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On this 80th anniversary, marking the end of a dark chapter in history, we remember the sacrifices that were made by all who stood against the tyranny of fascism. Their courage and resilience ensured our freedom, peace and democracy. We will forever be grateful to them.

Peace is not merely the absence of war; it is the presence of harmony, understanding and co-operation among nations. Yet, currently, we are witnessing the horrors of genocide continuing in Gaza, and fascism has reappeared, threatening democracy and human rights as the far right rises around the world. We cannot be complacent in the face of growing threats of fascism, international violence, hatred and oppression. We must continue to strive to build a world where peace endures and the horrors of the past are not repeated. We must remain vigilant and united in our efforts to create lasting peace by supporting democracy, justice and human rights for all.

We all accept that we are living in uncertain times, from Donald Trump to war in Europe, Palestine and now potentially Kashmir—and, looking ahead, to the impacts of climate change. The increase in armed conflict is a glimpse of things to come as the breakdown of our climate progresses, the earth’s resources become scarcer and our planet heats up.

The Scottish Government cannot be timid in its response to the challenges that we face. We are facing profound threats, and we need profound answers. It is not enough to try to do the same thing faster with ever-reducing resources. Business as usual is not only alienating a significant proportion of our society and driving them into the arms of the far right; it is not reducing emissions fast enough to prevent the collapse of our environment.

It is possible to build a fairer and greener Scotland, and we need a brave and bold Government to do so. Greener means rapidly reducing emissions, in line with the advice from the UK Climate Change Committee, and restoring our depleted nature. Fairer means redistributing wealth and opportunity so that homes are affordable and work pays fair wages, and ensuring that our social security net allows everyone to live with dignity. It means implementing practical measures to get money back into people’s pockets and to reduce poverty.

There are some good examples of those policies in the programme for government, including a permanent end to peak rail fares, a policy that was first brought in by the Scottish Greens in October 2023. There are references to key budget commitments that were also won by the Scottish Greens, such as the £2 bus fare cap pilot, the free bus travel pilot for people seeking asylum and the increased roll-out of free school meals in eight local authority areas for Scottish child payment recipients from secondary 1 through to secondary 3.

The roll-out of the offshore wind skills programme and the continuation of the nature restoration fund for another year are also to be welcomed, and I am pleased to see a recommitment to a 20mph speed limit as the default by the end of 2025-26. It will make our towns and cities safer for children, pedestrians and cyclists, and will also reduce pollution. Moreover, progress towards the devolution of parking fines to local authorities, and allowing local authorities to increase council tax on second homes, are welcome, if somewhat overdue, developments.

However, I see too many backward steps on progressive policy. The Government does not always seem to be willing to do the hard things that we need to do to build a fairer, greener Scotland. We need those things now—because, to be frank, we are running out of tomorrows. It would have been good to see some progress on tackling the high levels of wealth inequality that we see entrenched in Scotland, and a recognition that income inequality has surged in recent years.

Scotland is unfair for so many people, and the Scottish Government could do more to make it fairer—for example, with greater ambition to deliver warmer homes and cheaper energy bills, and with rent controls to end rip-off rents and protect renters. We need an ambitious plan to tax wealth in Scotland effectively and reinvest it in public services for communities. We need cheaper bus fares—and, indeed, cheaper fares across all public transport. Capped bus fares would go a long way towards delivering that.

I am particularly disappointed that the car kilometre reduction target has been scrapped. The target could have been met, but the Scottish Government was never bothered about putting a plan in place to follow through and make the effort to meet it. We cannot get people out of their cars when buses remain unreliable or unavailable, and trains remain so expensive.

The watering down of our ambitions to make homes cheaper and cleaner to heat will make it impossible to meet our 2045 net zero target, unless we make up the difference in other sectors. Will the Scottish Government really go that much further and faster on emissions reduction in agriculture and transport to make up the difference from what it is not going to achieve in housing?

