Seòmar agus comataidhean

That is not what I said.

The Scottish Government puts forward its opinions and ideas to the UK Government about how it can reform the market. Unfortunately, our proposals for a social tariff have not been accepted by either the previous Government or, so far, the current UK Government.

We also want to see a decoupling of the price of gas and electricity, because it is a false coupling. That would make all the difference.

I would like Scotland to have control over all those levers, Mr Lumsden. I would like my answer to you to be that Scotland can have its own electricity market and all the levers of energy policy at its disposal. However, we are a devolved Government and energy policy is largely reserved. Therefore, the only thing that I can say in answer to that direct question is that the Scottish Government must make its views known to the UK Government, which has control of the levers.

The Scottish Government’s views on these issues are mostly in line with those of the industry.

I do not want to step on the toes of my colleague Fiona Hyslop, so I will outline to Parliament her thinking on that. It points to the importance of cross-portfolio working that I work so closely with Fiona Hyslop on this and on dealing with the reality of what it means to reduce car usage. Before I go into what Ms Hyslop has said, I note that, in rural areas in particular, a lot of people rely on their cars for their everyday lives—for getting their kids to school, caring for elderly parents and accessing their jobs—where there might not be a suitable bus route or any rail infrastructure. With regard to the justness of the transition, we need to take into account Scotland’s geography and the demographics of the people we are talking about.

However, it is perfectly reasonable to say that in cities, where people may have access to better public transport and there are facilities and services within walking distance for those who are able to get there, we could reduce car use. As we have seen, some councils have made decisions on the types of cars that they allow into their city centres—Aberdeen City Council is one example.

On 6 March, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport set out that she is revising the 20 per cent target for car use, taking into account the UK Climate Change Committee advice on the carbon budgets and informed by other relevant evidence, to develop a new longer-term target, the timelines for which are aligned with the climate change plan, and which supports the net zero target.

I point to some of the things that Ms Hyslop has talked about, in particular around EV use. We recognise that, given Scotland’s geography, many people will always need cars. I include myself in that, as someone who has to travel around a rural constituency, but I have an EV. Scotland has one of the most comprehensive charging networks in the UK and, through Ms Hyslop and her officials working with the private sector and the publicly owned charging network, there has been a vast increase in the amount of publicly available chargers in Scotland.

A total of £65 million has been invested to support the development of public EV charging, and we met our target for 6,000 public charge points early: two years ahead of schedule. There are still more charge points appearing; members may see them on their commute home. Dundee has particularly good infrastructure for fast charging, which is a real boost to EV drivers.

A lot of pilot studies have been done on the infrastructure around tenements and flats, which do not have access to their own chargers. In addition, we still have grants available for households that can put in their chargers—such grants were, sadly, scrapped in the rest of the UK. Again, that is another lever that is available to the UK Government; we have kept the subsidy scheme and the grants associated with that in place.

We are the only nation in the UK that has an interest-free loan scheme not just for new EVs but for used EVs. That is very attractive but, as a game changer for the take-up of EVs—I hope that Ms Hyslop agrees with me on this—I would like large employers in Scotland to think about offering salary sacrifice schemes to their employees. That would make EVs very attractive to people; they would almost be buying a car tax free, with a 40 per cent reduction on the car through a salary sacrifice scheme. I think that that would lead to a vast improvement in the take-up of EVs.

Dick Winchester will be delighted to be mentioned in a committee meeting, I imagine.

There has been movement in that space—largely, I think, due to prompting from voices in Scotland saying that that has to happen. There has also been influence coming from other countries that want to import hydrogen that is made not just in Scotland but in the wider UK. However, it is principally Scotland that needs the standards to be bottomed out as part of the plans to export hydrogen. I am very excited about its export, but I am particularly ambitious about its domestic use. Hydrogen is not a silver bullet—there are no silver bullets—in addressing climate change. It requires myriad solutions, and hydrogen is part of those solutions.

