclusive, healthy and full of life. I would like to think that my parents and grandparents had this wish, too, for us with the knowledge that they had in their time, and this is an obligation that we should all take extremely seriously with the science and knowledge that we have today. I asked my children what inaction on climate change meant to them, and the consensus was quite clearly a distrust of politicians and businesses to do anything with the urgency that they sincerely felt and with true intent to change the climate disaster they will face much more than us. They really did not have hope that, overall, we had a grasp of it, they are my greatest critics. They are fearful and they need assurances that we are doing all we can. But, like many across the world, and even some on the Conservative benches in this place, I was truly dispirited by the Prime Minister's statement last week, that his betrayal of the current generations of my children and grandchildren and of generations to come is truly unforgivable. He should hang his head in shame as anyone who dares to defend the indefensible or who stays silent when our climate and environment are crying out for help. I thank the member for taking the intervention. Does she feel that the Scottish Government are betraying the children due to them not meeting any of their targets that set themselves? I thank the member for that intervention and I think that the cabinet secretary clearly set out at the beginning of her speech the targets that you are asking about. The part of my next speech might be valuable to you. Not every Scottish Conservative kept quiet and it's not often I'll say this, but Maurice Golden was right. The Prime Minister's decision last week was indeed—and I quote—a regressive move that isn't only damaging environmentally but economically and socially too. It drags net zero into the territory of culture wars. What a shame the leader of the Scottish Tories can't bring himself to say the same. In the words of my son who's in his 20s, he said, I think it's extremely short-sighted and indicative of Tory politicians the inability to see past the end of their terms. They don't care about the consequences because by the time they come around, they'll be long gone and have pocketed at the gains already. This latest move by Westminster is another glarian example of the Tories' lack of urgency and the fight for our planet. It took more than a decade for the UK Government to finally announce support for the Scottish cluster's acorn carbon capture project in my constituency. This only came after they missed out on the track 1 funding back in 2021, with the Tories instead granting it to two projects in the north of England, a purely political decision. Make no mistake, along with Rushi Sunak's rollback of climate objectives, shows a clear pattern of behaviour that is by virtue throwing the responsibilities to our planet under the bus for some cheap votes. I thank the member for taking another intervention. Would she agree with me that the Scottish Government, who put £80 million into the budget for carbon capture, then took it out again? We have shown a complete disregard to the north-east of Scotland by removing that funding. The member likes to move the goalpost here, and I remind him of the fact that the acorn project still does not have the green light, it has an amber light. If he met with the Scottish carbon capture, he might realise that that is delaying our intention to be able to capture that carbon, and we are not competitive in the global market. It is delaying it, and it is not like the Tories to pull back Scotland. During my two and a half years as a parliamentarian, I have taken a keen interest in food security, both as a member of the Scottish Parliament's Rural Affairs Committee and as a proud representative of a coastal and rural constituency. I know the essential role fisheries and agriculture play not only to our economy and our culture, but to do availability and secure supply of sufficient, safe and nutritious food. It is clear that the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss pose an undeniable threat to the security of our food and nutrition. Across the world, we are already witnessing slowed agricultural productivity as a result of the effects of climate change, and that, along with Russia's war and Ukraine, is stoking further food insecurity. We do not need to tell our farmers or fishers any of this. They know first hand the impact that these crises are having on the land and the sea. Their expertise and involvement has been and will continue to be vital as we deliver on our climate pledges. After all, food systems are responsible for up to a third of human-caused global greenhouse gas emissions and are the leading cause of biodiversity loss. I am grateful that the Scottish Government has a strategic vision with provision of the right support and a commitment to bring lived experience to the policy-making table. Without that, we risk further driving food insecurity. The climate emergency is the most serious challenge of our lifetimes, and it is only by working with our fishers, farmers and crofters that we will succeed in our ambitious efforts to achieve net zero emissions by 2045. I am proud of the efforts of the Scottish Government led by the SNP on climate action. For decades, we have led the charge on demanding investment for carbon capture and storage in the north-east, and for further investment in renewables and the essential role that my constituency and the wider north-east will play in achieving a just transition cannot be emphasised enough. With the carbon capture project and Murray East and West offshore wind farms, Bamshire and Bucking Coast is certainly punching above its weight in Scotland's efforts on industrial decarbonisation, renewables and carbon capture and storage. Presiding Officer, in conclusion, I implore all in this chamber today and all elected representatives across the UK to take our responsibility to climate action as serious as they do the future of the children and grandchildren we hold dear. Thank you. I call Maurice Golden to be followed by Kevin Stewart. Thank you Presiding Officer. Let me start by speaking plainly. I don't agree with the Prime Minister's decision to scale back net zero policies. If we are going to succeed in limiting the damage caused by climate change, we must be ambitious. The sort of ambition shown when the UK became the first major economy to set net zero in law. Seeing the pathway to that ambition watered down is deeply disappointing. But watching the First Minister launch hypocritical attacks on the UK Government is just as disappointing. He says that we need climate leaders, while seeming to ignore the fact that the SNP has missed their legal emissions targets eight out of the past 12 years. Let's look at the SNP's record on meeting targets, on biodiversity, fail, peatland restoration, fail, woodland creation, fail, renewable heat, fail, community and locally owned energy production, fail, green jobs, fail, cycling target, fail. Humza Yousaf wants to be on the right side of history but his party can't even get on the right side of their own targets. However, those missed targets are a symptom of a more fundamental failure to build a sustainable economy, a circular economy. According to the Circularity Gap report, Scotland's economy is just 1.3 per cent circular. That is not only far below the overall UK score of 7.4 per cent but the worst of any country surveyed. It means that almost 99 per cent of what we consume are virgin resources. That simply isn't sustainable, especially with a growing global middle class all clamouring for goods and services. Not to mention the appalling conditions workers, including children, often face around the world to extract the resources that we use or, for that matter, the environmental damage extraction can cause such as deforestation, flooding and drought. But adopting circular economy policies could cut our resource consumption by almost half and reduce our emissions by 43 per cent according to the Circularity Gap report. As it happens, I delivered a lecture on the circular economy to post-graduate students at Edinburgh University today. Every student in that room understood the value a circular economy would bring to Scotland. They got it, but the SNP Government doesn't. Their circular economy bill is only now being introduced 16 years after they came to power and it remains to be seen if it will deliver the change that we need. Maurice Golden has the confidence that he should have in the circular economy bill that it will deliver the changes that he wants to see or not. It is a framework bill. If you were a cynic looking at the SNP's approach to this, what they did was, in 2019, they announced the circular economy bill, then they delayed it, then they promised that it would be delivered to me in this chamber by 2021, then they worked out that they needed another consultation and we are now in 2023 and we still haven't seen a bill and even then it's a framework and an enabling bill. It would strike me that someone would only employ that sort of policy direction if they didn't want to take any action in the circular economy. I need to make a little bit of progress, but I'm happy to come back later. For example, we all want to see recycling improve. It's ridiculous to think that ministers are still trying to meet their 2013 household recycling target a decade later. If you can't do that, you can forget about net zero, but it's more about than just recycling, we also need to promote reuse. That's because recycled material ultimately goes into producing new products, a processor that requires energy inputs, produces waste and creates new costs. In turn, that means emissions and environmental impacts. I'm happy to. Just on the subject of recycling, and whilst I welcome Maurice Golden having condemned the Prime Minister's actions, will he extend that to the seemingly ridiculous position of the Prime Minister claiming to have scrapped a policy of seven recycling bins when it's not readily clear that that was ever a policy? More importantly, will he be voting against his party at decision time? I've actually got six recycling bins, but I was very concerned about the way in which the member points to framing some of the bullet points on that social media clip. I used that this morning to the circular economy students. I thought that that was deeply disappointing to frame the climate change debate in that manner, because certainly during the last session of Parliament we had a consensus around climate change across party and in cross-government, and I think it's worrying if that consensus breaks down. On the point on voting, I will let you wait to see the decision time results coming through rather than an advice in advance. I need to make some progress. In terms of reuse, that requires better product and system design, and ultimately the SNP and Greens might try to make excuses, but we can encourage research, support designers and identify emerging talent. The circular economy design academy that I proposed six years ago would help to do that, and with the right policies a circular economy could be worth up to £3 billion to Scotland, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and would help to re-energise industrial industries and communities. The bio economy is a great example of that, and using anaerobic digestion we could be providing businesses across Scotland with self-generated heat fuel or feedstock for agriculture. On textiles, wills are a fantastic and sustainable natural resource, but the Scottish Government doesn't even know how much Scottish will is used in textile manufacturing. That needs to change. Supporting farmers to provide native fibres would help lower impact textile manufacturing and help to diversify rural economies. Ministers could implement much of those policies right now if they want to. A great first step would be to embed principles of the circular economy in their decision making across departments. If they do, they might find that they finally have some success to report. Kevin Stewart to be followed by Alec Rowley, a generous six minutes. The Prime Minister's announcement last week that the Tory UK Government is set to rip up its climate change targets is not only unforgivable, but is a complete betrayal of current and future generations. Instead of showing leadership on climate change, such as Humza Yousaf, Rushi Sunak is acting like a climate change denier. I hear laughter from the Tory benches. Mr Lumsden talked about honesty in his speech. The honest fact is that by ripping up what few policies he had, there is no way that the UK is going to reach net zero. That, I am afraid, puts impediments in our path too. Beatrice Wishart was absolutely spot on in her speech. Rushi Sunak's announcements were to pander to the Tory back benches that are ridden with divisions at this moment in time. That announcement was to bolster the Tory core vote, because it is obviously panicking about the next election. However, that is doing nothing to help future generations. I hope that Rushi Sunak will have a change of heart, or that he will go down in history as the worst Prime Minister ever. That is very difficult, considering he succeeded Liz Truss. Scotland has made real progress to deliver on our climate pledges. Our country's greenhouse gas emissions are down dramatically since the 1990 baseline. Scotland is on the journey to net zero emissions by 2045. It is not an easy journey, but it is now one where the UK Government is trying to blow us off course with those recent announcements. As it stands, the Scottish Government's climate change plan update contains nearly 150 policies and sets a pathway to meeting our ambitious emissions target over the period of 2032, including a 75 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. I will give way to Douglas Lumsden. I thank Kevin Stewart for giving way. Maurice Golden listed a whole list of failures by the Scottish Government. Those failures were happening long before Rushi Sunak made a statement last week, so does he not agree with me that the failures on the Scottish Government's part are totally embarrassing? The things that I would say to Mr Lumsden are that all of us in this Parliament signed up to those very ambitious climate change targets. I recognise that, in some of those issues, we have not met those targets and we must go further. Mr Stewart, could I ask you just to resume your seat? There is plenty of time in hand in this debate. Interventions will be recompensed for those who take them. That should then underscore the need to avoid both front and back benches contributing from a sedentary position. Mr Stewart, if you could resume and you can be recompensed for that time. