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That issue has crossed my mind quite a lot, as somebody who lives rurally and likes to travel into Edinburgh and Glasgow on a regular basis. When we were discussing awareness raising, I remember having a conversation about the fact that it would be a real miss to target awareness raising only within the cities, because folks who are used to driving into cities from rural areas also need to be thought about.

In general, we are talking about one square mile in each of the cities, so I suspect that there will be opportunities in all of them—I do not just suspect; we know that this is the case—to take public transport all the way in or to drive a portion of the way and then take public transport so that people do not have to drive into the LEZ itself. Prime-time television slots are being used to do some significant awareness raising of that. Neither Vincent McInally nor I watch the programmes that we are advertising around, but that is happening in order to get people prepared.

On your initial point about the funding that can be raised, local authorities might have different views on this and might have different experiences of how the scheme operates, depending on how many people intentionally or otherwise breach an LEZ, but the money from penalties can only be put towards the scheme’s operational costs and its objectives—in other words, supporting air quality improvements and climate change emission reduction activities. That is designed into the system.

That is a good point because we have had a lot of discussion about transport emissions and the impact of those, but CAFS2 was intended to recognise that the impact on air quality goes beyond transport and that we need to look at agricultural activity, too. We have committed to working with the agriculture industry to develop a voluntary code of good practice for improving air quality in Scotland. We are also taking specific action to reduce ammonia emissions from the agriculture sector. That work will be developed as part of the prevention of environmental pollution from agricultural activity code.

We are working closely with the rural affairs secretary on all those things. Another example of that joint working is the fact that the agricultural transformation fund was included in the agri-environment climate scheme round. The rural affairs secretary and I—and my predecessor—worked closely on that. I think that the capital budget for that fund in 2023 is £5 million, which is being used to extend support for the slurry stores across Scotland. As I said, that is built into AECS, so it is integrated across portfolios.

I can talk a little about the response to the sixth recommendation from ESS and the specific and measurable timescales that it asked for. As it stood, CAFS assigned to each of the plans either short, medium or long-term completion status, which meant 2022, the end of 2024 and the end of 2026 respectively. We will add further detail to all those broad categories to allow progress to be monitored more closely, and we will ensure that all non-completed actions have been given a date by which they will be achieved. I should say that we will report on progress annually.

The last progress report was due in 2022 and we will be publishing another in June 2023. As part of the structure of CAFS, I chair the ministerial board, under which there sits the delivery board, under which there sit five implementation boards. Therefore, I will be personally involved in the monitoring of the short, medium and long-term objectives.

I hope that that answers the question, but I am not sure.

We are always striving for the highest possible integration that we can manage across these issues, because they are so interlinked. You mentioned transport. I think that Vincent McInally will probably have something to say on this, but as I said previously, getting the LEZs in place has—so far—been the principal achievement of CAFS2. Equally, they are one of the best examples of integration and collaboration between the Scottish Government, Transport Scotland and our local authority partners. Alongside NPF4, I would highlight the development of LEZs. Right from the very beginning, we have all been working very closely together, including with local authorities.

We certainly do. Telling the committee that we are considering very closely what the revised WHO guidelines would mean for Scotland is as far as I could go today. We are doing that via CAFS and as part of wider policy development. As I think I said earlier, we have shown ourselves to be willing and able to lead the way when it comes to WHO recommendations, and work is now on-going to consider the development of those.

This is up to local authorities, and we do not want to fetter their discretion when it comes to deciding how to operate. Instead, what we do is provide guidance on the backdrop of the Environment Act 1995 and supplement that with funding. In response to ESS’s recommendations, we have agreed to update or clarify the guidance in a number of ways, and it is all to do with how local authorities produce their own air quality action plans and, I suppose, operate within the system itself. In short, we are providing support through funding and guidance, especially the most recently updated guidance in response to ESS.

Please be assured that all that you have mentioned—the speed at which things happen and the speed at which things change—was taken into account when we considered ESS’s recommendations. However, we reached the same conclusion that we reached when considering the best monitoring period for CAFS2, which was that five years was an appropriate period to give us the opportunity to implement the changes, to see their implications and to monitor them.

I do not know whether Andrew Taylor can add anything helpful to that. That is how we made the assessment.

In response to your specific question about the triggering of a review, I would point out that, as a result of the updates to the guidance that we have made following ESS’s recommendations, a significant change of circumstances in an air quality management area will trigger an automatic review of the air quality action plan to ensure that it remains able to achieve compliance in

“as short a time as possible”,

per the recommendations of ESS.

Absolutely. I am really enthusiastic about the low-emission zones. I mentioned that I oversee the ministerial working board for CAFS2. There is no doubt that, in the past six months, our focus has been on responding to ESS, but alongside that, one of the more significant developments has been working with local authorities to have the LEZs designed and implemented. I am absolutely thrilled about that.

To go back to your question about continual improvement, I see the way in which we have designed LEZs as being an example of that. Unlike in some clean air zones down south, we have designed the LEZs in such a way that it is not an option to pay to enter. We have not treated the LEZs as a revenue-raising opportunity. We have designed them in such a way that they will robustly disincentivise driving into the areas in question. There will be a penalty, which will accumulate every time the individual comes in. That is an example of how we have designed the LEZs to be stretching and ambitious, and to bring about constant improvement.

I think that you mentioned local exemptions. We have some national exemptions that are built in, including for blue badge holders. We have a figure for how many people have applied for such an exemption so far. Local authorities have the discretion to make local exemptions to respond to their own requirements, which I think is the right way to do it.

With regard to buses, a huge amount of work has already been done to prepare for LEZs, especially, as you can imagine, in Glasgow. The bus emission abatement retrofit fund has already awarded £21 million of grants to enable more than 1,200 buses and coaches to reduce their emissions by retrofitting the Euro 6 exhaust system. We can already see how, through the funding that we have supported and the framework for LEZs, the preparation for the policy has already driven improvements, which the implementation of it will continue to drive.

I agree with that point. Work is being done as part of the plan that I mentioned to look at how we can make it clear that environmental health is a career that a whole spectrum of people should consider entering.