Seòmar agus comataidhean

There is a fundamental issue that I cannot escape, which is that I cannot bind future Administrations. The climate change plan will be completed, as you all know, before the end of this parliamentary session. Subject to fundamental change, it will contain a 2045 target for decarbonisation and the policy levers that we think are required to achieve that. The fact that the UK Government is changing electricity cost arrangements will not change. What I can say is that anyone who picks up this work will appreciate that every lever has to be pulled, and the cost of electricity is a very significant lever.

I will come to Jess Niven on housing to 2040. However, I should have been clear that it is not just about my overseeing those things. Sustainability and good places are built into the housing to 2040 vision, of which the housing emergency action plan is a part. I suppose that all of it forms part of the public policy landscape. The registered social landlords with whom I meet about the affordable homes targets are very conscious that they will have to look across the board at what the Government asks them to do—whether in house building, the environment or emissions reduction—and they know that they have to comply with the suite of asks. Jess may want to add something.

I will take your question in two parts. If I remember correctly, the local heat and energy efficiency strategies are all complete and we have funding for their development and delivery. I will let one of my colleagues confirm the arrangements for that shortly. There is no doubt that local authorities are critical partners. The funding for the development and delivery of the strategies is committed over a number of years but, again, my officials can confirm that.

On the skills side of things, I have wrestled with and discussed with stakeholders the question of how much of the preparatory work has to be done in the supply chain, skills development or even public readiness before we legislate, and how much legislation will drive that. It is a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario, and we need to get the balance right.

A lot of work is being done on skills by the Government and industry. For example, Scottish Gas has the start at home scheme where it allows teams to practise the heat pump installation by doing it in their own homes. That is an example of a major employer such as Scottish Gas leading the way. For our part, our warmer homes Scotland scheme has a contractual requirement for training and I believe that that is producing quite a number of modern apprentices.

That is all happening now, but the setting of the 2045 target as a backstop for decarbonisation will, ultimately, drive what we do. It says, “This is the direction of travel and the way that we are going. Some preparatory work has been done, but it now needs to be stepped up.”

I will bring in Gareth Fenney, who can correct any of the numbers that I have used and give a bit more detail on apprentices.

First, that reflects what my constituents say to me. I visited a constituent in Carstairs village in Clydesdale who had installed a heat pump and various bits and pieces through our warmer homes Scotland scheme. He told me that his motivation was that he wanted a warm home and wanted to do the right thing for the environment and his grandkids. On the same day, I could speak to a constituent who would tell me, “This is so far off my priority list. I would love it; I would love to have lower bills and to have a wind and waterproof home, but I don’t know how to navigate the system.”

Trust is really important. Of course, we know that certain past experiences have worn away people’s trust. That is why the Home Energy Scotland piece is important, and why we are trying to clarify that Home Energy Scotland is the single window in Scotland to go to for support and for trusted advice on what people might be entitled to and how to move through the system. Sometimes, when I speak to stakeholders, they say that there is too much hand holding and that, in order to achieve the kind of scale that we need, we will have to change the system to become a little more hands off. However, I am wary of that; many of the people whom our schemes support are in fuel poverty, and we are talking about fundamental changes to their home. As soon as the work starts, quite a lot of my constituents panic a little bit, and think, “Now the work’s begun, have I signed up to the right thing here?” and so on. Therefore, I think that that support mechanism is important, and I would be very open to looking at how local authorities could play a role in that. I guess that they do play a role just now, but you are talking about a more fundamental, strategic delivery partner role.

We are trying to offer that sort of thing on an on-going basis, using the best information that we have at the time. What we have in the draft climate change plan is our best projection of the policies and proposals that we think can help meet our trajectory. The strategy and delivery plan that we will be producing at the end of this year will be another articulation of our attempt to set out in a really clear way the steps, the funding and what needs to come together in order to make this work. We will just have to keep doing that on an on-going basis, such is the complexity of this work. Moreover—and this brings me back to your previous point—we will always be drawing on all our delivery partners, because the Government cannot do this ourselves; it just would not work if we tried to.

My colleagues have just reminded me of something that I neglected to mention: I am responsible for the policy in this chapter of the plan, but Ms Martin oversees the whole of it, and she chairs a climate oversight group jointly with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. That group is asking itself, “Here’s the challenge in front of us, and here’s what we know Government can offer. What can local authorities do, and how do we work with industry and the public, too?”

Just for clarity, we will try to provide that step-by-step policy, funding and delivery with as much information as we have at any time as we move forward.

That is a good point. It would be fair to say that we do not see there being a system in the future in which everybody is referred through the process. Increasingly, people will take it upon themselves to organise the work. It will not happen as much that they will have to come through the scheme in order to engage with us; people will be able to have the work done outwith schemes. There will be a mixture.

Yes. My point is that, as we scale up, more people will not access it through the scheme but will do it off their own bat.

It is worth noting how exciting the prospect of industry building is when it comes to the opportunity that we have with heat networks. It is a critical part of solving the puzzle of decarbonisation, but it is also a huge economic opportunity, and we are trying to make sure that we do everything that we can to support it.

That is exactly our intention with the strategy and delivery plan.

We are. You mentioned the session that you had with COSLA and others, and I read the Official Report of that in preparation for today. For us, it represents an important part of understanding what people think about the draft plan and how it might need to change. We are taking all of that on board.

Henry Hardy spoke earlier about the processes that the climate change plan team and Gillian Martin will go through to update the plan, and he can say more about that.