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That is correct on both fronts. It is correct that, under the current regime, a draft would be due by November this year. It is also correct that I have to introduce legislation that will amend that slightly. I cannot confirm exactly when the new climate change plan will be produced against the new targets, but it is my expectation that there will be as minimal a gap as possible, because I want to get a new plan published against the new targets as soon as possible.

That is a really good question. It is a question that I have been asking and trying to ensure that the Government has a plan for. It will depend largely on when we can get advice from the CCC on an appropriate trajectory, and early indications are that that might come in the early part of next year. Last week, I met the interim chair and chief executive officer of the CCC to discuss that. Its carbon budgeting work for the whole of the UK is likely to be completed in the early part of next year, and the devolved assessments are likely to follow soon thereafter. That might be the point at which we are able to have clarity on the targets, and I would want a plan to be produced very quickly thereafter.

Of course, and I appreciate that, convener. I will try to take it back to the generality, which is that my reason for raising the issue of fuel duty is not to comment on its current rates or the way in which it is currently organised. Instead, I point out that it should be reformed to have a climate focus and that, so long as it is in its current form, it is charging and overseeing something that I think needs to be reformed. I will not comment on the current rates and so on.

Unfortunately, I cannot say, but I am sure that the transport secretary will be able to.

I understand your uncertainty, convener. I equally have uncertainty. I am not in receipt of the advice. The First Minister has sought advice for ministers from the permanent secretary, but we do not have that yet, which makes it a little more difficult. I am giving answers that are as full as I can make them. For example, in response to Mr Lumsden’s question on electric vehicle charging points, I confirmed a point about the policy—that the points are additional—but I could not confirm the timeline. Even if I could, however, I am not the transport secretary. The detail of policies in packages that are outside my portfolio will be a matter for the relevant cabinet secretary.

The ending of the Bute house agreement clearly means that we no longer have Green ministers. However, much of what we are referring to in respect of decarbonisation of buildings and the natural environment relates to Scottish National Party priorities that we were taking forward in advance of joining with colleagues in the Greens and will continue to take forward. We will look to work with colleagues from across the chamber in pursuit of those priorities.

The existence of a right to a healthy environment that is properly accessible and judiciable is a very important part of a human rights bill in Scotland. I cannot confirm the timetable for the human rights bill, not because of the purdah question but because it is the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice who is leading on that bill. However, I can confirm to the committee that I and my officials in environment have been closely engaged with the development of the bill to date, including the question of a right to a healthy environment.

Yes, that is a very simple question, convener.

I will take the question globally and then address it from a Scottish perspective. As you said, there is scepticism about whether the 1.5°C target can be met. Of course, 2023 was the hottest year on record, and we surpassed 1.5°C for, I think, the whole year. However, that rise was not sustained and therefore the Paris agreement was not breached, but it is deeply concerning and unacceptable.

The global stocktake at COP28 and the work that came from that considered the commitments that have been made in terms of fossil fuel and so on and determined that the target of 1.5°C could be kept alive globally if the actions of states were in line with that.

In respect of Scotland’s position—noting, of course, that Scotland cannot solve the climate crisis, but that the climate crisis cannot be solved without countries such as Scotland doing their bit—my understanding is that retaining 2045 in our legislation would keep us aligned to 1.5°C. I will ask questions of, and seek advice from, the Climate Change Committee when it comes to setting those carbon budgets.

I think that 2045 remains the correct aim, and the CCC has recently confirmed its view that 2045 remains the correct net zero target for Scotland.

I am glad to take the opportunity in closing today to restate the value that I put on following science, so that what we do is feasible as well as ambitious.

I want to come on to lessons learned, because I see the forthcoming bill as being the lessons that we as a Parliament have learned since we, rightly, set very ambitious targets a number of years ago.

It is worth first exploring a little more what Mr Ruskell rightly says about the CCC’s advice in the aftermath of the passage of the legislation. That goes to the core of the CCC’s function as a statutory adviser. It has to advise on the legislation as it is set. Therefore, it was not going to advise the Government and the Parliament to change the legislation. Elected politicians had made that decision, and its role was to give advice on how to fulfil it.

In that letter of December 2020 to Roseanna Cunningham, the CCC set out some scenarios, as Mark Ruskell says, that “could potentially reduce emissions” and that

“the Scottish Government may wish to consider”.

Among those were, as Mark Ruskell says, an early start to engineered greenhouse gas removals. That relates to what we call BECCS, which is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or direct air capture and storage. The CCC considered at the time that those would come on stream around the early 2030s. Its advice was that their coming on stream earlier could assist us in reaching our newly set targets. However, carbon capture and storage infrastructure coming on stream was almost entirely in the gift of the UK Government. The fact is that we have not seen that it could be done earlier, as the CCC advised; indeed, we have seen a slip in the deployment of carbon capture and storage. I point out that one of the first interventions was not something that the Scottish Government could directly control.

The CCC’s second recommendation was early decarbonisation of the Grangemouth cluster, which, again, clearly relied on the deployment of carbon capture and storage as a key means of industrial decarbonisation. We all know that, for a variety of reasons that we do not need to get into right now, CCS has not been deployed across the UK at the speed at which we thought it might, never mind on an accelerated timetable.

There are certainly lessons that I wish us to learn, the most important of which must be to follow the independent advice of bodies such as the Climate Change Committee when it comes to setting our targets. I ask colleagues across the Parliament to work with me in doing so when we come to look at the new bill. I will seek advice from the Climate Change Committee on the appropriate levels of the carbon budget. I intend to follow that advice and I ask the Parliament to do so, as well. We also need to set a framework that is capable of recognising that contextual issues will arise from time to time, not least pandemics and wars on the continent, which, to an extent, disrupt our ability to make transformational change.

I reflect on the fact that we are a devolved nation. We seek to implement transformation right across our economy and our society, but not all the tools that we need to do so are in our gift. I point back, for example, to the deployment of CCS.