With the world and climate in crisis, people across Scotland want reassurance that the Government is still on their side, and that cannot come from broken promises and scrapped commitments. From ditching plans to ban so-called conversion therapy and introduce the long-awaited misogyny bill, to rolling back on addressing climate action, this is not the programme for government that Scotland needs. The Scottish Government can do better than that, and the Scottish Greens will keep pushing it to do so.

I move amendment S6M-17437.3, to, leave out from first “to grow” to end and insert:

“could have been an opportunity for bold, decisive action towards building a more equal, healthier and greener Scotland with an economy that works for people and planet; recognises the substantial changes to Scotland’s transport, industry, land use and homes and buildings systems that are required to meet the challenges of the climate emergency, as described by the UK Climate Change Committee; further recognises the need for action to create well-paid, skilled jobs in growing low-carbon industries; believes that tackling poverty requires not only strong, resilient economies that provide access to fair work opportunities and support investment in public services, but also measures that secure the human rights of all citizens, from affordable, accessible housing and education to a social security system based on care and compassion; regrets the weakening of commitments to tackle climate change and the housing emergency, such as the watering down of the proposed Heat in Buildings Bill and the Housing (Scotland) Bill; expresses its dismay that the proposed Bills to tackle misogyny and end conversion practices have been dropped from this Programme for Government, and calls on the Scottish Government to reconsider its position on human rights and equalities legislation and urgently produce an ambitious plan to tax wealth more effectively in Scotland to ensure appropriate investment in public services, support communities and build a fairer Scotland.”

Thank you, Presiding Officer, but my app has now updated, so I think that I am all right.

I am delighted that the Government has finally committed to the Scottish Greens’ policy of ending peak rail fares for good. Earlier this year, the Scottish Government said that it would not do that—it even voted against the Greens’ calls to do so—but we have finally got there. More brave decisions will be needed if we are to make all public transport cheaper. The Scottish Government agreed to the Greens’ proposal for a £2 bus fare cap to be run as a local pilot from January 2026. However, people all across Scotland need cheaper buses now. Will the First Minister avoid the hesitation that he showed over peak rail fares and get on with delivering another great idea from the Scottish Greens—capping bus fares all over Scotland for good?

Scotland simply cannot afford any more broken promises on climate issues. Economists have found that, if we do not act now, Scotland could be up to £140 billion poorer by 2035. Through their soaring energy bills, people have been paying the price for a lack of progress on insulating our homes and moving away from expensive gas heating.

There is no route to net zero by 2045 that does not involve making our homes warmer and cheaper to heat by insulating them and replacing gas heating systems. Bold action is needed on climate to get Scotland back on track. What new action will next week’s programme for government contain to reduce our sky-high energy bills and achieve the rapid cut that is needed in the use of fossil fuels?

Once again, the member seems to misunderstand the nature of the international market for oil and gas. The oil in the North Sea oilfields is being extracted not by public companies that can decide to sell the oil beneficially to the UK or to Scotland, but by international corporations that will sell it to the highest bidder. That may or may not be the UK, but in no way does that protect the UK’s energy needs. It simply does not do that.

The Scottish and UK Governments need to work together proactively and strategically to plan the transition and not simply deal with disasters after they happen. The changing climate is not the only external shock that is coming our way. Having Donald Trump in the White House means that more shocks are coming. It is likely that his on-again, off-again tariff policies will lead to recession and damage the global economy. It is possible that American support for Ukraine may be withdrawn, leaving Europe and the UK to have to support Ukraine ourselves, with the consequential costs. Those shocks will require additional Government intervention, which will require additional Government resources.

The UK Government, with its full suite of powers, will have to think carefully about how to raise those resources. Cutting public services further is a self-defeating strategy. Growth in the face of global economic slowdown is a mirage. Those resources will have to be found by taxing the very wealthy and the polluting corporations and reducing the tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuel extraction and use. I encourage the UK Government to investigate those measures urgently, because it is going to need them.

I move amendment S6M-17352.4, to leave out from “the Grangemouth” to end and insert:

“Grangemouth as it transitions to supporting Scotland’s journey to a low-carbon economy, protecting the jobs of the highly-skilled workers at the site, and demonstrating how Scotland’s industrial sites can implement the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, in the understanding that a just transition requires substantial public funding and support that private, profit-driven owners of energy infrastructure cannot be trusted to provide.”

