Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Official Report 948KB pdf

Committee Announcement (Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee)

The next item of business is an announcement by the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee on the people’s panel on Scottish Government effectiveness in consulting and engaging the public on its net zero targets. I call Edward Mountain, the convener of the committee, to make the announcement.

There seems to have been quite a lot of heat in the chamber this afternoon. Let us see whether I can add some light.

Presiding Officer, I am pleased to notify you and all other members of a new people’s panel that will start its work this weekend. The panel comprises 25 individuals who have been randomly selected, but who reflect the demographic balance of Scottish society. Over two intensive weekends, they will reflect on this question: how effective has the Scottish Government been in engaging the public on climate change and Scotland’s climate change targets?

The work of the panel advances no fewer than three strategic goals of the Scottish Parliament. The first is to make more use of tools of deliberative democracy such as people’s panels, as was recommended by the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee in its report “Embedding Public Participation in the Work of the Parliament”. The Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee is pleased to be a pioneer in that area.

Secondly, the panel promotes post-legislative scrutiny—in this case, of the provisions in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, which lie behind the question that the panel is considering. We all agree that we need to do more to hold to the light laws that the Parliament has made to see how well they are working. The panel’s work will do exactly that.

Thirdly, there is the Conveners Group agreement that tracking Scottish Government progress against net zero targets is a collective priority for committees in this session of Parliament. The panel’s work will contribute directly to that, and I expect that we will want to pay careful attention to what it tells us when the committee scrutinises the Scottish Government’s next climate change plan, sometime later this year.

This is new territory for us all, and one thing that I have learned is that a considerable amount of time is needed to prepare the ground for the panel before it even begins work. My thanks go to parliamentary staff for their endeavours so far—in particular, the participation and communities team. I also thank the distinguished members of the panel expert group, who are drawn from academia, business and the third sector and who have kindly given up their time to help us to ensure that the panellists get a broad and balanced selection of views, data and information on their deliberative journey.

I look forward to welcoming all the panellists in person to the Parliament this Friday. The committee really looks forward to reporting back to Parliament later in the year on the work and on what we have learned.