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I very much appreciate it. I agree that we must go further, but let's be honest here. Let's be honest, because it was you who was talking about honesty, Mr Lumsden. Sorry, Presiding Officer, to read the chair. In all honesty, all of Rushi Sunak's announcements make all of this much more difficult as we go forward. Let's look at some of the achievements, still, over the past while. In 2020, the equivalent of almost 100 per cent of Scotland's gross electricity consumption was generated from renewable resources. The Scottish Government has allocated over £1 billion since 2009 to tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency. In my own neck of the woods, the Scottish Government has put in place the Just Transition Fund, a £10-year £500 million investment to support a fair transition to net zero and to diversify the north-east economy. There is also the £75 million energy transition fund, which is committed to an energy transition zone in Aberdeen, £6.5 million of funding towards a global underwater hub, £16.7 million to the net zero technology transition partnerships, and £15.2 million of funding for the Aberdeen hydrogen hub. I am very grateful that he presumably also acknowledges and welcomes the £16 billion North Sea transition deal that is funded by the UK Government. I would say to Mr Kerr that the north-east of Scotland has been a cash cow for the treasury for decades. I have to say that the UK Government has not invested enough in the north-east to allow us for that Just Transition. I will come back to some more of that as I progress. We can only deliver a Just Transition with the resources that are required, and we cannot deliver a Just Transition if we are the last to do it. Once again, Scotland is being held back on not only its environmental ambitions but its economic ambitions. Oil and gas will remain important for years to come, but industry knows that there needs to be dialogue, diversification and decarbonisation. Unfortunately, the Tories have done little on those issues, and on the likes of carbon capture, they have deferred, dithered and delayed, as they are now doing on climate change as a whole. That wrecks business confidence. As for Labour, it seems to forget all about the need for that Just Transition. It has been reported that it would block all new oil and gas development, and it has been heavily criticised by workers and unions, such as the GMB and Unite, given the impact on jobs. The former Labour leader and Lord Provost of Aberdeen, Barney Crockett, resigned from the party saying that Margaret Thatcher never delivered a more brutal putdown of an industry than that delivered by Keir Starmer. The Scottish Government is absolutely committed to a Just Transition and ensuring that we take workers with us on our journey to net zero. That is why the Scottish Government is investing half a billion pounds to deliver that Just Transition, something that both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have failed to commit to match. For decades, the UK Treasury has melted the northeast of Scotland, and successive UK Governments have squandered Scotland's oil and gas revenues. It is time for the Treasury to invest in that Just Transition, to support the diversification of supply chains, and to ensure high-quality jobs for the future. To Jeremy Hunt and the UK Government, I say that get your hands in your pooches and pay back the northeast of Scotland now. I now call Alex Rowley to be followed by Jackie Dunbar at around six minutes, Mr Rowley. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I begin by apologising to yourself and the cabinet secretary for being late for the start of the debate? Looking at the extreme weather events that have happened across the world over the past few years, I believe that that is to be evidence enough of the incredible impact climate change is having on our environment, on our way of life, and on the ability of people around the world to live safe in the places that they have lived all of their lives. However, I think that I would be forgiven for questioning that belief when I heard the most recent announcement on the UK Government's approach to green policy that appeared to be taking straight from the trust manifesto for taking the United Kingdom backwards. Delays on the end of sales of new petrol and diesel cars, on phasing out of oil boilers, on rolling back requirements for rental properties to be energy efficient, and the failure to invest the levels of investment that we need to tackle climate change. The bottom line is that Prime Minister's speech was bad news for anyone in the UK that wants to see Government action on climate change. The amendment from the Tories is a masterclass in deflection accusing others of trying to stoke division on this issue when the main purpose of their announcements is to do exactly that in a desperate attempt to avoid being comprehensively defeated at the next general election. I agree with the Scottish Minister's characterisation of the Prime Minister's decision as an unforgivable betrayal of current and future generations, and I also call on the UK Government to rethink those proposals. As outlined in an article for the Prime Minister's speech from Carbon Brief, the vast majority of cuts to carbon emissions so far have come from the phasing out of coal and the scaling up of gas and renewables in the power system. This has meant a huge amount of progress in a relatively short space of time, but to be clear, the hardest part of our journey to net zero still lies ahead. A fair point made today in our Labour amendment, I believe, we want both Governments to increase the actions with the powers that they have. Two of the areas that we must focus on in the next phase of decarbonisation is transport and buildings, two of the highest emitting sectors, and we have the powers to do so. Both Governments have the powers to do so. A Scottish Labour's transport spokesperson and recently having my member's bill to increase building energy efficiency targets in line with passive house standards adopted by the Scottish Government, I certainly have an interest in both of those areas. Looking at the statistics on the roll-out of electric vehicles infrastructure, it is clear that there is still some way to go. We must ask ourselves whether we can do better or whether we have to do better if we are to see the transition to electric vehicles that we need to see to decarbonise transport on a grand scale. I agree with Mr Rowley that we need to do more, even though Scotland's charging points are greater per head than anywhere else other than London. Does Mr Rowley agree with me that the announcements by Rishi Sunak last week is unlikely to lead to further new investment in that, because companies will be cautious about how they spend their resources? We are certainly seeing that companies have said since that announcement that they are far more cautious and we need some kind of stability in future planning, so I would agree with that. I am pleased that Mr Stewart agrees that we need to do more. For example, in my village of Kelty there are zero public chargers for almost 7,000 of a population that lives there. Across Fife there are only 160 vehicle chargers, of which only 26 are rapid chargers for the 3,303 electric vehicles that are registered to people living in Fife. That is less than 7 rapid chargers per 100,000 people, where electric vehicles total are 705 per 100,000 people, so we have to do more. I suggest too that the Government can do better, we must do better. The Lib Dem amendment suggests greater partnership with local government. I agree, but not just with local councils. We need joined up partnerships with employers, with industry and with local communities leading the move to ensure infrastructure for electric vehicles is put in place. However, I do not believe that our transport climate targets will be met by simply replacing every vehicle in the driveway with an electric equivalent. We must do more to encourage the use of public transport, and we can only do that by enabling public transport to ensure that it is affordable, accessible and reliable. Mark Llywodraeth Cymru, for giving way on that point, would he agree with me that it is really important that councils, including Fife Council, look to use the new powers that are coming over municipal ownership of bus companies and franchising to bring public transport into public ownership and public control, and that the Government's recently announced community bus fund provides some way, some kind of mechanism for councils to develop that vision and to move towards that space? Alex Rowley, I can give you the time back for both. I certainly come on to that point, but what I would say is that councils have been absolutely starved off-cash over the last decade. They have been disproportionately cut, and therefore their ability to use powers without any resources are very limited, so we need to be realistic. If we want councils to have those powers, we need to put the resources and follow that through so that they can actually, the powers become meaningful. We must do more to encourage the use of public transport, and we can only do that by ensuring that public transport is affordable, accessible and reliable. The bus pass for the under-22s is a welcome move, as is adopted in the recommendations of the rail unions to end the peak fares attacks on workers. Just as ScotRail has been brought under public control, we must now look at greater regulation and public control of the bus network across Scotland. I believe that there is progress, but much more must be done. The Scottish Government has rightly set out ambitious targets to fight the climate crisis, but those targets mean very little if they are not achieved. As Al Gore recently put it, the fossil fuel companies are far more effective in capturing politicians than they are in capturing emissions. Judging by the most recent action of the UK Government, I believe that Mr Gore may well be correct, we cannot allow the UK Government's poor decisions to sway Scotland from our goal of net zero. We must redouble our efforts to meet our rightly ambitious climate targets to secure the future that our planet needs to secure the future that future generations need. The challenge that climate change and biodiversity laws poses to our planet is absolutely immense, so I am pleased that Parliament is debating this incredibly important issue today. Climate change is not something coming down the line or something that will happen in the future if we do not buck up our ideas. It is already here and it is causing devastation across the world. Scotland and, in particular, my constituents in Aberdeen Donside have benefited from employment in the oil and gas industry over the decades. We are a resource rich nation and we have all felt the benefits of that. Now, however, we need to push forward a just transition, ensuring that we utilise the skills and expertise in the oil and gas sector to ensure that we become the renewables capital of Europe or even the world. When we talk about just transition, the just aspect of the transition is so very important, ensuring that nobody is left behind as we move away from fossil fuels in the years to come. The key here is that the folk in the northeast of Scotland who currently work in the oil and gas industry will be essential in the shift to renewables. We need to unlock their potential. We have the potential. We just need to fully unlock it. Many companies, including—I will take an intervention from Mr Kerr—I am very grateful. I do not actually disagree with what she has just said about the importance of the workforce in the northeast, but does the member worry, like me, that if you have a draft energy strategy that suggests that the north sea might be shut down, you create a narrative that, as the north sea is declining, people will move away from the northeast and not be able to contribute to that just transition. Jackie Dunbar in the middle of the time. Thank you, Presiding Officer. In response to Mr Kerr, I would say that the oil and gas companies that I have been in discussion with are already transferring over on to renewables. They are telling me to ask the Conservatives to stop talking them down. It is having an impact on their ability to attract young folk into their energy companies. The culture is changing. I am still trying to respond to Mr Kerr's intervention, thank you, Mr Lumsden. The culture is changing and it is only the Tories who will not. That is what I am getting told within my constituency of Aberdeen-Donside. Presiding Officer, as I said, many companies, including a number in my constituency of Aberdeen-Donside, I will take an intervention from Mr Lumsden. It does not look like I am going to get my speech to you. Douglas Lumsden, I