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Every project needs to be considered on its own merits. If the member were to look at the A9, he would see that its cost benefit ratio did not stack up initially. I am asking for all transport infrastructure projects to be considered fairly against each other as to whether they are delivering the best value for the public pound. Numerous studies have shown that investing in public buses and trains connects people with economic and education opportunities, boosts productivity and aids connectivity, which all contributes towards growth.

There are also clear environmental and health benefits of investing in and encouraging a shift towards sustainable transport. We all know that private car use is responsible for about 60 per cent of road transport emissions, compared with the 6 per cent of emissions that are created by public transport.

Obviously, we have a lot of roads in Scotland—31,700 miles of roads, to be exact, which is enough to travel the circumference of the earth one and a half times. If we compare that with the 1,752 miles of Scotland’s railway network, it is clear that upgrading and dualling the A75, the A7, the A96 and the A9 will not enhance connectivity.

I absolutely accept that we need investment to dual key sections of trunk roads, alongside junction improvements and bypasses to relieve town centres of traffic congestion. However, we do not need investment to build wider roads everywhere that will ultimately result in more traffic congestion and higher maintenance costs.

We need investment in accessible, affordable and reliable public transport. That means upgrading the Highland main line, for example, and delivering projects such as Newburgh station to connect communities to the rail network and create fresh economic opportunities. It means investing in bus services so that they are reliable, affordable services that everyone can access, which is especially important in rural communities, where those who depend on public transport can become socially isolated. Bus priority measures should be delivered in our cities, so that buses can quickly pass traffic jams. The pause in the Government’s funding for those investments was damaging. Delays and congestion have only helped to accelerate the withdrawal of services by private operators that are solely focused on profitability.

In conclusion, we need a Government that is prepared to break the cycle of declining bus services and commit to financially supporting public transport to deliver franchising and public control for bus services, alongside investment in rail and active travel. I look forward to a national transport strategy that goes back to the principles of good transport planning, rather than a slanging match about the dualling of roads in Scotland.

I move amendment S6M-20057.2, to leave out from “recognises” to end and insert:

“believes that future transport investment must prioritise sustainability, equality, public transport and active travel over large-scale road building, and further believes that investment in roads should improve safety, address maintenance backlogs, deliver climate resilience on vulnerable routes, including the A83, help prioritise road space for buses and be matched with ambitious investment in rail, including upgrading the Highland Mainline and reconnecting communities, such as Newburgh, to the rail network.”

Finlay Carson has made a strong case for dualling the A75, but the cost of that would be £50 million and Governments need to prioritise investment. The cost of dualling the A96 would be up to £5 billion—that is £5,000 million. Does he not see that the political priorities are for the A96, not the projects that he has put forward?

Do I have time, Presiding Officer?

Speaking as a motorist, I welcome sensible investment in our roads, but building roads is not the only way to generate economic growth, and roads are not even the most effective transport infrastructure to achieve that goal. The evidence on the economic impact of road building is mixed. Analysis from the Institute for Public Policy Research shows that investing in roads does not deliver good value for money. Return on investment for road infrastructure is lower compared with other infrastructure investments, particularly in public transport. In a recent SWestrans board meeting, Transport Scotland officials noted that revenue spending on the A75 in the past two years would keep bus services in Dumfries and Galloway running for the next 300 years.

Unfortunately, I do not think that I have time to take interventions.

Of course, buses use the roads too, but the unprecedented growth in traffic and congestion is piling costs on to maintaining the network for all road users, and public transport is not being prioritised as was promised in the national transport strategy.

The notion that upgrading and dualling more roads in Scotland is the best way to boost economic growth and increase connectivity is disingenuous. Investment in our roads for maintenance, improved safety and climate resilience is absolutely necessary, but dualling miles of road to speed up journey times by a handful of minutes is not.

I will start on a note of consensus and refer to the points that Emma Harper has just made. I do not think any member in the chamber would disagree about the need for investment that she set out.

I have not yet heard a single member speak in favour of the Westminster Government’s proposed punitive tax on EVs. It singles those vehicles out and discriminates against them. To answer Jamie Halcro Johnston’s question, I do not know whether that represents a wider approach from the Treasury on demand management. However, if it does, it is starting at the wrong end. It should be starting with sport utility vehicles—SUVs—and not EVs.

