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What can and what is the Scottish Government doing to de-risk investments in net zero infrastructure? What barriers are preventing more successful partnerships between councils and private investors? How do you make sure that there are investable opportunities? The criticism that we have is that the propositions are not big enough, so who helps to resolve that situation?

Heat and transport are the big issues that we have to address, but not all heat is in council housing. There is also social housing and private sector housing. How will that be financed and how do we make sure that we have propositions of new finance models to make net zero happen? Is there any role whatsoever for local government in that? Is that what we can expect? Or, in a place-based approach, who will do it? There are big questions around that wider investability and how we leverage in the money. What role do local authorities have and what are you doing to support them? Do they have any responsibility whatsoever for private sector housing in a place-based approach to tackle net zero?

Everybody says that public funding is not sufficient to do what we need to do, so the financial expertise to leverage in private funding will be essential. Those skills are very few and far between and the need is particularly in that area.

I will move on to the Minister for Social Security and Local Government. How convinced are you that net zero will be at the heart of the new deal that is being prepared between the Scottish Government and local government, as it needs to be to ensure that we can deliver on it? In particular, how will local authorities manage a place-based approach to net zero? We have just heard comments from the cabinet secretary about fleet replacement and EV charging. Some of that is for the private sector and for car owners. A lot of what we will expect councils to do is to help lead action that is about privately owned housing. How are you factoring in what local authorities will have to do to lead a place-based—not just a public sector and local authority responsibility led—approach to net zero? How is that being built into the new deal discussions and negotiations and how can local authorities be resourced to do things that are outside their direct responsibility for public sector housing or schools and so on?

I previously launched the green investment portfolio and it was primarily private sector propositions at that point. It would be helpful to the committee if you have any examples of public sector, council-led propositions that are part of that portfolio now.

We have concerns, however, as councils are telling us that they would carry the risk for such joint propositions and they are of some scale, as a result of propositions being brought together. Also, most of them are probably city based, so what are we doing to help the smaller local authorities access this portfolio of investments that we know is available? How do we help smaller local authorities and what can we do to help to de-risk the activity for local authorities embarking on putting forward an investable proposition?

Can the cabinet secretary explain the rationale and also the timing of the commitment to enhance the forestry grant scheme to deliver improved outcomes? What will those outcomes be? Will that address the serious concerns that people have about large-scale investors buying significant land for forestry and getting the benefit of carbon offsetting at the same time as they are paid by the public purse for forestry, as well as address the issues around good farmland being sold increasingly off-market, when combined forestry and farming may be a better solution?

Cabinet secretary, are you convinced that the partnership agreement and the new deal will be strong enough to deliver on net zero? You have the overall responsibility across Government.

Minister, I previously asked about net zero being part of the new deal and agreements with local authorities. Are you convinced that nature-based solutions and the climate emergency are given equivalence to the biodiversity in nature crisis that we face? Will that be in your new deal negotiations, on an equal footing with net zero?

For our interest, do you know when the revised grant scheme will be delivered?

Is there a tension between local government delivering net zero targets for its own estate and responsibilities and taking leadership with regard to a place-based approach? That touches on the issue about industrial emissions, which are not on the public sector side. Would a place-based solution require local authorities to have some sort of remit or responsibility in that area?

Good afternoon. I would like to talk about collaboration and co-ordination. Councillor Macgregor, what do we need to do first to improve collaboration and co-ordination between local government and central Government? In her written evidence, Louise Marix Evans said that there needs to be some kind of framework agreement or mechanism between different levels of government across the UK. Do you agree that that is needed or do you think that there is already sufficient co-ordination and collaboration?