thank Jackie Dunbar for taking the intervention. It is just when we talk about politicians talking the northeast down, what is her thoughts on the headline of Humza Yousaf that does not want Aberdeen to be the oil and gas capital any more? Thank you, Presiding Officer. Humza Yousaf wants the northeast to be the energy capital of Europe and the world. I shall try again. I have had the privilege of visiting a number of businesses, as I said, within the oil and gas sector and in the supply chain. They are all playing their part in the national road to net zero. While work has started, we need to act on climate change as it is already having a devastating impact on our day-to-day lives in our economy, our businesses and our communities, and the worst impact has yet to come. It is impacting our daily lives either directly or indirectly, whether we ignore it or not. We simply cannot spend years in a state of denial waiting for the impacts to become so obvious that they cannot be ignored any longer. If we, as a nation, are serious about tackling climate change and want to be seen as credible on the international stage, we must step up to the plate and take further action. We must take further action to prevent further damage to our planet. That is not just about doing something now to protect our future generations' futures. That is about everyone here and now taking responsibility for the actions that they perform on a day-to-day basis and the impact that that has on others. If we take responsibility for what we do now, I truly believe that we can change the future for not only our bairns but their bairns and their bairns after that. On that note, I think that it is important to acknowledge all those playing a part in our journey to net zero, be it workers, businesses and including local and national government, to get us to where we are now, halfway to net zero, as highlighted in the motion, but we all have so much more to do. Let us take a look at how climate change is affecting Scotland. Scotland, since 2000, has had nine of the 10 warmest years on record, nine out of 10 since records began. That is not something to be proud of, that is extremely worrying. The future is likely to hold warmer, wetter summers, with more storms, flooding and periods of drought, and winters will be milder. That has a devastating toll on industry. According to a WWF study, the impacts to the farming sector in 2017-18 included sheep farmers suffering the biggest losses of approximately £45 million when the beast from the east hit during their lambing season. Beef producers seen a huge increase to the cost of feed of approximately £28 million as cattle were kept inside for longer during the bad weather and grass growth was low during the dry summer. Serial crops were also significantly impacted with total production in yields down into 2018 due to the poor weather conditions at key points in the growing season, a cost of the farmer of approximately £34 million. At the UK level, wholesale prices of some staples such as carrots, lettuce and onions rose up to 80 per cent. Those extreme events are likely to become more frequent and severe as our climate continues to change. I do not think that I need to spell it out that that has a huge impact on the cost of living. The cost of stable food products suddenly become too expensive for those who can least afford it. Just a few degrees difference in the winter temperatures has a devastating effect across the sectors and our services. As I bring my remarks to a close, it is important to reflect on the devastating impact that the Prime Minister's U-turn is going to have on our net zero journey. The delays on banning fossil fuel cars by five years and warping down the phasing out of gas boilers all impact on that 2050 target. What does that say to the world, to businesses looking to invest in the UK? It says that the UK Government are not credible, they won't stick to their plans or targets, particularly when there's an election looming. The Prime Minister has claimed that it's all to support those most affected by the cost of living crisis, when in reality it was all just applied to provide assurances to climate-denying Tories that won't have seven recycling bins or be taxed on meat products or heaven forbid be forced to car share. Westminster once again holds Scotland back, thank you, Presiding Officer. I now call Mark Ruskell to be followed by John Swinney around six minutes. Well, this year's climate week marks a tipping point in the climate emergency, because 2023 is the year when the climate emergency arrived on the doorstep of so many communities across the world, where fire and flood has taken the lives and livelihoods of so many people. It's been impossible to ignore, and it's the first year when I've looked at my own children and felt fearful for what the decades ahead will be like for them to actually live through. We must also not forget the impact climate change is having on the natural world, increasing temperatures, extreme weather and invasive species are threatening ecosystems with collapse. 2023 has been a year where videos of climate protesters slowing cars have been watched alongside videos of cars being swept away by flash floods. We're at a tipping point in public consciousness, but it's also a dangerous time, a time when those who feel powerless or disbelieving can turn to dangerous conspiracies and denialism about climate and even about democracy itself. We need honest leadership about both the challenges and the opportunities that lie ahead, free from the agendas of vested interests who wish to slow or reverse change. So many people felt disillusioned by the Prime Minister's climate climb down last week because there was not a shred of honest leadership in that announcement. Standing at a plinth that read long-term decisions for a brighter future, he announced short-term decisions that will destroy the future. He described the need for change and for a second I almost felt quite hopeful, but then he cancelled or delayed the programmes that are delivering the change that is necessary. The very policies that he was elected to deliver, policies that had been extensively consulted on for years, cancelled or delayed, he then quite incredibly scrapped a range of policies from compulsory car sharing to meat taxes that don't even exist. It was a level of double think not seen since 1984, but the Government motion today rightly acknowledges that Scotland is halfway towards net zero but that the hardest part is still to come. To meet net zero we'll need a level of political ambition, collaboration and leadership across the UK not yet seen. There are genuine challenges, particularly as Governments look to scale up delivery on areas such as EV charging, peatland restoration and heat and buildings, because supply chains and finance need built up quickly. The push of strong regulation needs to be matched by the pull of new markets. Opposition MSPs are right to ask searching questions of ministers and this Government, but the quickest way to deter investment is to send the signal that a target, however stretching, can be summarily ditched. Ford last week called for ambition, commitment and consistency from Government. Rishi Sunak did exactly the opposite. He lowered ambition, showed that his Government has no commitment and created inconsistency and uncertainty. An announcement that was bad for the planet and bad for the economic growth of key sectors that are critical for the transition to real zero. It wasn't just the car industry that found the energy company that said that the announcement was a backward step and damages supply chains at a time when skills for developing green heat need to be massively ramped up. It was the Prime Minister's comments on energy that really concerned me the most. Telling people that energy efficiency is an expensive luxury that they cannot afford is clearly absurd. The cheapest energy is the energy that we don't use. I have agreed with what Mark Ruskell said today, but that point about energy efficiency, could he say how we get ramping up the need to make energy efficiency a top priority? Before you do that, even shifting your fuel use is still going to be hugely expensive. Shouldn't that be a top priority for the Scottish Government? Mark Ruskell should be, and it is. The heat and building strategy will lay out how we can bring together both energy efficiency with heat decarbonisation, but it takes time to build up a supply chain that was decimated by the policies of the Tory Government 10 years ago. When David Cameron inverted commas cut the green crap, he stripped out the investment from that industry. People moved out of that industry completely. That supply chain was shut down. It is this Government that is now trying to build that supply chain back up to the point where budgets can be spent, where real change can start to happen. Maybe Rishi Sunak was thinking about the cost on private landlords of improving the efficiency of properties that they own but do not pay energy bills on. Housing is a human right, and locking people into energy and efficient, cold, unhealthy housing is a violation of those rights. His comments about the cost of heat pumps were alarmist. Householders will see cheaper costs as a supply chain develops, but many houses are heat pumps ready today, with Scottish Government grants most generous in the UK. Labour has said that it would not reverse. If there is time in hand, I will take an intervention. Liam Kerr, the cost of delivering the heat and building strategy has been estimated at £33 billion, and that was about two years ago, so it will be more than that now. £1.8 billion has come from the Scottish Government. Where does the rest come from, Mark Ruskell? I point Mr Kerr to where investment in our home energy and our energy systems comes from at the moment. It is a mixture of predominately private finance, personal finance, investment through mortgages, investment through housing, but also through public finance as well. It is that blend of investment that will deliver that £33 billion. I agree that it is challenging. The Government has a challenge there, but it will lay out that pathway. Labour has said that it would not reverse Sunak's weakening of targets for household heating should they form the next UK Government, but that would condemn another generation to grow up in fuel poverty. I would warn Labour of not jumping on to false solutions such as hydrogen for home heating in an attempt to surf the waves of uncertainty created by the Tories. Studies have shown that hydrogen would be two to three times more expensive than heat pumps and would not be ready for over a decade. Let me make some progress. I will take one intervention from myself. That would worsen fuel poverty and is one of the reasons why the Scottish Government is focusing the deployment of hydrogen on hard-to-abate industries rather than homes. In concluding, the announcement by the Prime Minister will have serious ramifications for Scotland's next climate change plan. The cabinet secretary is right to seek urgent updated advice from the UK Climate Change Committee. I am sure that advice will be treated with respect, unlike the disgraceful way that senior UK Government ministers misinterpreted, then rubbish their own advisers' work in public over the past week. However, we need that leadership and consistency for the next Westminster Government, working with the devolved Administrations to keep ambition high while supporting everybody through the transition with all the challenges and opportunities that come with it. That needs a genuine four nations approach to deliver what the cabinet secretary talked about at the beginning of this debate, a collective mission—all Administrations coming to work together with the UK Climate Change Committee to find a pathway to real zero. The solutions are there. It is not rocket science, but only a lack of political will can hold us back now. I understand that at the beginning of the debate, a number of members were not present in such circumstances. It is expected that members would offer an apology to the chair and to the chamber as a whole. I call John Swinney to be followed by Kate Forbes. Just after that introduction, I want to make it clear that I was here. I bang on two o'clock for the whole experience. I do not want any members to feel that I have been singled out for a reprimand, which, on this occasion, is not merited by me on other occasions. I begin with what I think is the absolute core of the debate, which is that there has to be a deep understanding and acceptance of the gravity of the threat and seriousness that we face from climate change. For me, that was illustrated by the comments of the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, on 27 July, when he said those words. Humanity is in the hot seat. According to the data released today, July has already seen the hottest three-week period ever recorded, the three hottest days on record and the highest ever ocean temperatures for this time of year. The consequences are clear and tragic. Children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, workers collapsing in scorching heat. For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa and Europe, it is a cruel summer. For the entire planet, it is a disaster. For scientists, it is unequivocal. Humans are to blame. All this is entirely consistent with predictions and repeated warnings that only surprise is the speed of the change. Those are the UN Secretary General's words. I put those on the record because I think that we are always in danger. The whole political debate in Scotland and the United Kingdom is in danger today of being distracted by just running off on side tangents and trying to almost suggest that there is a kind of easier way or a quicker