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Fairness has to be at the heart of all of this. I know that we are asking quite a lot of people, but I hope that, by giving a clear explanation of why this is required because of the climate situation and by making it clear that it will benefit people by giving them warmer homes and lower bills, we will be able to make the case. That applies to the private rented sector, too.

When I came back from maternity leave, I felt that a suite of commitments had been made across the board in the heat in buildings space. As I think that I have explained to the committee before, I wanted to take a moment to ensure that they were sequenced properly, with fairness as a key part. The regulatory review group, overseen by Professor Russel Griggs, offered me a bit of insight in that respect.

It is all about sequencing, fairness and practicality. When we ask the private rented sector to abide by a minimum energy efficiency standard, I want to ensure that it will benefit tenants and be workable for landlords. That will require reasonable lead-in times, reasonable support and early engagement.

That is a fair question. The committee will know that the Government has wrestled with that issue and that previous iterations of our proposed bill contained trigger points at which people would be required to switch.

My judgment—it is simply a judgment, informed by advice from my officials—is that that would not be fair. It could catch people at points of difficulty and potentially exacerbate fuel poverty. Therefore, rather than prescribe trigger points, we should set the long-stop date and fill that period with the right support, industry building and regulatory elements, such as the PRS MEES, to encourage behaviour. I have to say again that the greatest encouragement of all will arise when electricity is cheaper.

10:15

I will come to Gareth Fenney, because he is the expert on our schemes.

In essence, our warmer homes Scotland scheme and our area-based schemes are already targeted at those who are at risk of fuel poverty or who are experiencing it. To drive uptake of our schemes, we recently did some marketing that was directed at those who might be in or at risk of fuel poverty.

For my part, I have to speak again to managing to rebalance the costs. A third of the population is in fuel poverty, and unit costs for electricity are five times more expensive.

I am sorry if Gareth Fenney said this while I was flicking through my notes, but so far during the current financial year, the average saving on a fuel bill because of warmer homes Scotland has been £350 per year.

Henry Hardy will respond to the question on updating the climate change plan.

Consumer engagement is absolutely critical. I come back to the point about the level of need in the country and the fact that 33 per cent of people are in fuel poverty. I am conscious that, when people are trying to heat their homes or make ends meet, they do not have the capacity to navigate something that is complicated and feels risky and which they do not trust.

I think that I mentioned to Willie Coffey that we are trying to respond to the consumer research that we have done on the issue, to make Home Energy Scotland the trusted number 1 door through which you walk if you want to engage in the question of energy efficiency and clean heat, and to make the process as easy as possible.

I also come back to the marketing and investment that we have done, which is about communicating in a really public-friendly way about the opportunities that are ahead. I think that we started that work towards the end of last year.

The greatest driver of the public’s confidence will come when we can all say, “This will make your home warmer and bring your bills down.” Until we have the warm homes plan and the certainty on what Mr Griffin’s colleagues will do, we cannot quite say that, but I have confidence that we will get there.

I will come to Henry Hardy to say something about the plan update.

We definitely want to improve that pipeline, and I have said several times that I want Home Energy Scotland to be the repository for that advice. You are right that it will be required more as we scale up; equally, there is nothing more effective than seeing your neighbours go through the process. There is a floodgates argument that, when more homes in a street have had the work done and more neighbours are talking to each other about their personal experience, that is more of a positive encouragement than anything that politicians can do. Of course we will all support constituents in our own areas.

The budget announcement is happening later today. I will resist pre-empting the content of that in relation to support for the likes of Home Energy Scotland.

Absolutely—that is a fair point. As a minister, I receive correspondence about issues across my portfolio and a substantial part of it is from MSPs who come to me on behalf of their constituents who have had experiences such as those that you mentioned or who have had some difficulty.

From my perspective, albeit this is only anecdotal, the correspondence that I receive from MSPs now leans more towards complex cases where there has been difficulty, as opposed to run-of-the-mill cases where there has been difficulty. That is positive, but I have no doubt that there is still work to do.

Gareth Fenney knows a great deal more about the operational aspects of the scheme. Do you want to give any views on that, Gareth?

10:30

Among a couple of key issues, costs are paramount in all those considerations, whether for the individual, the public purse or industry—it will be a combination of those that will meet the costs of all this.

It is important to say when we are discussing costs that we are talking about a 15-year trajectory, which makes it inherently difficult to be as accurate as we might like to be. That is not only because technological advances will undoubtedly happen in that period—who knows what technology will emerge, and the cost of certain products will come down as they become more readily manufacturable—but because changes in UK Government policy will affect the cost of running clean heating systems. I put that on the record so that the committee can understand the uncertainties that we are dealing with.

Henry Hardy is the expert on the climate legislation, which is not so much my bag any more. Despite that uncertainty, we set out more detail on costs than other Administrations throughout the UK, because our legislation requires us to do that. We already have more detail than others might provide, despite the uncertain horizon. For the buildings piece, we have included as much detail as we can, as accurately as we can.

I will come to Henry Hardy on that question, which is about the technical aspects of the plan itself.

For my part, on buildings, I will report annually in the way that the legislation requires us to do. I do not think that there are any recent developments that have changed that.

First, carbon budget 1 is very much about the continuance of our existing schemes and provision, understanding that those will have to increase. We will review our schemes in the next financial year to ensure that they continue to deliver as efficiently and as well as they can.

There also needs to be a significant scaling up. When it comes to the timing of the strategy and delivery plan, I am conscious that we have a number of documents, strategies and delivery plans in the heat in buildings space—almost starting from the 2021 strategy, through the climate change plan, the heat in buildings bill that is to come and the delivery plan at the end of the year. I appreciate that that might seem to be a bit of a cluttered landscape, but I think that it reflects the complexity of this area, the fact that there are so many moving pieces and the fact that we are having to challenge ourselves all the time on how up to date our planning and delivery is. It also reflects our being able to sweep up actions that the UK Government takes as it takes them.

On publishing the heat in buildings strategy and delivery plan at the end of 2026, I hope that, by then, I—if it is me who is in this post—will be able to include the framework that the climate change plan offers and perhaps add to that the critical action that I expect the UK Government to take in respect of reducing the cost of electricity. That would almost be an on-going layering of action, all of which would take us towards the level of carbon emissions that we need to see.