You say that I would have had a year to persuade the UK Government to change its view on reform of the electricity market, but I have been trying for nearly three years to get it to do that. Indeed, my predecessor was encouraging it to change the electricity market for years. I really do not think that the UK Government would have said, “Oh, well, there are triggers in place in Scotland now, so we need to step up and change the electricity market in order to lessen some of the fuel poverty implications.”

That reform needs to come now, and I have been continually pressing the UK Government to bring back some of the mechanisms that were discarded in the REMA process. For example, it has discounted zonal pricing and the decoupling of gas and electricity, which would be the major game changer for people and the lever that would make it attractive for households whose boiler has reached the end of its life to switch to electricity or get a heat pump.

We also have to remember that heat pumps will not work in quite a lot of the housing stock in Scotland. I live in such a house—and, believe me, I have had people in.

We need to do what we can to support through grants and loans people who want to make such a change. We already have a good programme of work; we might need to ramp it up, but that will be for future budget decisions.

The fundamental game changer when it comes to the decarbonisation of heat is lower electricity prices, and the market will be created—and boosted—by such an intervention at UK Government level. After all, it is not just Scotland but the whole UK that will have to decarbonise heat. We are talking about the UK’s 2050 targets, too, and its response to the Supreme Court judgment, under which the UK Government has to bring forward what it is going to do.

It is perhaps not universally popular, but I am a big believer in blending a percentage of hydrogen into the gas grid as a medium-term measure. Gas boilers are the majority solution for household heat. We could put 10 or 20 per cent hydrogen into the grid. The concept has been proven by Scottish Gas Networks, which is testing 100 per cent hydrogen. It is also proving that it can do blending.

We come back to the issue of multiple solutions. If we have an onerous solution that is a one silver-bullet-type situation, we will not have buy-in from householders and we will not meet our net zero objectives. We need to make it easy and cost effective for people. I think that reform of electricity wholesale prices is the game changer that will happen.

I leave the detail of the heat in buildings bill to Ms McAllan to take to Parliament.

We fundamentally disagreed that we should have a policy of reducing the herd and livestock numbers more generally. I will set out not just my thinking but the Cabinet’s thinking. I obviously do not make these decisions in isolation; I liaise with the sector and with my Cabinet colleagues, particularly in the rural economy space.

My issues with the policy of having a reduction in the herd are manifold. The implications for the rural economy of not having a meat production sector in Scotland are stark. I do not want to see an end to livestock farming in Scotland; I want meat to be locally produced to high standards of welfare and to be locally sourced and produced with a lower carbon footprint. We are working with the agriculture sector to reduce the emissions that are associated with the life cycle of the beef herd. That has been worked on thoroughly, particularly in relation to reducing methane emissions.

I disagreed with the assumptions and assertions that were made about what land could be used for if not for sheep grazing. Anybody who farms in mountainous and hilly areas would say that it is not suitable for crop growing—that is just a fact. You cannot displace sheep farming with crop growing. You could not harvest crops, so the land would not be suitable.

We also have to recognise that people in Scotland still eat meat. There is a carbon footprint associated with everything that we eat, including the vegetables that we import in winter. People should not really be eating strawberries in December, because heaven knows where they have come from and how many food miles are associated with that—

Phil Raines has just reminded me of a third sector that I had forgotten about: industrial decarbonisation.

The details will be in the climate change plan. I do not have the details with me—we have not published the draft plan yet; we are bottoming it out.

Scotland is already exceeding a lot of its targets for tree planting anyway: the latest figure is that Scotland produces about 70 per cent of the tree planting for the whole of the UK. We are already punching well above our weight in that respect, although we still need to do more. However, it needs to be the right planting in the right places, working with partners who see the benefit of that planting.

No. I am not going to talk about taxation in a climate change plan. We will set out the costs that are associated with the climate change plan and put them in the context of the market creation that is involved and the costs and benefits that are associated with that market creation.