way to get to some of these challenges or that perhaps the challenge is not as grave as it is, but the challenge is very grave. What I think has served Scotland very well over many years has been the unanimity of opinion that this crisis has got to be confronted. So, when I go back to the climate change legislation that was taken through this Parliament in 2009, I remember Sarah Boyack pushing the Scottish Government to go further in that legislation, and as a minority Government, of course, at that time, we had to go further to reach agreement with other political parties. The same sentiment lay at the heart of the climate change bill in 2019, supported by everyone in this Parliament, with an exception of my colleagues and friends in the Scottish Green Party, who did not believe that it went far enough. However, we have been well served by that unity of purpose, but it is fraying now. The Conservative amendment today is deeply disappointing because it frays that sentiment because it chooses to stand behind the Prime Minister who abruptly changed direction last week. Why does a change of direction on this issue serve us ill? It serves us ill because we need policy certainty on those questions. Why has Scotland largely decarbonised our electricity networks in about 15 years? We have done it because of policy certainty, not created by the Government of which I had the privilege to be a member, but initiated by our predecessors in the Labour and Liberal Coalition, where ministers and, might I say, special advisers contributed for middibly to creating the policy certainty that electricity had to be decarbonised and, over the course of about 15 years, with the combination of policy certainty and vast private investment by our power companies, Scotland's electricity has largely been decarbonised. That marriage of private and public activity, private investment and public policy, delivered through policy certainty, has given Scotland a great advantage on electricity decarbonisation. I thank John Swinney for giving away, but on policy certainty, it is not long since Chris Stark from the Climate Change Committee said that Scotland's targets were in danger of becoming meaningless, and he was worried that we are now seeing a collective impact of what you might call magical thinking in the Scottish Government. We have heard lots of tip for that, and that is something that he also warned against as well. He said that we needed to stop the nonsense for tit for tat, blame the UK Government for this and that and get on with being ambitious, and that is what the act in Scotland is for. I understand the point that Chris Stark is making. He wants the Scottish Government to get on with it and to do more. I accept that I am not going to stand here and say that everything is perfect, but I am also not going to stand here in the ludicrous position that Mr Carson finds himself in, of pressing me to do more on climate change when his Prime Minister has just pulled a rug right out from underneath Mr Carson and all of his calls. He brings me to my second necessity, which is that we need common purpose. For those who study inter-governmental relations, last week is a classic example of what is wrong with the United Kingdom, because we have been working actually in this space in quite a collaborative way all administrations of the United Kingdom until last week. To suit the supposed electoral advantage of the Conservative and Unionist party, they decided to do a vault fast. There has been no consultation with the Scottish Government, none with the Welsh Government, none with the mayor of London. Everybody has just been thrown asunder because the United Kingdom Prime Minister has decided that he knows better. As a consequence, there will be suffering as a result of that folly of decision making that the Prime Minister has undertaken. I make a plea for that. I know that the Scottish Government gets attacked for not being co-operative, and I know that it suits everybody's narratives. I was at the butt of getting all of those criticisms in the past, but, on this occasion, the United Kingdom has acted menacingly and unilaterally, and it will be the children of the developing countries of the world and our children that will suffer as a consequence. Lastly, as I draw my remarks to a close, we need, in this Parliament, to try to recover some of the sentiment of the driving sense of achieving those objectives on climate change. We need to spend a lot less stuff on, frankly, the pretty trivial political conflict stuff. I remember getting told that the world would come to an end when the carrier bag charge was introduced in Scotland. It would be the end of the world. What did people do? They did what my granny did in the 1960s. They went to the shops with a bag that went to the shops the following day with a bag, and they did not use plastic bags in supermarkets. There is nonsense about deposit return. What a disgrace. This Parliament legislated for a perfectly good deposit return scheme sabotaged by foolishness and menace by the United Kingdom Government. We need to move on from those things to realise that the small incremental activities and actions that we take will help towards achieving the big picture, but we have to get on with it and get on with it now. I can confirm that my earlier reprimand was not directed at yourself, although I am sure that it was a timely reminder in any event. I call Kate Forbes to be followed by Edward Mountain in six minutes. I am keen to focus my remarks on the experience, contribution and interests of communities across Scotland. Over the summer, while I was engaged with constituency summer tours, many of my colleagues will have been one issue that dominated my meetings above all others. It was, in fact, the question of community empowerment in the context of moving to net zero. In the Highlands, we are blessed with many of the resources, skills and communities that will make net zero a reality. We are a producer and generator of renewable energy. Indeed, we pioneered much of the hydropower in the 1950s and 1960s that still forms the bedrock of Scotland's success on renewable energy. We also have extensive peatlands and forestry, both essential for capturing carbon. Our communities and our people have traditionally played a very critical role in supporting the energy industry. Indeed, it is our coastline that is saying a lot of the decommissioning activity that we need to move to net zero. That sits alongside another crisis. It is the crisis of de-population. At the moment, the forecasts are for a net loss of people over the same decades that we will see us move to net zero on greenhouse gas emissions. We need to make sure that the process to moving to net zero also deals with the de-population crisis. The way to do that is to ensure that communities are driving the policies to get to net zero and that the social, economic and environmental benefits of getting there remain with communities and are not off-shored to shareholders. There is a palpable fear that the Highlands might disproportionately bear the burden of transitioning to net zero without anything to show for it locally, but that is not inevitable. In my constituency, a campaign called Hands Off Our Hills has managed to attract 1,000 members in less than a week in response to a huge wind farm that is going to be built right in the middle of one of the most scenic areas. However, would the member not agree that the SNP Green's new national framework 4 appears to give carte blanche to wind farm developers and override the views of communities? On the contrary, the national planning framework introduced new powers and rights for communities to ensure that development was locally planned and locally delivered. I think that it captures some of the principles that we need to embed in our approach to the just transition. I am grateful for the opportunity to offer a counter suggestion to the intervention that we had a moment ago. Does Kate Forbes agree that if the UK, instead of making the announcements at dead, had come forward with the detail on how they would break the artificial link between gas and electricity prices, that would mean that here in Scotland, where we are generating cheap, abundant, clean, green and renewable electricity, people would get the benefit of that in their bills? That is one of the things that we could do to support and build public support for more renewables. I cannot agree more with that, because it is an absolute disgrace and I was going to come on to this, that the very communities that see on their front door the infrastructure that is carrying the bulk of the generation to the bulk of the consumers, those very same households are paying far too much for energy and not just that, know that their neighbour, a pensioner, cannot afford fuel, that the family next door cannot afford to put the heating on and that the family down the street cannot afford to pay to use their car in the first place. That, Presiding Officer, is what the disgraceful reality of the situation for households in rural Scotland. It is not a question that there is not a sufficient interest or investment to be made in moving to renewables. It is the fact that the just transition depends not just on the destination but also on the process to get there. The just transition needs to enshrine justice at its heart if we are to celebrate reaching net zero and to celebrate the sustainable future for our rural communities, particularly the Highlands. I was going to touch on two examples of where we need to ensure that the just transition reduces inequalities, it does not exacerbate them, that the just transition builds a sustainable economy, it does not shrink it and that the just transition invests in the Highlands future and does not just exploit its resources. The two examples where I think we need to see greater progress of enshrining community empowerment is firstly right now when it comes to renewables, because while the Scottish Government has made great strides on land reform, we must remember that the advantage of land reform is putting communities in the driving seat and allowing them to determine their future. If that is true for the natural asset of land, it is also true for the natural asset of wind, for water and for our coastline. I think that we need to see greater progress in ensuring that all natural assets are in the hands of communities. I use the example in Sky where there is concern about the cumulative impact of multiple planning applications for wind farms that are owned by international corporates. We need to ensure that we see more of what is happening in the western isles where communities that own the turbine, according to community agreement, and the sustainable income that is generated from that is reinvested in the community in order to boost the local economy. The same goes for the investment in upgrading the grid and upgrading the infrastructure, and I have already commented on the fact that communities should retain the benefit of those investments. I will draw to a close but my final comment is this. If the net destination is net zero for greenhouse gases, it must also mean net gain for communities. That will be the true success of a just transition. Thank you, Ms Forbes. I now call Edward Mountain to be followed by Christine Graham around six minutes, Mr Mountain. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and your rebuke delivered in this chamber just before Mr Swinney's boat was obviously directed at me, and I therefore find myself in the uncomfortable position of being in the same boat as Alex Rowley. I'm sure he'll welcome me, but I would like to apologise to the chair and to the Cabinet Secretary before she leaves the chamber for being slightly late. I would also like, Presiding Officer, to remind members of my register of interest in that I am a farmer and I am a landlord. Presiding Officer, no one in this chamber, I believe, denies that climate change is a real threat to our future, and reaching and reducing global warming is an absolute imperative. But to make the changes we need, we've got to take the public with us if we're going to achieve them at all. So, hitting the public in the pocket, making changes overly expensive is not helping. Overriding local decisions, whether it be on wind farms or electric lines, doesn't help either. Not just yet, but I will in a minute, Mr Harvey, making the public feel that they are leading the way and not being dragged by a Government is the way I believe we do it, by encouragement and not forcing it. Mr Harvey, I'll give away now. I agree that we need to take this debate forward in a way that brings people with us. Does he think that the use of language like eco-zealots and extremists helps to achieve that or undermines it? It's not language that I use and I'm sure it's not language that you would use either. If you want to interrupt again, please raise to your feed and ask for an intervention, as you don't. Okay, it's not language that I would use and therefore I'm not possibly even going to comment on it. So, by encouraging and not forcing, it's the way forward. I believe that one thing we need to get from the Scottish Government today is agreement that they will publish their climate change plan by Christmas, as they said they would, and not delay it any further, because that will give us some direction, because this Government does make lots of big announcement, but it's not delivering them. Delivering them in fields which I know possibly quite a lot about, like growing trees and agriculture, both of which have failed to have a plan in the future. Well, where we do have a tree plan, they haven't reached the targets and when it comes to agriculture, we're still waiting for a plan, despite the fact that the climate change committee said that