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Will the member take an intervention?

The agreement between the Scottish Greens and the Scottish Government is historic. It is a new model of politics that responds to the code red for humanity on the climate, while building a fair recovery from Covid. The agreement has a bold and far-reaching programme, which will accelerate a just transition, double the size of the wind industry that was previously butchered by the Tory party at Westminster, invest £1.8 billion in energy efficiency and renewable heat, and invest £500 million in a just transition fund for the north-east. Does the First Minister agree that the programme will help Scotland to grasp the economic opportunities of the just transition by creating new fair jobs while tackling the climate emergency?

Empty town centre properties are being repurposed into spaces to house artists’ studios, venues and workshops, including Fire Station Creative in Dunfermline and Creative Stirling’s hub. How has the culture organisations and venues recovery fund directly supported those types of initiatives? What further support can be offered in order to provide a viable future for our town centres?

Thank you, convener. I congratulate you and Fiona Hyslop on your appointments. I look forward to working with colleagues across the committee. It is good to hear some early areas of consensus emerging.

I served on the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee in session 5. It was a hard-working committee, as you can see from our 119-page legacy report. We faced some particular challenges, and it is good to see that one of the key recommendations—that there should be a dedicated net zero committee—has been picked up on. That is a great first step. It is important that some of the key sectors where we face new challenges in terms of a just transition have been brought into the remit of this committee, and that our remit mirrors the cabinet secretary’s responsibilities.

Members have already spoken about some of the challenges around energy and about the public energy company, which I am also interested in. There are massive issues around how we scale up delivery. Particularly in relation to heat, there will have to be an unprecedented increase in effort and installations if we are to meet the targets and deliver the progress that is needed.

On transport, a few key points have come up. The strategic transport projects review, the national transport strategy and the national planning framework are all hugely important, alongside the climate change plan, when it comes to how we build future-proofed infrastructure that will tackle the climate emergency. It makes sense for us to deal with all of that.

As other members have said, there are a number of other cross-cutting areas that we need to address. I point in particular to the need to work with the committee that has responsibility for farming and land use, because that is another sector where there must be a transition. That process must support farmers and managers, but we need to see cuts in emissions in that sector.

I am interested in how we might work creatively with other committees. For example, we have to think about whether we could appoint reporters or conduct joint inquiries, for which, I think, there is some precedent. In order to avoid the siloed scrutiny that has been mentioned, we will have to work across the Parliament, and we faced some challenges in that regard in the previous session.

Housing and planning are two other areas where, again, we will need to do some further work to get the most out of our time.

I am looking forward to the discussions ahead. We are dealing with the biggest issue that faces us, and we need to tackle it.

I have nothing to declare.

Families in Fife who are waiting for autism assessments for their children are at crisis point. There have been no assessments since the start of the pandemic, and there is now a backlog of more than 1,000 children waiting for support. Given that there is currently nothing in Government guidance to prevent autism assessments from taking place, what more can the First Minister do to ensure that NHS Fife clears the backlog and gives families the support that they desperately need?

Three years of missed targets shows that we need that transformative step change. We have already seen what is possible with renewable electricity, in which this country has taken a great lead in the UK.

On renewable heat, the statement talked about 1 million homes needing to switch over to green heating by 2030. That is 100,000 a year, but we saw only 3,000 installations in homes in Scotland last year. How will the cabinet secretary work across the Government and the Parliament to fill that huge gap between ambition and reality?

It is quite clear that, at the moment, there is a free-for-all for planning applications for incinerators in Scotland. Given that in the national planning framework there is a moratorium on nuclear power stations, and that in the next NPF there will be a ban on fracking, will the Government also consider putting a cap on incineration capacity in NPF4?

In February, I moved a motion to extend the self-isolation support grant so that it would become universal, which would ensure that no one would be forced to choose between working and isolating. The Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People at the time agreed to further extend eligibility but argued that universal provision could cost a whopping £700 million a year. Given that only £2.5 million has been spent on self-isolation grants this year and that over 40 per cent of those applying have been rejected, will the Government look again at making provision universal?

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