Chamber and committees

What, for you, are the priorities in the programme for government, particularly with regard to land use?

I also have a small, though meaningful, supplementary to that question. There is an increasing tendency for people in urban areas to pave over their gardens, and I would be interested in getting from you a sense of what short-term or longer-term impact that sort of very local land use issue will have.

However, the big-picture question is about the land use priorities in the programme for government. Perhaps I can take the witnesses in the same order as before.

Which will be 31 January 2023.

The policy is a very strong one for young people, the climate emergency and the sustainability of buses, but the devil will be in the detail of the reimbursement rate. Liam Kerr and Jackie Dunbar raised that issue. Keeping close alignment with local authorities will be key to the policy’s success.

Collette Stevenson raised a very important point in relation to bus contracts. Some young people can get free bus transport because of the school transport legislation, but some do not. In many families, people do not live together. Sometimes a person who lives with one parent does not have access to free transport. Obviously, that has implications for the policy.

We welcome the broad thrust of the policy, but I encourage consideration of the sustainability of bus companies. What the policy means for individuals and how they live their lives will be an important part of the promotion of the policy and of the detail in working with local authorities on their transport contracts and with their education departments.

I encourage the minister to consider those things as the policy is—I hope—successfully rolled out.

Thank you.

When the cabinet secretary appeared before the committee, he said that we are facing a twin crisis: a climate crisis and a crisis in nature and biodiversity loss, which is just as important as climate change.

Nick Halfhide, what does NatureScot think the Government should do more of to ensure that biodiversity loss is not overshadowed by the climate crisis? What are SEPA and Zero Waste Scotland doing to ensure that those twin crises are treated with equal importance?

Thank you.

I am conscious of the time, but perhaps we have time to hear Jocelyn Richard talk about the assembly’s recommendations about empowering communities and, in particular, the funding and resources that are needed to empower people to take action.

We might want to come back to land use and flooding at some point. Iain Gulland, is there anything that you want to add on the programme for government’s priorities or on land use?

The policy will save young people cash and support behavioural change in order to tackle climate change and might provide sustainability for bus companies that otherwise might not have it. I know that, at the start of the pandemic, the Government moved rapidly to keep the companies afloat, but the issue of the finances involved needs a bit more detail. Given that the reimbursement rate will be a symptom of any success that we have in the first two policy elements that I highlighted, when are you expecting to review the scheme and assess its delivery against targets, and when will the committee get any report in that respect?

The minister said that the provision of bus services is a separate and distinct issue, but clearly there is an interrelationship between success in getting young people to use bus services and the availability of services. In a constituency such as mine, it is easy to travel by bus east to west but difficult to do so north to south. I go back to the point that Monica Lennon made about the sustainability of services and the fact that many people want to travel in the early evening. Is there an opportunity during the year—not waiting for the year to be over—to get in better alignment with local government and its provisions? The sweet spot is getting more young people on buses while also getting sustainability and improved services in rural and semi-rural areas, in the evening in particular.

Welcome to your Parliament and your parliamentary committee.

The Scotland’s Climate Assembly report was very clear and very direct, and it set out clear actions that are expected to be delivered. The Parliament debated it with cross-party support, as was indicated previously. You are in a very powerful position.

Will you explain the journey that people were on as part of the assembly? Some people will have come in at the start with particular views, but there was an evidence base, and there was a great deal of consideration and understanding—and then your ranking. Will you give us an indication of what issues you think shifted most during the course of the assembly’s work, so that we can get an idea of what we perhaps need to challenge most regarding people’s understanding and how we can achieve the behavioural change that the convener talked about?