it should have been around over a year ago. What I would also say to the Government, you need to be careful just in a minute, Mr Ruskell, if I may, what I would say to the Government is leading the way is comes with a risk, because if you are at the cutting edge of technology, you often that technology is not mature enough and needs to be further enhanced and enhancement then needs replacement and that leads to additional costs. So, the question is we are pondering and we're looking at the committee, that I'm in, the electrification or the use of hydrogen, solar power or wind power, onshore or offshore wind farms. All of these have got to be put into the melting pot, but what I've come to the conclusion is that all of them play a part. It has to do some of the other energy generation schemes that we have, which seems to have been discounted, like nuclear power. I'll give way to Mr Ruskell if I have some extra time. Mark Ruskell. If I can go back to his point about the climate change plan, we're now less than three months away from Christmas. Does he really expect the UK Climate Change Committee to provide their in-depth analysis for the Scottish Government to work with that analysis and to come up with a plan by December? Does he recognise the impossibility of that and the difficulty that we're going to have in the NSET Committee of actually scrutinising this and scrutinising the UK Climate Change Committee's assessment of the Prime Minister's announcement last week? Edw ymatech. Give me a thing back for board. You can do an awful lot in three months, trust me, if you set your mind to it. Certainly, when I was a soldier, you didn't often have three months to make some really big decisions and get on with it, and that's all I'm asking the Scottish Government to do. Now, I want to drill into a particular point that's been mentioned today, and I think Mr Ruskell mentioned that, and that's the whole issue of EPCs. We need to be honest to people. Now, I don't speak as a landlord. I speak as somebody who wants to see heating costs reduced in houses. Do we really know what EPCs mean? Do we really know how those figures come up with? No, because a survey is put into a computer. Oh, Mr Hover, you can look perplexed. I explain it to you. It's put into a computer. The computer comes up with the figures. So, if you're going to insulate property, you have to take off the existing walls, you have to reframe them, you have to put king span in, which means you have to move the electric points, which means you have to move the radiators. If you want to insulate the floor, you have to lift the floor. If you can, if there's space underneath it, you insulate the floor. If you want to insulate the roof, often with houses that predate 1950, they've got coon ceilings, which means that you can't insulate the roof without putting king span in, reducing the height of the ceilings, which may make them unable to be lived in. You have to put in new lighting, you obviously have to put in new windows, and let's be honest, let's, the costs of those are £1,000 a window, or if it's a bay window, it might be £2,500, and you have to replace the boiler £7,500, probably with all the pipe part, you're closer to £10,000. In my opinion, with some 15 years behind me of a surveyor, I think all that work's going to cost about £40,000 for most houses. Now, where are we going to get that money from? There are 6,000 houses sitting in the Highland region, which are within the public sector, which are below EPCC. Simple maths tells me that all we need is £252 million to pay for them, to get to them to EPCC. It is not realistic, and what I'm asking for is some realistic assessment of how we can get there. It's fine smiling, it's fine saying, let's scrap fossil fuel boilers by 2032, if that's what you want to say that. Why throw away something that's working? Why throw away something that is delivering actually heat in the house, which is probably cost effective, just to reach a target? I think Mr Ewing said it might not be just the boilers that get scrapped, it might be the government if they fall that policy through. So, in summary, Presiding Officer, I think what we need to do, and we need to make sure today, is that we come up with fair and equitable plans that give the public the chance to own the plan. If you give them a chance to own the plan, they will take it forward. My one real concern is that, if we rely on being on the cutting edge of everything, there is a cost involved with that, which may mean that, in years to come, we have to repeat the whole process again as the cutting technology isn't up to date. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mountain. I now call Christine Graham to be followed by Colin Smyth around six minutes, Ms Graham. It's almost inexplicable that we still have global warming deniers. Who better to quote than perhaps the Donald, the Donald Trumps of this world, who claimed and I quote, quote, when I listen to people talk about global warming that the ocean will rise in the next 300 years by one-eighths of an inch, and they talk about, this is our problem, the environmentalists talk about all this nonsense? In a further podcast interview, he said of one-eighth of an inch over 300 years, when I see these people talking about global warming, where the ocean will rise by one over one-hundredth of an inch over the next 350 years. Well, he's not even consistent in his idiocy, but, of course, he represents the madmax of society. The reality is that the federal, national, oceanic and atmospheric administration NOAA has, and I note, said that the global sea level is currently rising at about one-eighth of an inch per year. In other words, the sea level rise that Trump claimed to say will happen over 300 years is actually happening annually, and I also reference John Swinney's contribution in this regard. But we don't even need NOAA pronouncements. From the raging global fires, droughts and floods across the world, the disappearing Arctic ice, to the very weird seasons in my own tiny garden, global warming is here and accelerating and very scary, and if not, it should be. It is a time for food on the metaphorical accelerator, not the brakes. Now, each nation, government, community and every one of us has to do our bit. Governments must not backslide, least of all, for short-term electoral gain. While others have addressed that, it is despairing that global commitments can be cast aside so cheaply by Labour and the Tories. Now, terms like net zero, zero emissions, can sometimes not be understood. They become overworked, therefore undervalued, and familiarity can be guilty, too, of breeding contempt. Folk hear the need for new cars to be electric within a timescale for heat pumps and look at the cost of the weekly shop of heating by conventional means and understandably feel the urgency is not as great for them as their immediate financial urgencies. We must work with that, but we must also take the lead. However, let's start where differences can be made now, be seen to be made while we work on the medium and longer term and take people with us. Focusing on planning law and the role of local authorities and opportunities, some taken, some missed, I'll illustrate. For example, a new bill of private scheme and lauder, I was happy to attend a briefing. Yes, the homes will be energy efficient, but the heating systems will be gas boilers, homes still to be built. Across Midlothian, there's an eruption in new builds in both the private and social sector. The compliance with reducing carbon emissions is a mixed bag. In Peniclute, for example, the Scottish Government has supported a new build development with over £3.9 million. This has enabled weekly group working with Cala to deliver 57 high-quality energy-efficient affordable homes there. Of course, by the way, high-quality affordable housing helps to eradicate full poverty and homelessness and ensures that everyone has access to green space and essential services, as well as contributing to reduction in emissions, because each property is energy efficient, achieving a minimum EPC rating of B, as well as provision of electrical vehicle charging. Some new builds in other private developments such as Gorebridge do have solar panels, others do not. None to the best of my knowledge have heat pumps. Some have electric charge points for vehicles, some have not. Those are relatively new builds. Some of the planning consents with conditions will be years old, but why now are the planning departments not including mandatory carbon reduction in consents together with clean energy efficiency? If planning law needs amended to make those mandatory, let's examine that. Staying with housing, apart from local authorities, is there a role too for modest companies, banks and lenders? For example, more favourable borrowing terms is the house being purchased meets certain energy-efficient levels and reduced carbon emissions, and it will also help, not just with current value of the property but resale value. Christine Grahame is making very important points. We are seeing some willingness to innovate in the financial services sector to develop green mortgages or a range of products under that umbrella term, but does the member agree that the measures that are announced by the UK Government again will undermine the investment and the willingness of industry to innovate and to put those financial products on the market that will enable people to make those investments? I appreciate that the financial sector is a reserved matter, but I put that out for debate, as I think that we must look at all agents within the system to see if we can join the dots together. Transport is also key, as others have mentioned. I had a tune fro some time ago with a developer because they built houses and they had a simple thing like no bus shelter, so people were standing in the pouring rain to access it. Why is that not part of the development? It is a simple thing about bus shelters for them. There is also the business of council developers liaising with bus companies about providing a service. I think of Ock and Denny in my constituency, with hundreds of houses to be built and the opportunity for more than the current threadbare bus service. No point in having concessionary bus passes if there is not a bus, yet I see many developments as I travel to my constituency, where the presumption on the build, on the estates, is car travel not making it for buses. I recognise developments that are people-friendly with no through-road, no rat-run, but safe roads for bicycling, so let's see more building and cycle walk-paths in developments. In the Borders, and I congratulate all councillors on this, cycle paths run along the tweet from Peoples to Interleethan, linking in with the Edlesson cycle footpath. That takes people away from a dangerous main road, especially at commuting times, and of course we will have people using those if they are safe. It's good for local people, good for tourists and good for the environment. It's not rocket science that somebody else has said that more folk will get on their bikes. Those are small steps, they are incremental, but we do need bigger steps than that. Unfortunately, Scotland and this devolved Parliament, this Government, is caught up in the electoral vagaries of the Tories and Labourers, which is to now panders to the right to compensate for Sir Keir Starmer moving on in the footsteps of Tony Blair into what was previously Tory electoral territory. Until we are independent, then big steps are not ours to take. As the world burned over the summer, our world leaders continued to fiddle. Instead of keeping 1.5 degrees alive, the decisions made across the globe mean that we are still heading for a devastating 2.7 degrees rise in temperatures. Just as we lack climate leadership abroad, we still lack that leadership from Governments here at home. It really was an understatement from the cabinet secretary when she said that the Government doesn't always meet our climate targets. Every single independent report card from the Climate Change Committee to Audit Scotland shows that the Scottish Government's current plans won't deliver net zero by 2045 and won't deliver the arguably even more challenging 75 per cent reduction by 2030. Progress on cutting emissions is largely stalled with the damning verdict of the climate change committee in December. Seven out of 11 of our increasingly at risk legal targets were missed. They concluded that targets, the committee said, are in danger of becoming meaningless. I'm grateful to the member and I take very seriously the challenge that he's bringing. The reason I'm in this job is to contribute to a climate plan that's capable of getting us back, but I hope that Colin Smyth will recognise that the last target, the gap was the smallest it's been since 2011. We've been closing that gap and catching up on where we should be. That's what we need to continue to do but the announcements from last week are going to make our job 10 times harder. Colin Smyth, I welcome to the UK Government's announcement but if the Government do recognise we're not making the progress we should, why does the motion that's been tabled today fail to even acknowledge that? It simply talks about welcoming progress, it doesn't even acknowledge the fact that the Government hasn't met their own climate targets in eight out of the past 12 years. That's not good enough but it doesn't even merit a mention from the Government and their motion. What concerns me most is that the more we miss our targets the less likely any transition will be a genuinely just transition. It's not enough for the cabinet secretary to say in the debate that they have a just transition fund, little of which has actually been allocated. Action to deliver a just transition needs to run through every single action of Government and we didn't see that in areas such as the mishandling of HBMAs and the DRS scheme. If you look at what this year's climate change week asks us to focus on, the areas that have the most impact, you can see that lack of a just transition. Take transport, it's the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for more than a third. This week, Labour Mayor Andy Burnham brought bus services in Manchester under public control, proper regulation of services whose fares have also been cut. What a contrast to Scotland. Under the SNP and now the Greens, we've seen bus fares rocket while services have been dismantled route by route. 