The debate has revealed quite a lot in common across parties. There seems to be a consensus that a proactive industrial and energy strategy is required and that we would like the return of high-value manufacturing to Scotland. I do not think that anyone wants the Trumpian vision of hordes of Scottish people assembling shoes and small electronics, but high-value manufacturing is a possibility.

Members will recall from my entry in the register of members’ interests that I used to work for Orbital Marine Power. It—we—built in Scotland the world’s largest tidal turbine, in the port of Dundee. Its components were assembled in Scotland and were launched and are now operating in Orkney. Many of the high-value components—gearboxes, generators and so on—were sourced from Europe. They were not manufactured in Scotland, which is a shame. Some of the components were manufactured in Ireland and some in England, but not in Scotland. However, we assembled them here.

There are big challenges to shifting a whole economy, as Donald Trump is trying to do, back to manufacturing, but there are areas in which Scotland is already good. I have previously spoken, as I did at the Business for Scotland conference, which Murdo Fraser referenced earlier, about scaling up already successful Scottish businesses. In Scotland, we already have—[Interruption.] I will come to the Deputy First Minister in a second—or was that an accident?

Many successful small and medium-sized enterprises in Scotland already supply components to the renewables industry and to the oil and gas industry and have the scope to scale up. It seems to me that the piece of the economic puzzle that we are missing in Scotland is support for those SMEs—I am thinking specifically of engineering-related businesses, because that is the industry with which I am most familiar—to scale up to supply not only Scotland but countries that are further afield.

There seems to be substantial agreement across parties that increased UK Government investment is required and that the cost of energy is a major barrier. Unlinking the artificial connection between gas prices and electricity prices in the UK would go a long way to resolving some of those problems.

I feel a great deal of dismay at Fergus Ewing’s intervention, which ignores the UK’s historical emissions and contribution to climate change in the world. At least Murdo Fraser acknowledged the offshore component of our emissions.

Fergus Ewing rose—

I will come to the member in a moment.

Tackling climate change is a collective endeavour. Our individual emissions are trivial on the global scale, but every one of us around the world needs to do our bit to meet the collective challenge. Saying that we should get away with bad behaviour while expecting others to behave well is cynical and will not resolve the problem of climate change, as is needed.

Will the member take an intervention?

The member consistently ignores the facts of the international market. We do not control American policy on gas extraction, but the Americans sell that on the market to our gas suppliers here, based entirely on price. I absolutely am sceptical about the ability of capitalism and global markets to tackle climate change, but the member cannot suggest that that is a way to reduce carbon emissions, because our energy suppliers in the UK will buy the cheapest gas available. If he is proposing that the UK implement some sort of law requiring gas providers in the UK to buy lower-carbon production, that would be interesting to contemplate. However, he is not doing that. He is still a proponent of the market-based energy system, and so that is what will happen.

The way that we manage our emissions is to reduce demand for gas in Scotland through, for example, insulating our homes properly, getting people out of cars and taxing aviation. Those are all things that we could do in Scotland to rapidly reduce our dependence on oil and gas.

In fact, I would agree with many members about the importance of steel production and the importance of unlinking that from fossil fuels. A feasibility study undertaken by British Steel and EDF in 2022 on using hydrogen for steel production had good results. It said:

“A full conversion of TBM’s furnace to hydrogen could reduce its direct CO2 emissions by 94% or 71,000 tonnes based on 2021 emissions data.

Indeed, the main challenge noted in the conclusion was that of a mature and reliable supply of hydrogen, which is clearly a significant opportunity for Scotland. The production of green hydrogen requires cheap electricity and water—something in which Scotland is abundant.

Many of the problems noted with Scotland’s challenges in industry could be resolved by our rejoining the EU. It is about access to research funding, access to labour and skills, access to the results of research, and access to the European common market—all of which would improve our economy and our industrial strategy. If the UK cannot be prevailed upon to rejoin the EU, Scotland should be given the choice and allowed to do so.