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Level boarding is about making it easier for people, and it would save money with regard to passenger assist, but would it make rail more attractive to new users? Have you thought about how many more journeys could be generated with level boarding?

Fewer passengers are using trains and buses. Covid obviously had a big impact, although some of the stats have bounced back since then. What other things do we need to look at when it comes to the reduction in the number of people using buses and trains?

Thank you. That is useful.

Greig, do you have a similar view?

I will seek the committee’s permission to withdraw amendment 1077. However, I want to get the issue up the agenda, because it is seen as an issue in Edinburgh. I accept that the GDPR issues would need to be worked through, but I go back to the point about having a framework so that we know how many people need homes, because tackling the housing emergency must be a priority.

That is why I want to explore the issue further. The City of Edinburgh Council raised the issue as a challenge, so we need to pick it up.

The minister’s response was constructive, so I am happy to seek to withdraw amendment 1077, but I hope that we can make some progress, ideally before stage 3. We should at least have a conversation so that the minister can understand the concerns of that local authority, which is facing a housing emergency.

Amendment 1077, by agreement, withdrawn.

I declare an interest as a result of my former work with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

Amendment 1077 is important because we need to understand the scale of our national housing emergency. Currently, we do not have enough detailed data on those who are threatened with homelessness or those who are now experiencing homelessness. The amendment would provide a national register of homeless households.

The amendment follows on from an excellent cross-party briefing by the City of Edinburgh Council, which I attended. Preventing homelessness and supporting people who become homeless are huge priorities for that council. If the amendment were to be accepted, it could ensure that organisations are able to work together in order to allocate suitable housing, which would streamline the resources required for households that have applied to be assessed as homeless in different local authority areas.

The amendment would also result in the provision of more detailed information about the depth and breadth of the housing issues that are being faced in Scotland. It is important to understand the scale of the issue in order to identify how many new homes we need. The amendment offers the opportunity to get exact information on the scale of the housing need through a deliberative, preventative framework, and to deliver an opportunity as a result. Having a high degree of accuracy about the number of homeless households and where they are will help us to be more exact about building and planning for the homes that we need to address homelessness.

I move amendment 1077.

I will comment briefly on the issue of policy coherence. The Parliament has passed a large number of bills since 1999. More than 30 of those bills refer to sustainable development, but where is the policy coherence to join up the dots between those pieces of legislation?

I come back to the point about a long-term impact. Politics tends to be much more focused on short-term impacts. That is one of the issues that we face in embedding wellbeing and sustainable development in the work of the Government and public bodies. We have more than 130 public bodies out there. Who gives them advice? Some are large bodies, while some are very small. Where is that extra capacity? The work of a commissioner would increase the capacity of the Parliament and its ambition for the legislation that we pass—when we tick the box and move on—to join up. Policy coherence is absolutely critical.

Fantastic campaigners and lobbyists encourage us to ask questions and have a debate, but that is not the same as a more processed approach, through which somebody focuses on an issue all the time. Commissioners are appointed for a number of years, they are accountable to the Parliament and they are able to regularly update different committees—you might assume that a sustainable development commissioner would report to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, but, for example, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales has had an impact on transport and education.

It is a question of having policy coherence across the piece, which, without the focus of a commissioner, we would not get. That is the added value that would be provided by the commissioner that I have proposed, both in relation to the decisions that we make now and those that we make for the longer term.

Commissioners are independent, and they are also there for a set period. That is very different from ministers, who do not know how long they are going to be there for and, indeed, do not know what their role will be, because it can shift. When I was a minister, I set up cross-ministerial work on sustainable development, but those kinds of things come and go.

A commissioner is a robust position that is held by a person who is accountable to the Parliament and who will have a plan. That function can be complemented by ministers but, in a way, you do not want either one or the other. We would want ministers to be working on such issues all the time, although, from my perspective, it should not be about one minister doing just one thing: we need cross-Government work. There are also thousands of officials who should be working on the issues.

There will be leadership from ministers, there is the work of Government itself, and there are the public bodies and local authorities. We must ensure that all of them deliver on the ambitions that are set out in legislation that we pass in the Parliament.

They formed part of the consultation process, because we asked, “What is the purpose of a commissioner?” and “How would a commissioner work?”

One of the things that I was very conscious of was the issue of feedback after the establishment of a commissioner, and the need to find out whether the commissioner has made a difference.

The consultation process was good, and I am now at the point where my proposed bill is with the Presiding Officer. I have had to go through the financial memorandum, which includes various estimates based on our thinking about the experience of existing commissioners. We have thought about how we could reduce the costs while still having the benefit of that commissioner, because, however passionate I and others are about climate change, we are not going to make the difference on our own. We can ask questions, but there needs to be a focus to make it happen. Even if you get a minister who is passionate about the issues, they are not there forever, and neither are Governments. There is something important about the longevity of commissioners.

I am not here to say where you should draw the line—that is up to MSPs. However, having this debate will make people think more carefully about whether such a commissioner is the only way of proceeding. In my view, having looked at the Welsh example and at what is happening globally, I would say that it definitely works as a way to deliver climate ambitions.