1,200 routes axed since the SNP took power in 2007, 160 in the last year alone. Yet nearly four years since the timid transport bill was passed by this Parliament, the Scottish Government still haven't properly implemented the powers that are secured in the bill by giving councils the resources that they need to deliver publicly owned local buses so that we can put passengers not profits first. I support free travel for young people and I support the end to peak rail fares but you can't use a bus pass if there's no bus and you can't pay any rail fare when there are no trains. It isn't a just transition if you tell people to stop using their car but you don't provide the public transport alternative. What about the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases agriculture, responsible for a fifth of emissions? It isn't a just transition if seven years since the EU referendum all farmers and crofters have had is dither and delay from government on future agricultural support when they need detail and direction to properly plan and make the changes to bring emissions down. The third biggest emitter is heating in our buildings. It isn't a just transition if we make people ripple their gas boilers or heating oil tanks and replace them with heat pumps at a big cost if the heat that they produce is flowing out through the walls and the windows of their homes. If we want to bring down energy use and the shameful levels of fuel poverty, we need a proper programme to insulate our homes. We need to learn from effective retrofit schemes across Europe where a one-stop shop approach is used to manage the installation process for the homeowner from access to information and options to getting quotes and engaging contractors. Even where there has been progress in reducing emissions in areas such as energy production and I recognise that progress, the Government has failed to deliver a jobs-led just transition. We all remember Alex Salmond telling us in 2010 that Scotland would be the Saudi Arabia of renewables with 130,000 green jobs by 2020. A decade on, less than a fifth were created. Now the Scottish Government is leasing Scotland's seabeds on the cheap for offshore wind almost entirely to overseas-owned firms, offshore and not just Scotland's wind, but offshore and billions of pounds of profits and many of the jobs that flow from it. When Labour proposed a publicly-owned energy firm headquartered here in Scotland to invest in and generate energy, instead of backing the plan, the cabinet secretary dismissed it as a brass plaque on an office somewhere in Scotland. I have no doubt that the current failure to ensure a transition to net zero is one of the reasons Rishi Sunak is trying to appeal and exploit genuine fears. We should not dismiss those fears, but Rishi Sunak's abandonment of net zero commitments last week wasn't just bad for the environment, it was bad for jobs, bad for household bills and bad for energy security. Real leadership and large-scale investment in delivering the net zero targets would open up the huge growth opportunities for British firms and innovators who are able to create products and services to meet growing global demand. Backtracking on the phasen out of the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles will ensure that British businesses, instead of having opportunities to move forward, will be missing out on those opportunities. The Green Alliance also calculated that the phasen out of the diesel and petrol cars could deliver two thirds of the emission cuts that we need over the coming decade. What a missed opportunity. I am pleased that the next Labour Government will reinstate that 2030 day and crucially across the whole of the UK, because that is a UK-wide market. We badly need new governments to understand that net zero targets are not the barrier to economic growth, they are the very pathway to it. Governments that recognise in that global race for the jobs of the future all roads lead to investing in making our energy cleaner and greener. Frankly, the next general election really cannot come soon enough. Thank you, Mr Smith. I can advise the chamber that the time in hand has pretty much been exhausted now, so we are going to have to encourage members to stick to those speaking time limits. I call the final speaker in the open debate, Ben MacPherson, in around six minutes. First, I apologise to all Presiding Officers, the chamber, more widely and the cabinet secretary for my absence at the beginning of this debate. For all of my life, we have faced the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. In recent years, the seriousness of the global challenge has been even more evident for us all to see. The need for us to save ourselves is not our planet that is at risk. In essence, it is ourselves in the shorter to medium term, in terms of the way time passes. In order to save ourselves, so much action is required. For years, that compelled individual action from myself to many, many people around the world for organisational activism and some corporate leadership. After decades of too much apathy of action from too many Governments in too many places in too many ways, it has been so motivating and uplifting in recent decades to see Governments taking more of the action that is needed. That has absolutely happened here in Scotland. There is hope, and we have helped to provide it through the 2009 act and many of the initiatives and investments that have stemmed from it. We saw action as well to be fair at Westminster level. The David Cameron Government was a step change from the Conservative Party, and we seemed to have a consensus that we needed to step up as a major player on the global stage. Do not get me wrong, with humility and honesty, it is important to recognise that Scotland alone cannot stop climate change. We need others and other places to play their parts too. The UK cannot stop it either, but we can, should and have been leaders in all the different ways possible, and that must continue. We may not meet the challenge as a global community, but people look to the UK to give them that motivation, that inspiration and that innovation to do what we need to do and to retain that hope and to provoke action elsewhere. People look to that because not only are we one of the most advanced economies and biggest economies internationally, but we have also been the fifth biggest historic emitter in the world. We have a responsibility from generations past because we started the burning of fossil fuels. We were the birthplace of the industrial revolution. Scotland can make our contribution, and we have done already, not just in reducing emissions and making huge progress on that here, but also in developing new technologies such as NOVA innovation, the tidal development firm and my constituency. We can collaborate with others like we did with COP here in Glasgow just a few years ago, and we can do what we can to nurture and restore nature and enhance our biodiversity, like in the fourth estuary that the cabinet secretary marked in recent weeks. In time, we need to start taking more carbon out of the atmosphere, and we have a particular advantage here in Scotland with the natural resources that we have. We have huge opportunities, so I pay tribute to everyone who has been part of that, whether that is local communities, individuals, businesses and workers, but Government and law has been key, as have public finance investments and policy direction. They have helped to provide markets with incentives and impetus to push social change and shifts in consciousness, and that political direction, ambition and leadership and the consistency of that on the journey, has been so important to obtaining the momentum that we have had. What is so disappointing out of touch and wrong-headed about the UK Government's announcements last week is that it will likely stall some of that progress to create a wedge issue for electoral purposes. That sort of short-term thinking is everything that we do not need in this challenge, and it also dwells on the negatives when we should be focusing on the opportunities of the action that we need to take. Whenever I receive letters from young people in my constituency, it is always about things to do with climate. They are convinced, so we need to match their expectations, because the local benefits to our wider quality of life of taking action in this climate emergency are so important to emphasise, as well as the need to reduce emissions, because it will bring greater health benefits in terms of less pollution for children and other people walking through our streets. Walking, cycling and wheeling will create greater opportunities for exercise. Eating less meat and fish and dairy will have an impact on a better healthy diet for many people, and we know from evidence produced by Oxford University in the summer that this could have the impact in the UK of taking the equivalent of 8 million cars off the road. Warmer homes will make a significant impact in terms of costs, as will the action that is being taken to make sure that landlords rather meet the standards that are expected in terms of their dwellings. That will help people. I would ask the minister in his summing up if he can touch on the challenges for tenement properties, because there has been misinformation that has been spread around some of those issues. It is a big issue in northern northern Leith, as it has been for other members in this Parliament, and it would be great to have some clarity around those issues. In conclusion, I would say that there are so many opportunities. We often focus on the economic opportunities of net zero, but the social ones and the health benefits cannot be underestimated and emphasised. Just a warning, we missed opportunities in the past. The onshore wind farms that we put up in Scotland and across the UK are developed in Germany and Denmark. The UK had the comparative advantage on that technology and it did not act on it, and they are building them and benefiting from that employment elsewhere. Let us not lose the opportunities, let us meet the challenge and let us have a debate that is based on our shared collective interest in this. If we cannot meet the challenge of climate change, how are we going to deal with the potential challenges that we have around adaption? We have to have courage and we cannot dwell and wait. I think that we can agree that we have had some excellent contributions and an interesting debate this afternoon. I agree that the contribution from Sarah Boyack setting targets is only the start to making change. For many years now, the Scottish Government has missed its own targets and Morris Golden highlighted the 2013 recycling targets, as well as underspending on climate and net zero budgets. With greater collaboration and funding to local authorities, communities could more widely contribute to cutting emissions and energy demand. Sarah Boyack also mentioned the importance of the offshore wind potential, renewable energy and the important supply chain. There is a skilled workforce there in the oil and gas sector ready to transition. Cardin Adams spoke of our moral obligation to future generations, while Jackie Dunbar and others reminded us that we all have to take action individually and collectively. Alex Rowley spoke about the investment that was needed to reach net zero and highlighted the work towards building transition to high standards such as passive house. Matt Ruskell spoke about the honest leadership that was needed, now more than ever, and that the hardest part of reaching net zero is yet to come. I want to talk a little about my constituency of Shetland, which is keen to do all that it can to help tackle the climate emergency. At the centre of the energy rich North Sea, ahead of its time with the district heating scheme over 20 years ago, and more than ready to play its part in a just transition, yet we have extremely high levels of fuel poverty. Earlier this afternoon I stated that we need to be ambitious and act swiftly. As we have heard this afternoon, transport is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Ferry emissions in Shetland raise our carbon footprint greatly compared to mainland-based local authority areas. Council-run inter-island ferries contribute to emissions, and the technology for more sustainable ferries with green power is expanding but procurement and construction will keep the fleet reliant on emitting ferries in the meantime. However, the opportunity of transformational change is the vision of many in Shetland. Short subsea tunnels are the next step in the evolution of inter-island transport. Unston Yell tunnel action groups, as well as other island communities, are pressing for tunnels that would help to reduce ferry emissions. Shetland Islands Council is working hard to secure support and funding for such projects with the Scottish Government and the UK Government, and interest is growing. A reduction in emissions, reversal of depopulation, an issue Kate Forbes highlighted, connection to healthcare and cultural outlets would be of local and national advantage. Shetland punches above its