Seòmar agus comataidhean

Mark, I will come in very briefly.

Minister, I fear that a lot of the questions this morning will be about understanding the draft code, which the committee has taken evidence on, and which would really help the committee in considering the instrument. It is up to the committee to say whether it supports the instrument—personally, I support its principles, but I am concerned about its implementation. However, I will sow this seed now: you have an option to withdraw the instrument and produce the draft code. The matter would then come back to the committee, and we would have a chance to look at the instrument again along with the draft code. I am not saying that that is what the committee wants, but you have said that there is something there. I fear that there will be lots of questions on the code, so I ask you to consider that. I would like you to respond to Mark Ruskell’s question, and that is just an option that I want to put on the table at this stage.

Sorry—whoa, whoa! While I am convening the committee, I ask members to quietly allow other members to get their questions answered, without adding bits in. Ms Webber will get her chance at the end, as I have indicated. [Interruption.] Ms Webber, you will get a chance at the end. As a respect to the committee members who do this week in, week out, let them get their questions in without making comments from the sidelines, so that I can hear them.

Michael Matheson wants to ask a supplementary on that. I know that Kevin Stewart and Bob Doris also want to come in, so there is a heap of questions. By the look on her face, I suspect that Sarah Boyack wants in as well.

Welcome back. We move to agenda item 4, which is subordinate legislation, to debate motion S6M-20054, which calls on the committee to recommend that the draft National Bus Travel Concession Schemes (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Order 2026 be approved. I invite the minister to speak to and move the motion.

Welcome back. We move on to agenda item 5, which is an evidence-taking session on the Scottish Government’s draft climate change plan. The plan sets out how the Scottish Government intends to meet its carbon emissions reduction targets. The committee is leading a cross-committee effort to scrutinise the draft plan, and the Scottish Government has said that it will lay the final plan by the end of March. Everyone who gives evidence today will be contributing towards a final report that we will publish in late February, with a debate in the chamber to follow.

I put on the record that the committee is extremely grateful to the members of the Scottish Youth Parliament’s Transport, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee for attending a meeting with us last Thursday and for the evidence that it gave us.

I also put on the record that the committee visited the energy transition zone in Aberdeen yesterday, and we are grateful to ETZ Ltd for hosting us and showing us some of the work that it is doing. In the afternoon, we met community groups from across Aberdeen to discuss the climate change plan. I thank the attendees for attending that meeting. It was clear that, at all levels, people had engaged with the plan and maybe had different interpretations of it. A note of those meetings will be circulated to committee members, so that we have it for the record.

I welcome Professor John Underhill, director of the centre for energy transition and professor of geoscience, University of Aberdeen; David Whitehouse—who is here in person—chief executive officer, Offshore Energies UK; Adam Berman, director of policy and advocacy, Energy UK; and Simon Coop, national officer for energy and utilities, Unite the Union. Thank you all for attending this morning.

As is generally the way on the committee, I get to ask the very easy opening question. I will give you all a chance to answer. We have slightly overrun, and I am sorry for keeping you waiting. However, our time is quite short, so if you agree with somebody else on the panel and everything that they have said, you can just say, “I agree”, and if you do not agree with them, you can say, “I do not agree”, rather than rehearsing the whole thing again. I am sorry—that is probably over-icing the cake, but we are quite short of time.

My first question is, what position should the Scottish Government have with respect to future oil and gas licensing and production in the North Sea? I think that last year was the first year that we did not drill a well in the North Sea since—I was going to say 19-canteen, but it was certainly a long time ago. David, do you want to start off?

That was very clear. John, what are your views?

Adam is next.

It might well be net neutral. The other annexes state whether a project will be net neutral or whether there will be a net gain on costs. This part says that there is zero on both sides to the Government.

Simon Coop—yes or no? Can I push you on that?

John, before you start, I feel bad doing this, but I am up against the clock. You will be the last person to answer and I ask that you keep your comments as brief as possible. I have to bring in Sarah Boyack as well as the deputy convener, who will both be chasing me around the Parliament with angry faces if I do not let them in. I would appreciate if you could keep your response short.

11:45

We have come to the end of the questions. I have overshot my target by only 15 minutes, so I have probably done well. I apologise for the late start to the session—there was nothing that the committee could do about that—and for the fact that I had to cut people short when they were giving detailed answers. However, we are up against a deadline for consideration of the draft climate change plan.

Hearing from all the different people means that not everyone will be able to say everything that they have to say, but what you have said this morning has been incredibly helpful. I thank you for attending.

12:00

Meeting continued in private until 12:33.