Seòmar agus comataidhean

Robert Nicol wants to come in, and then I will come back in with a supplementary.

I wonder whether the message is filtering across. Gail Macgregor mentioned the £750 million shortfall in social care. Money and budgets are tight and we do not quite know what we will get until next year. One concern that I have had flagged to me is that, in some local authority areas, there are questions about the role of the climate team, which suggests that we are going backwards. Are local authorities getting the message that they need to prioritise this?

Sure. Certainly, climate is one of the Government’s three stated collaborations under the Verity house agreement, so I would hope to see good funding in that space.

I saw George Tarvit indicating that he was going to pick that up.

At the moment, companies are buying up bits of Scotland to plant trees in order to achieve their carbon offsetting targets. An architect called Craig White gave a presentation in Parliament and talked about the idea—which I do not think originated with him—of taking that a step further by looking at locking up carbon in housing through retrofitting and building with Scottish timber. Instead of planting trees and having them potentially being taken down by storms or whatever, which means that we would not be certain that the carbon would be locked up, we could ensure that the carbon was genuinely locked up by using it in houses. I have not had a chance to delve into that suggestion, but I think that it is interesting with regard to our thinking about building housing stock in the future and also retrofitting existing stock. There is potentially something there.

What are your thoughts on the Scottish Government’s plans for the energy efficiency standards for the private rented sector? Do you think that that will help us get anywhere with regard to climate change? I accept that that target is just a target, but is that a helpful policy that will help us get somewhere?

That is a good point. We need to think about the infrastructure piece, as well as the issue of insurance. What you have said is interesting, because it seems to me that someone needs to enter this space. Leadership needs to be shown by local authorities or individuals who realise the job creation potential and the opportunity that exists for companies to enter the retrofit space. We will need such companies all over the country, so some initiative needs to be shown.

I am aware of someone in my region who has just painstakingly retrofitted their own cottage, which involved going down the road of learning and understanding all aspects of the process. They are now considering whether to take that further and set up a business, because they have an incredible amount of knowledge that could be shared, but, as Clare Wharmby said, we need financing to be available so that private home owners can take that leap.

I have a few more questions to ask. Staying on housing, I would be interested to hear what your thoughts are on whether we need to have a bit more clarity with regard to building standards and planning. At the moment, we use timber frames, and we congratulate ourselves on doing so—we say, “Yes, we use timber frames whereas, south of the border, they don’t use timber frames.” However, we still use concrete blocks in the walls, which involve a lot of embodied carbon.

Is there a need for more clarity in that space? I know for a fact that it is possible to build great buildings using timber. There is the potential to use more Scottish timber, but simply by using timber in general we can get the embodied carbon out of what we build. Does the plan need to be clearer on that? The issue is about not only what we emit, but what we emit through embodied carbon emissions.

That would be great. I think that is maybe why you are called the Scottish Climate Intelligence Service—we need some intelligent service in this area.

I have to draw our conversation to a close. It has been really constructive to hear from you all, and it has been good to have different representations from different parts of local government this morning. We very much appreciate your views on the plan and I am glad we were able to pull the discussion back to the plan. Thank you so much for joining us.

I suspend the meeting briefly to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

We will have a few more questions on that later, to go into a bit more detail.

You do not all have to answer this question, but I would like to get your views on the Scottish Government’s new proposal to legislate for heat in buildings following the election—we were all hoping that it was going to happen in the current session—including the proposed target to decarbonise heating systems by 2045. Maybe Nicola Barclay could come in on that initially.

You have pointed to the general frustration about our not getting on with things quickly enough.

That must be incredibly frustrating. Fulton, do you want to continue with your questions?