weight in fishing and aquaculture export, and short sea tunnels between islands would help to speed up distribution and cut emissions. That is national infrastructure that we are talking about that would lower the contribution to national emissions. There is another national opportunity here. Tunnel construction could become a new industry for Scotland, helping to cut emissions and travel times in other island and rural areas, not just Shetland. To conclude, councils ensure that power is at a close level to communities and must be adequately funded in order to realise the ambitions of the local people that they serve. The adage, think global, act local, springs to mind. I apologise to the chamber for being late to the start of the debate. Although there have been some points of consensus in today's debate, I find it hard to believe that, overall, it is anything more than an annual box-ticking exercise for the Scottish Government. I do not doubt the cabinet secretary's concern about the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. She has always spoken with passion on the subject. Today's motion rightly calls out the unilateral reversal of net zero policies set out by the UK Government. Where is the acknowledgement of this Government's mistakes, the missed targets, the underspends and the reckless pursuit of private finance initiatives? That really is the crux of the problem with this Government. Not its targets, but its submission to vested interests. What crises of the scale we are facing require is Government-backed, industrial-scale change of the kind that this Government has repeatedly cowered away from. Take the Scottish Government's approach to funding nature restoration. Last week, Parliament heard how the Scottish Government has consistently promoted the use of private finance initiatives based on an uncritical acceptance of the so-called funding gap identified by the Banker-led Green Finance Institute, an organisation whose credibility is now under significant doubt. Rather than hearing an acknowledgement from the Scottish Government that the way in which it accepted those now discredited figures was irresponsible, Parliament instead heard this Government deny, deflect and double down. So it is clear that this is not a Government serious about protecting our nature for generations to come. Rather, this Government's priority is to outsource responsibility to meet our rightly ambitious net zero targets. Nowhere is this clearer than in this Government's response to our energy transition. The Scottish Government regularly pleads powerlessness, but when it comes to areas that could be doing more, it readily shirks its responsibility. Take the offshore training passport as just one example. The passport would provide a route to alignment and recognition of training standards across energy industries to make it easier for workers to do what Governments repeatedly tell them to do, to transition away from oil and gas into renewables. The offshore training passport has the support of workers, their trade unions, the industry, the offshore petroleum industry training organisation, APETO, and supposedly this Government. The Scottish Government is quick to claim credit for the passport with frequent references to the funding it has provided. However, when I asked the Minister in 2022 to provide regular updates in Parliament on the progress of this publicly funded work, I was told that she did not consider it appropriate or necessary given that this is an industry-led process. Now, we are four days away from the promised launch of the already six-month delayed passport and what news. The global wind organisation, GWO, is reportedly still creating barriers to the passport with offshore trade unions urging this Government to intervene. Our energy transition is too important and the need for co-operation is too great to allow barriers to transition to go unchecked. The Scottish Government cannot be content to be silent partners in our transition. Ministers must find their voice and bring all parties back round the table for the sake of offshore workers, for the sake of the economy of the north-east and for the sake of our planet. For too long, we have allowed our precious environment to be degraded for short-term private profit. This is acutely apparent in the way successive Governments have allowed our land to be amassed in ever greater concentration in the hands of so few. Take Trump international golf links in Aberdeenshire. This is a site that has long-faced opposition from local residents concerned about the environmental impact of the development. Yet the Scottish Government's proposals for land reform would do little to address this. My own proposal for land justice would empower people to challenge existing holdings that are not working for our communities. It would make sites like Trump international that are over 500 hectares subject to a public interest test. In contrast, the Scottish Government's proposals for land reform are far too timid. They will only apply to land over 3,000 hectares—almost six times the size of Trump international—and they will not apply to existing holdings like his. The consultation on my proposal closes at midnight tonight, and I would urge all members to highlight it to their constituents whatever their views. Tackling the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss can only be done through a recognition of the failings of the capitalist economic system that brought us here. The short-sighted pursuit of limitless profit led to carbon intensive practices, the proliferation of single-use plastics, the destruction of biodiverse rich habitats and the pollution of our environment. If our transition is truly to be just, we must now see a shift in ideology from this Government away from the pursuit of private finance initiatives and towards community wealth building so that as we restore nature, as we meet our climate targets, it is the people of Scotland, not multinational corporations, who see the benefits. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. It is fair to say that this has been a mixed debate. I was interested to hear John Swinney strike a conciliatory tone during his contribution, and he appealed for consensus. There has been some consensus. We all want to get to net zero. I would like to get to net zero by 2050, and the Prime Minister would like to get to net zero by 2050. That has not really changed, but we have seen this debate has been used by some as an excuse to simply bash Rishi Sunak. It could have been a more positive debate. Douglas Lumsden was right. The SNP has no reason to crow about this. Their own record is appalling. They have failed to achieve 8 out of 12 of its own emission targets to date. I recognise why the Tories might want to criticise the SNP that is their raise on debtor. Does he recognise that it is communities and businesses that have ensured that we have made the progress that we have? They should be commended for what they have done over the past few decades. I was going to come on to Ms Forbes' earlier excellent contribution, and I thought that one of the more positive contributions from the SNP benches was that she was quite right to say that we need to bring communities with us. Spot on, I completely agree with her. Back to those missed targets, the climate change committee said that despite the scale of the challenge in the 2020s, Scotland is still not delivering on key milestones such as energy efficiency in homes and peatland restoration. Further, it noted that the trend of failure will continue without urgent and strong action to deliver emissions reductions. I am grateful for the member taking an intervention. On the point about targets, how he reconciles what he has just said with his own party's wreckage of DRS, the refusal to back low emission zones. What kind of contribution has that made to Scotland's targets? I did not hear most of that, but I thought that the language was not very helpful at all. Audit Scotland has said that the SNP's climate change governance arrangements are missing core elements. It did a report into how well the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change and noted that, quote, we have found some key elements of good governance are missing from the Scottish Government's climate change governance arrangements or are used irregularly and inconsistently. The Scottish Government's heat and building strategy will fail to meet its 2030 climate target. The Scottish Government itself admitted last week to falling short of its own climate change laws by failing to set out how its emissions cutting targets are compatible with infrastructure investment. They have not published an assessment yet showing how those investments will impact targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions. So what of the Prime Minister's recent announcements? To me, they were a dose of realism. We're still committed to hitting net zero by 2050, but Rishi Sunak just wants to give the public a little more time. You know, Presiding Officer, the SNP say they are in lockstep with the EU. They love the EU and everything it does. So why the outcry over bringing our own ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars into line with Europe? What's that all about? You'd have thought they would be happy about that. The move to push back the date when a new boiler has to be replaced by a heat pump where appropriate to 2035 is also just common sense. And speaking of being in line with Europe, in July, the EU passed a law that requires fast recharging stations for cars and vans every 60 kilometres, that's 37 miles in real money, along the EU's main transport corridors by 2025. How about we fall into line with Europe? On that one, cabinet secretary, people will be falling over themselves to buy electric vehicles if we did that. Presiding Officer, there's been some interest in contributions this afternoon. In some cases it's been more heat than light, but not so with Morris Golden, the award-winning green giant who makes a lot of sense on these matters, though I don't agree with him on everything. Mr Golden spelled out the long list of SNP failures, biodiversity, peatland restoration, wooden creation, renewable heat. I could go on and he did. He also reminded us that those missed targets are a symptom of failing to build a circular economy. We used to call that reusing things. There's nothing new in the circular economy, we've just forgotten how to do it. Whether a circular economy bill will make any difference remains to be seen. I have my doubts alongside Mr Golden. Of course, we heard from that strident defender of the North Sea oil and gas sector, Douglas Lumson, who reminded us that we need that sector to be strong, because we don't want to have to rely on imported oil and gas. That's about energy security. He and myself, as he said, visited a couple of power stations recently. We're in Peterhead yesterday, where they're planning to build a power plant that will store its own carbon emissions before sending them off to St Fergus. Peterhead, which can produce enough power for everything north of Dundee, is the only non-nuclear power station north of Leeds. Scotland is pulling its weight in wind power and hydro, but in helping towards the base load, we could be doing a lot more. We've yet to see a plan from the SNP to hit that other target of theirs, cutting car miles by 20 per cent by 2030. That must involve dramatically improving public transport, as Alex Rowley said, and making it cheaper so that people have alternatives to the car. We will keep being promised a road map, but we've yet to see it. Maybe when the minister closes, he could tell us what will be in that road map. I don't think he will, but we'll wait and see. Scotland has added just 169 charges, that's the electric vehicle charges, between October 2022 and August 2023. That's nowhere near enough. We're not getting there. Presiding Officer, I haven't even touched on homes, but that was mentioned by Kate Forbes and Edward Mountain. Improving your home's energy efficiency is a good thing, but it can be runously expensive. The UK actually has a good story to tell when it comes to cutting our carbon emissions, and we should celebrate that. Instead of creating division, the Scottish Government should seize the opportunity presented by the Prime Minister to set more realistic goals that bring people with us. Pointless fights and made-up gripes will not save the planet. Pragmatic politics might. Thank you. I call on Patrick Harvie to wind up the debate, if you might take us to 5 o'clock, Minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'd like to thank many of the people who've spoken in this debate, perhaps slightly less so that last piece of absurdist performance art that we just heard. This has been a debate that has, of course, marked climate week. This year, more than ever, perhaps, it's felt that every week is climate week, with news media full of frequent vivid reminders of the climate breakdown that's already happening, floods, wildfires, land destroyed, species pushed to the brink. John Swinney painted that picture extremely powerfully in his remarks, and Mark Ruskell said that we're reaching a tipping point for the climate emergency. In relation to his reflection on how he feels looking at his children and thinking about their future, I think that anyone who isn't fearful of what young people's future is going to look like simply isn't paying attention. However, climate week feels different this year for another reason, too, because just as we are at the point where the signs of breakdown are at their most stark, when the need for action is having been greater, we find ourselves also at a political pivot point in our recent history. The UN stock take report recently told us very clearly