Seòmar agus comataidhean

Today, a group of nine animal welfare organisations have teamed up to call for a phase-out of greyhound racing in Scotland. The industry is on its last legs, with just one racetrack left in Scotland. No dog deserves to be forced into a gambling-led industry with an unacceptable risk of injury and death. Does the First Minister agree that it is now time that Scotland phased out greyhound racing once and for all?

The cabinet secretary may be aware that Scotland’s environmental watchdog, Environmental Standards Scotland, has raised concerns about the UK Government’s proposed ditching of national air quality laws, saying that Scotland would have no national programme on long-term air quality targets. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the Tories are now the polluters party? Having scuppered the deposit return scheme this week, they are now cancelling action to protect our lungs as well.

Will the member take an intervention?

I am enjoying the member’s contribution about the benefits of franchising. Will he acknowledge, though, that what he is suggesting needs leadership not only from the Scottish Government but from councils? Councils need to engage with the Scottish Government and say that they want to use those powers and the community bus fund, and that they want to develop a vision, perhaps in the way that Andy Burnham has done in Greater Manchester.

I thank members from across the chamber who signed my motion to secure the debate, and I look forward to everyone’s contributions and the minister’s response.

Last week, I hosted a reception for Scottish bus week. Here, in Parliament, we had bus drivers, passenger groups, bus champions and transport organisations, who are all passionate about improving Scotland’s bus networks, and the room was alive with ideas. I want to especially thank Kevin Stewart for engaging and listening so well and reflecting that passion during his speech at the event, and I am sure that the whole chamber wishes Mr Stewart well.

In my region of Mid Scotland and Fife, I have seen the same thing: communities full of ideas of how to improve services where they live. We should take note of what those organisations and communities say, because we spend a lot of time in the chamber talking about what is wrong with bus services in Scotland, but we spend less time setting out how we want to transform our bus network. At the heart of our vision for better buses should be a few central principles.

First, buses must be reliable. One of the most common inquiries that I have from constituents about bus services is about short-notice cancellations of services. Whether it is McGill’s in Stirling and Clacks or Stagecoach in Perth and Fife, folks are finding it harder and harder to rely on buses to commute to work, head to school or meet up with family and friends. Cancelled services erode passenger confidence in bus services, particularly in rural areas where people can be left without any other option to make their journey.

Passengers and regulators such as the Traffic Commissioner for Scotland should be able to hold bus operators to account, but too often they are hampered by a lack of available evidence. Therefore, we need a Scottish equivalent of England’s bus open data system, which shares live data on bus fares and service information. We have the equivalent powers available in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, and it is time to make them a reality.

Today’s debate is, of course, on the most critical issue of our time. It is worth spelling out what the overwhelming scientific consensus says will be in store if we do not alter our ways of generating, using and exporting energy.

In March this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its final report in a series of six reports. That was the culmination of nearly a decade of study by hundreds of researchers. It is brutally clear. It states:

“Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards”.

The clearest path to keeping global temperatures within safe limits is to rapidly phase out fossil fuels. The researchers say that that is needed in the near term, that renewable energy must be urgently prioritised, and that some of the consequences of not heeding that advice are “increasingly irreversible losses” across ecosystems on land and sea, increasingly insufferable heat in urban areas and in our oceans, and a starkly different future for our children and grandchildren. The scientists say that our climate’s future depends on our choices now and in the near term.

Scotland is not hiding from the seriousness of those choices. The Scottish Government’s draft energy strategy sets out a way forward.

I am pleased that the Scottish Government will no longer support unlimited recovery of fossil fuels. The development of the Cambo field has been halted, and the UK Government must now use its reserved powers to do the same for all new licences, including for Rosebank.

If I have time, Presiding Officer, I would be delighted to.

Yes, absolutely. The bus industry has faced a number of headwinds, some of which are being caused by Brexit, and the driver shortage is very much part of that picture. However, fundamentally, where there is not a good reason for services being cancelled and passengers experiencing poor services, we need to hold the companies to account. The bus open data system is a really good way to do that, and I think that that would be welcomed by the traffic commissioner.

Secondly, our buses must be affordable. From subsidies to concessionary travel schemes, millions of pounds of Scottish Government money is given to bus operators. Despite that, private bus operators have recently hiked fares. There has been a 9 per cent increase in Glasgow, a 12 per cent increase in the Highlands and a 15 per cent increase in Perth and Fife.

Earlier this year, the former transport minister, Jenny Gilruth, committed to a review of all public subsidies for bus, to look at how increased conditionality on public funding could improve bus services. Applying conditions to public grants is not new. We need to see conditionality applied to all Scottish Government funding for private bus operators to prevent profiteering, fare hikes and cancellations.

We need to see an integrated ticketing system that allows people to take the bus, train, tram or metro using one ticket or travel card. I hope to see that in the Scottish Government’s upcoming fair fares review.

I do not have time.

There is no long-term future in North Sea oil and gas. Research that was undertaken for the Scottish Government makes it clear that, under all scenarios, the North Sea is a rapidly maturing basin with little prospect beyond the middle of the century. A responsible Government and a responsible Parliament must grapple head on with that challenge and secure a well-managed, supported and just transition for all who work in the sector, and particularly for those communities in the north-east. That also means pushing ahead with site-specific just transition plans for Scotland’s largest industrial polluters, such as Mossmorran in Fife.

The decline in fossil fuels is irrefutable. Our choice now is whether to accept a slow withering of skills and expertise or to grasp the opportunity to maximise the expansion of jobs in renewables and all the supporting sectors. However, the Tories want us to ignore the writing on the wall for fossil fuels. The power over our future still lies in the hands of a UK Government that retains control of licensing and would prefer to sell out the north-east’s chance of a stable transition to maximise short-term shareholder profiteering.

There is no guarantee that an incoming Labour Government would be any better. Keir Starmer’s support for banning new licences for oil and gas in the North Sea is very welcome, but Anas Sarwar has said that Labour might still allow the 500 million-barrel Rosebank field to go ahead. That is an impossible circle to square.

We lie at a critical juncture. Less than two years ago, we all united over COP26 in Glasgow, and we committed to keeping 1.5°C alive. From what I have heard in this debate, there is a consensus—at times an uneasy one—among four parties in the Parliament that we need to move beyond oil and gas and that we can do that in a just way that takes workers with us and puts them at the fore. The only outliers in the Parliament are the extremist Tories, who deny the reality of climate change. However, the time for urgent climate action is now. There is no credible long-term future in oil and gas, and it is our duty as politicians—credible politicians—to map out the alternative.

People who have been campaigning for years to get a deposit return scheme will be, justifiably, incredibly angry and worried about the delay, which has been caused by the utter contempt that is shown towards the Parliament by the Westminster Tory Government. What does the minister say to people who are worried about the likely impact on Scotland’s environment and the impact on our democracy in Scotland?