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You see it happening in some local authorities. With the scale and level of investment that has now gone into aspects of active travel, you can see the considerable levels of ambition that some local authorities have on helping to get the right active travel infrastructure in place. It partly reflects the significant increase in funding that we are making available to active travel and the priorities that we have set out in the NTS and the investment hierarchy and the transport hierarchy.

You can see it by some of the ways in which local authorities are looking at the future delivery of transport provision within their areas and at different models and different approaches to take it forward. We see some real ambition being set out by local authorities.

Is there more that I would like to see happening in some local authorities? Absolutely. A lot of it is sometimes dependent upon individual officers and their desire to pursue particular policy areas. However, we are starting to see aspects of the NTS hierarchy becoming real policy on the ground, particularly in areas such as active travel and looking at wider transport provision within local authorities. I expect that to continue to develop, given the level of funding that we are putting into it in the coming years.

I gave a commitment to the committee earlier in the year to give you an update, which I am about to provide this week. I hope that it will give you much more detail on how the organisation will be taken forward and how it will operate. I hope that the committee will find it useful, given that I gave a commitment to provide that further detail. That information will be with you shortly.

That is covered by building regulations, but I am more than happy to take it away and we can come back to you with some further detail, including on the technical points that you have raised on how the points system operates.

Sure. We had a period when we had some water scarcity issues on a number of watercourses in Fife and in the south of Scotland. Presently, we have a single watercourse with a scarcity warning—the River Enrick is at a lower level. The others are no longer at levels that are of concern. If I recall correctly, people who have abstractors on the Enrick route already have in place a process to manage abstraction levels, so no orders have been made to tackle that issue at this stage.

I have found in my notes the other rivers that were affected. The Eden, the Tyne and the Tweed reached levels of significant scarcity due to the dry conditions, which resulted in the national water scarcity plan being activated. That meant that, for the first time in Scotland, abstraction licences had to be suspended, given the seriousness of the situation. As I said, only the River Enrick catchment area has a level of significant scarcity and arrangements are in place to manage that. The rest of the rivers are at levels of moderate scarcity or better.

Could you explain what you mean by that and how that links together?

Part of that goes back to a question I was answering earlier about helping to develop the capacity of local authority employees and council officers to take forward net zero proposals.

An organisation that works closely with local authorities on the circular economy is Zero Waste Scotland, which can provide additional support and advice to local authorities. I am not entirely sure whether it can provide training, but it can certainly provide assistance and expertise to local authorities on aspects of the circular economy.

We are also looking, through national planning framework 4, to make some changes to the way building use is considered as part of the planning process to help to encourage and develop the circular economy. The principal way to try to help local authorities, however, is through the skills that local authority or council officers need and making sure that we utilise the expertise that we have in Zero Waste Scotland, which already works closely with local authorities on aspects of the circular economy.

We are trying to take that forward through NPF4, which is due to be published in the next couple of months. Demolition should not be the default. It should be the last option to pursue. Whether a facility can be repurposed or redeveloped should be looked at first. Part of how we address that is through the guidance that we offer to local authorities through NPF4 so that they can make sure that that is embedded in their policy thinking and development as they go forward. NPF4 will be laid before the Parliament for the Parliament to make its views known on that as well, of course.

Our intention in the strategy is to give certainty and a very clear sense of direction and to show how we are moving forward. That is why we are taking a whole-system approach. The strategy will look at our need for oil and gas in the future, too, as that will continue to be the case for many years to come. However, although the oil and gas sector will play an important part in our energy mix, that does not mean that we should not be looking to decarbonise our energy systems. The two things go hand in hand. In that sense, and from my perspective as I move forward in this policy area, they are not in competition.

The key question is how Scotland gets the economic benefits. One thing that we cannot be—and which we cannot allow ourselves to be—is purely a production basin. We cannot be a place where energy is produced and then literally flows by our door, and we see no economic and social benefits from it. Therefore, we need to take an approach that helps secure the manufacturing and expertise that goes alongside the energy transition, whether it be in offshore or onshore wind. We lost a big opportunity in onshore wind through changes made back in the 1980s and 1990s—way before I was involved directly in politics—that countries such as Denmark were able to capitalise on. Of course, those countries are now world leaders in the development of onshore—and, to some degree, offshore—wind technologies.

That said, given the scale of the opportunity that we have in Scotland, we need to be able to create a pathway that gives industry confidence that there will be projects not just this year, next year or the year after but for many years to come and that it is worth investing in the manufacturing capability here in Scotland, because it can not only meet demand in Scotland and the UK but potentially export to other parts of the world.

More than half—actually, about two-thirds—of ScotWind projects use floating wind technology, but the sector itself has not yet settled on what the floating wind technology of the future will be. Many countries—for example, Norway and the USA—will have to look at floating wind technology, but with ScotWind, we have the advantage of being ahead. We have lease agreements in place so that we can be at the forefront not just in developing that technology but potentially in manufacturing it here for export to other countries. That is one of the advantages that we have with ScotWind and where we are in comparison with other countries. As I have said, we are ahead of Norway and the USA in this technology, and we need to capitalise on that.

As a result, our manufacturing capability and the pipeline of opportunity for developments in Scotland alone are critical to ensuring that we do not simply become a production basin and that we get the benefit of delivering these things. A key part of facilitating that will be the creation of the skills reservoir, which will be necessary in all this. Again, our oil and gas sector is a strength to us in that respect, because a lot of the sector’s technical skills and knowledge can be used in renewables, too.

I see the convener indicating that I should hurry up, but I just want to say that, later this month or next month, I will be hosting an event on the whole issue of skills transfer. There are certain issues with transferring some skill qualifications from the oil and gas sector into the renewables sector as well as other regulatory issues to consider, and we will be looking at some of those matters to ensure that those who want to transfer can do so and know what skills will be needed, too.

It is part of the emergency budget review that the cabinet secretary with responsibility for finance is taking forward at the moment and in which all portfolios are engaged. We are looking at whether further provision can be made for bus services through the support grant.

A last, last question.