that we need a systemic transformation of every aspect of our society, and we need it fast. However, inevitably, almost every member who has spoken today has responded to the Prime Minister's extraordinary announcements last week, both the content of those announcements and the way that it was announced with no detail attached and no prior discussion or co-operation with the other Governments in these islands. We are now faced with two scenarios, one where leadership prevails, where Governments respond with urgency and give stability for businesses and investment, ensure fairness and support for households and communities to cope with the rapid change that is needed, or another scenario that is characterised by policy reversals and where the next general election is the only horizon in sight. Douglas Lumsden. I thank the minister for taking the intervention. In press today, Fergus Ewing, an SNP member, well, I presume he's still an SNP member, warned that the Government's boiler policies were damaging and utterly unaffordable. Does he not agree with that point of view? No, I don't. And the Prime Minister's speech last week signalled a very clear—I mean Mr Lumsden's laughing away—his own party cheer Mr Ewing to the rafters on most of his announcements, and that's one of the reasons why I take them with a pinch of salt. The Prime Minister's announcement last week signalled a very clear intention to choose that latter scenario in which short-termism is the order of the day. It took some gall for him to stand behind a podium with the slogan, long-term solutions for a brighter future, while reading a speech that amounted to a betrayal of both current and future generations. I'll give way to Mr Swinney. John Swinney. I'm grateful to the minister for giving way. Does the minister not accept that the necessity in all of this activity, whatever the intervention is, whether it's the boiler system that Mr Lumsden was rather rudely interrupting or laughing at the minister about after his intervention, or any of these other issues, requires policy certainty? And isn't the lesson of the Prime Minister's actions last week has been to undermine the entire United Kingdom's efforts by crashing political certainty on these issues? It certainly does that. Mr Swinney makes that point well. The Prime Minister's announcements, if it's created any unity at all, is created unity between the car industry and Greenpeace about the lack of certainty and the lack of clarity that these announcements create. He spoke about being honest with the public, and he proceeded then to knock down straw men in his hunger to generate a climate culture war. Listening to that speech, I lost count of the number of entirely non-existent policies he reeled off before saying, I've scrapped it. What he scrapped was any shred of credibility that he had on climate, not only betraying our future, not only breaking his own manifesto pledges, but debasing the office that he holds. There are some on the right who are sincere in their belief that free market economics can solve this crisis, even though it's been the cause. I profoundly disagree with them, but they do at least acknowledge those people, the reality of the climate emergency. They want to respond, even if I think they're misguided, in how. The Prime Minister could have listened to the likes of Alex Sharma, for example, a Conservative colleague, who chaired COP26, who said that he was concerned about the fracturing of UK political consensus on climate action. He said that chopping and changing policies creates uncertainty for businesses and the public. Ultimately, that makes it more difficult to attract investment and pushes up costs for consumers. Instead of working with that kind of agenda, Rishi Sunak finds that his cheerleaders are the likes of Liz Truss and Jacob Rhys Mogg, as Christine Grahame reminded, as the notorious climate denier Donald Trump has weighed in to support the Prime Minister as well. That agenda, I'm afraid, is no surprise from a Government whose political motivation is made explicit when they denounce anyone seeking credible climate policy as eco-zellets or extremists, language that was repeated by the Conservatives in the chamber today, and seek ever more draconian laws to arrest campaigners. I'm very grateful for the Minister for Giving Way. Does he not accept, though, that just coming into this chamber and giving us these fantastical ambitions of the Scottish Government require the Scottish Government to come into this chamber also with a route map, and in a million homes you're going to retrofit, every part of the community says you cannot achieve that? Isn't it time that the Scottish Government were honest with a climate change? The member knows very well that we will be completing work on the new climate plan and we will be consulting on a heat in building strategy. When that comes out, he will see that it's a hell of a lot more ambitious than the level of backtracking that we're seeing from the UK Government. It seems very clear that the Conservative benches here in Holyrood are firmly behind the Prime Minister in watering down and delaying action. Those are the same people who, exactly a year ago, were urging Scotland to copy Liz Truss's economic policies in which she crashed the economy, and they are now urging Scotland to follow Rishi Sunach's policies, which will do the same to our global life support system. With very few exceptions, there are simply no lessons learned, no reflection and no backbone from the Conservatives. I appreciate the Minister for Giving Way because he has spent seven years attacking the easy target. Could I just ask him in terms of his homes and retrofitting what lessons he learned from last year's failure of spending £133 billion and what difference it will make, particularly to people who live in flats and tenements, where decarbonisation is more of a challenge but hugely important? I know that Sarah Boyack is aware because we've discussed it before that demand-led grant and loan schemes are vulnerable to low take-up in the likes of the last few extraordinary years that we've all been living with. That's one of the reasons why we've committed to consult on a supplier-led model, which we think may be less vulnerable to those kind of external shocks. It won't come as any surprise to anyone in the chamber that I disagree with the Conservatives and their Prime Minister, but it's also clear that most of the public doesn't trust them on this issue either. It's also clear that this is not just about policy differences, it's also about the role of this Parliament. What the UK chooses to do has a very significant impact on what we are able to do in Scotland. It couldn't be otherwise with the limits of the devolution settlement, which is being undermined year on year by the UK Government. When the climate targets were set, of course we didn't agree with the UK Government on details of policy delivery. There were reasonable disagreements of that nature, but there was at least some reason to think that the UK would have a hope of government that was vaguely rational and which was willing to communicate and co-operate despite our differences. That need for co-operation was set out very clearly by the UK Climate Change Committee recently, telling all the Governments of the UK that we had to try harder to work together. We agree, but within days comes this wrecking ball through climate policy without a word of communication, either with us or with the Welsh Government. Of course they've got form for this, Presiding Officer. This is the same UK Government, which, a few months ago, very deliberately sabotaged the deposit return scheme that this Parliament voted for. It did so by insisting that our scheme had to align with their scheme, a scheme that doesn't exist, a scheme that increasingly clearly will never exist under this UK Government, as cynical an act of political vandalism as I have seen. Not just to our green ambitions, but to this Parliament's ability to legislate as well. The direct harm done by this change of policy will be bad enough, but there is also a huge missed opportunity in the positive steps that could have been taken instead. Let's take the heat in buildings agenda. There are important things that we can do with the powers that we have. That's why we will have a new build heat standard in place from next April, well ahead of the rest of the UK, which ensures that new buildings will have a climate-friendly heating system from the outset. We want all homes to reach good levels of energy efficiency, and we know that private tenants need that improvement urgently. Ben Macpherson is right that there are different challenges in relation to our historic tenement stock, in which I declare a personal interest as a resident of one, and the heat in buildings consultation will have more to say on that. That's why we are making good progress towards improving energy standards in new homes, towards a passive house equivalent with the support of Alex Rowley, who I thought spoke very well, challenging us, but doing so constructively, not opportunistically. We have the most generous grants and loans for heating and energy efficiency works in the UK, including rural uplifts, which Mr Lumsden seemed unaware of when he spoke about them. When we have the levers here in Scotland, we match ambition with action, but we don't have control over the capacity of the grid to match the increasing electrification of heat and transport. That's controlled at UK level. We don't control the difference in unit price of gas and electricity, which the UK has repeatedly promised to put right and failed to deliver. That's perhaps the biggest step that could make the heat transition more affordable for people, and we go some way to addressing the concerns about a just transition that was raised by Kate Forbes. We don't have levers over the regulation of products and installers, which is being used as one of the main routes to heat transition in other European countries. It's needed to give that clear signal to industry to guide their investment. Mr Whittle and various other Conservatives said that we need to create markets in great certainty. Will the UK Government's announcements undermine and cloud that clarity and certainty that this Government is trying to provide? I thank the minister for giving way, and there is most definitely an undermining of business confidence, but there is also an undermining of the confidence of people. I was at Dayton's Sustainable Homes in Aberdeen on Friday, and a guy there pontificating about the big change that he made with a heat pump, which has made a real difference and made real savings. As well as that confidence being ripped out of business, what Mr Sunak has done is also done the same with people. Does the minister agree? Completely. The language and the anti-environment rhetoric that the UK Government uses is undermining the belief that people have that we can move forward in this together. We also don't control large-scale installation programmes such as Eco4 and Warm Homes' Discount, which are now rebadged as the Great British Insulation Scheme. We repeated requests for well over a year for the UK Government to join them more effectively with our schemes. Those requests weren't even turned down, they were simply ignored. All of Parliament should be supporting the ambition that we are bringing to this agenda, not just on the heat and building side, but on developing renewables, on record investment in active travel, on leading the fight back for nature with a nature restoration fund, a five-year delivery plan and the natural environment bill. As Christine Graham told us, it's time to hit the accelerator, not the brakes. Mr Sunak spoke about being brave in the decisions that we make and said that people wonder why, in the face of the facts as they have them, choices are made as they are. I'm afraid, Presiding Officer, that I don't wonder why he has done this. He has done this to create a new partisan dividing line when what our politics needs is united determination. He's done this because he sees political opportunity from making climate a new front in his culture war. In closing, the climate week might be an annual event, but this year, more than ever before, we need to recapture the shared sense of urgency that shaped the First Climate Change Act and led all political parties to work to strengthen it. Across the political spectrum, there are those who know that we need to act with urgency and there are others who would prefer to downgrade, delay and dilute climate action. We need to have the courage of our convictions and make sure that the next climate plan not only delivers but recreates that sense of unity. I move the motion in the Government's name. Thank you. That concludes the debate on climate emergency, ambition and action. It's now time to move on to the next item of business, which is consideration of business motion 10621, in the name of George Adam, on behalf of the parliamentary bureau on a change to the business programme. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press their request to speak button. I call on George Adam to move the motion. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and moved. Thank you, Minister. No member has asked to speak against the motion. Therefore, the question is that motion 10621 be agreed. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed. There are four questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first is the amendment 10597.1 in the name of Douglas Lumsden, which seeks to amend motion 10597 in the name of Mary McCallan on climate emergency, ambition and action. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. Therefore, we will move to vote. There will be a short suspension until our members to access digital voting.