The Treasury’s assumption is that driving an EV is low cost. It is low cost, but only if people are able to charge their EVs at home and get access to a low-cost tariff. When I charge my EV at home, I am paying about 8.5p per kilowatt hour at night, which means that my mileage costs are about 2p a mile. However, if I go to a public charger such as those provided by Perth and Kinross Council, I am paying 55p per kilowatt hour. We cannot get into a situation where the cost of EV use starts to creep up above the cost of petrol and diesel. That would absolutely stall the transition to EVs, and it would blow a hole in the Government’s climate plan. The cost of electricity is clearly a political issue, including in relation to the roll-out of heat pumps and the general electrification of our entire society, but it is a critical issue that we need to get right.

Members mentioned all sorts of projects during the debate, and many projects are mentioned in the motion and the amendments. However, I am disappointed that not a single member has mentioned the A83. All the projects that have been discussed are partly about safety, and they are also about making the roads faster, but people in Argyll are completely and utterly cut off when the Rest and Be Thankful is closed. We need to get serious about investment in climate adaptation, because a lot of our roads are simply going to crumble away as we start to go beyond 1.5°. We are seeing more extreme weather events, and the Rest and Be Thankful is a classic example of what can happen.

We need to get real about the economic impact and the cost of road-building programmes. I am seeing an increasing proportion of Government revenue going on servicing the private finance initiative and other models that were used to procure roads in the first place. We do not want to get to a situation where the entire transport budget is eaten up by more and more projects that become harder and harder to maintain and build. There is no magic money tree here.

I go back to the exchange that I had with Finlay Carson. Let us consider the costs of projects that have being named in the debate—£3.7 billion for the A9 from Perth to Inverness, up to £5 billion for the A96 from Inverness to Aberdeen, £64 million for the A77, and £50 million for the A75. That £9 billion of spending on four major road-building projects in Scotland is an exorbitant amount. It is the equivalent of 200 years of the Scottish Government’s budget for all road safety interventions on all roads.

Jamie Greene talked about a moral imperative. There is absolutely a moral imperative to invest in all roads in Scotland. Over the summer, very sadly, I attended a fatal road traffic accident on the A85. Wherever such deaths occur, there are too many. We need to be cutting casualties and making our roads safer—and I am referring to all roads. There is a need to invest here. I accept that there is a need to invest in the A9. There is a need to invest in junctions and a need to invest in parts of the A9 that are currently dualled but where there have still been accidents. However, that needs to be investment in what works, and it needs to drive down the casualty rate.

I want a national transport strategy that is reasonable, sensible and evidence based and that starts to push some Government funding towards projects that will work—ones that will improve safety, keep us connected and, ultimately, get us to a better place as a nation.

I agree with most of what the minister has just set out—I think that that should be the process going forward. However, I invite him to consider the quite rare circumstances in which it would make sense to bypass the voluntary control agreement process and allow NatureScot to take action. If the minister is confident that there could not be any circumstance at all where urgent action would need to be taken, I accept his argument. However, if there is any doubt about that, I ask him to have a conversation with me between stage 2 and stage 3 and to think about lodging an amendment in that space that could be better than mine and could leave it open for urgent action to be taken without undermining the important voluntary agreement approach that has been established. We are all behind that approach and wish the minister well with it, but we have concerns in relation to exceptional circumstances.

Were those aspects considered in the development of the draft climate change plan?

I am reflecting on what the cabinet secretary said about the need to move from reviews into action and delivery. That is the essence of Ariane Burgess’s amendment 303; it is about saying that the existing system of land management orders is not delivering the action that we need to restore nature. When people look around their communities, they can see SSSIs degrading in plain sight, so it is clear that the system is not working. I recognise the on-going invitation to discuss the matter ahead of stage 3, so I think that Ariane Burgess and I will take you up on that, cabinet secretary, and we will want to explore with you the provisions that the Government brought forward in the initial consultation and whether there is something either in the bill or outside it that we could take forward to improve that, because delivery is not happening.

I will not press amendments 67 and 67A today, but it is clear that Ariane Burgess is hearing about these concerns from the communities themselves, so it would be good to relate them to you directly, cabinet secretary.

On the other amendments in the group, it is not entirely clear what Rachael Hamilton is trying to achieve. She talks about tree planting and woodland, so I am not sure whether that relates to commercial trees or woodland restoration.

I wish to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 67A, by agreement, withdrawn.