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Indeed.

Obviously, where we are is really disappointing. The 2030 and 2040 targets are being dropped and we are moving to a new system of budgeting. What are the top-line lessons that the Government should learn from the past five years? Mike Robinson spoke about the level of action planning. I know that ESS has done a number of reports that have held the Government to account over the production of climate change plans. We have also had a long-running discussion between the Parliament and the Government on financial budgets, a net zero test and the need to embed climate change thinking in the work of Government.

From each of your perspectives, will you nail down what you think the central lesson is from the past five years? How do we now get on track for 2045 or even earlier?

Mike, do you want to start?

I will try to beat that.

Cabinet secretary, when you talked earlier about the net zero assessment work that is going on within Government—that is, the net zero test of all Government spending—you said that it is still at the pilot stage. It seems to me that it needs to go way beyond the pilot stage if it is to deliver the level of transparency that we might get through climate change plans linked to budgets—and to carbon budgets, too.

I am going to get a short answer to this question—

So, every Government department will be using this approach by next year.

I have a question on the five years since the setting of the 2030 target and where we are now. We have rehearsed some of this in the chamber in relation to where the Government could have gone faster or where the UK Government was, arguably, limiting ambition. You could make that point, but I am after an honest reflection from you, on behalf of the Government, on areas where you think you could have gone a lot faster.

You had the advice from the Climate Change Committee in 2021 that the target remained difficult to meet. However, there were areas in which the CCC was calling for the Government to really accelerate action, such as home heating. With hindsight, in which areas could progress have been made? What lessons does that provide for the next five years and for what goes in the next climate change plan? Where should we really be ramping up action in a way that we perhaps did not five years ago?

My final question is about the section 36 report, which a number of witnesses have mentioned. Last week, two catch-up reports in relation to two years of failed targets came out.

We are going to need to do a lot of scrutiny of the budgets. We have had catch-up reports, but do witnesses have thoughts on the level of detail that was presented to Parliament? Did it address some of the concerns that SCCS, ESS and others have had about the lack of action that led to those failed targets?

This is the second time in three years that workers at the Methil yard have faced a very uncertain future. The yard at Methil was previously on a long list for a portion of the £500 million investment in Scotland’s offshore wind supply chain. Can the cabinet secretary confirm whether the Government has explored all options to lock Methil yard into that supply chain for the future? Can she also give a commitment that any investments that come through the green freeport will not undermine the case for investment at Methil but will work alongside it to strengthen the supply chain that we need to grow in the east of Scotland?

I will address Christine Grahame’s comment first. This is a bit of a frustrating debate, because we always talk about peak fares and higher prices to manage demand on the railways, but we never talk about peak pricing on the roads. We never talk about putting in road charges to manage demand during periods of congestion—which, of course, could then be used to invest in public transport and in our road infrastructure.

The greyhound racing industry’s governing body recorded that more than 100 dogs died and more than 4,000 were injured while racing at regulated tracks in England and Wales last year. Does the minister recognise that the nature of that activity, with dogs running against each other at speeds of up to 40mph around sharp bends, leads to a similar rate of collision at any track, regardless of whether it be in Newcastle or Fife?

I think that I am short for time.

The reality is that those are the choices that people, if they are fortunate enough to own a car and be able to drive, have to make every single day. Do they pick up the car keys or do they pay upwards of £30 to travel between Edinburgh and Glasgow on the railway? The reality is that, if people want to drive between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley, it is actually free—there is no pricing on the roads. However, we all know that private use of motor cars results in cost to the economy, cost to the environment and cost to communities through congestion.

To be honest, people in France are quite frankly astonished that we do not have road pricing here, because they have road pricing. We can see the impact of that investment on the quality of the autoroutes and the roads in France, as well as on the quality of public transport there, so I hope that the cabinet secretary is preparing to launch the much-wanted 20 per cent vehicle mileage reduction route map—to give it its long title—in the weeks to come, because we need to get a grip on what the acceptable measures are to drive down demand.

Graham Simpson says that he does not back demand management, but we have to address the other side of the coin. I will give one example—again, it is from France, where residents of Montpellier have had free public transport since December 2023. In the first few months of the scheme, passenger numbers have increased by about a quarter. The scheme is paid for by a mobility payment from companies that have more than 11 employees and by ticket sales from those visiting the town. There is still significant public investment, which is funded by higher tax payers, but a model has been found to invest in public transport that gives people a real choice to leave their car keys at home and get on to public transport.

We need to be open to new ways in which we can invest in our capital infrastructure and support revenue measures such as scrapping peak fares. The cabinet secretary made a heroic attempt to market the new plethora of tickets that are being introduced, including super-off-peak tickets, which most people do not use because they are at times of the day when nobody needs them. A lot of the longer-term tickets need a longer-term commitment from people to invest up front. As Beatrice Wishart said, if we were going to design a ticket system to be a barrier for people to adopting public transport, this would be it—it is too confusing.

The cabinet secretary made the point that the people who have benefited from the pilot are those who are on an above-average income, but we will not encourage people whose income is below average to start using the railways by increasing prices. Richard Leonard and Alex Rowley made that point strongly. If we look at who gets the trains these days, we see that it is middle-income earners, nurses and front-line workers. They are the people I see on the railways day in and day out, and I know that they are the people Fiona Hyslop sees on her journey to work.

I urge the cabinet secretary to look for opportunities to fund a scheme such as this and to reconsider it. Last week, she made a commitment in the chamber to reconsider the policy if a better budget deal comes from the Labour Government in Westminster. We need to open the conversation about how we fund such measures. I look forward to that coming in the route map for reducing vehicle mileage.

Is there time in hand, Presiding Officer?