Chamber and committees

On the wider parameters of our report and of COSLA’s response, what was the response from your 31 colleagues about the suggestion that councils were not just responsible for their own properties or their own fleet but were well placed to co-ordinate and facilitate a place-based response to climate change, through co-ordinating sectors that were not part of their direct responsibility?

That leads on to my next question, which is about local franchises—which I assume could include community transport—and the issue of how to support them, and the bus partnership fund. What is your understanding of the interrelationship between those in making the step change that we need? Five hundred million pounds is a lot of money to go into supporting local authority bus services—either local franchises or community-owned buses—but how do we lever it in? It seems that, at the moment, most councils are just doing their scoping exercises on that.

What do you think will happen, or what do you want to happen, to ensure that local franchises can not only exist, but are funded? Can the bus partnership fund do that?

Thank you very much for joining us today.

Clearly respecting the independence of local authorities, the committee’s role was to bring together suggestions that would be helpful for both the Scottish Government and councils. One of the clear points that came out is that it is not going to be all about public sector funding and that we are also going to have to leverage in private sector funding. However, the scale of that is enormous.

For smaller local authorities such as Dumfries and Galloway Council, even your offer for the big infrastructure issues and housing and transport might not collectively be big enough to be attractive for financial investment. The Scottish National Investment Bank will not be able to work directly with you until it has approvals from a number of the market authorities.

What steps have taken place recently to mobilise that? How plugged in are you with the green finance task force in order to make sure that you will be well placed to access the private sector funding that will need to be invested—which we know will be billions—but through a sensible and place-based approach?

Our inquiry was about local government and its partners. As you identified—which is very much also how we see it—a number of partners have to be in this space to make sure that you can lead in your co-ordinator facility, or whatever role you may take in different areas.

In relation to the report itself, you have already indicated that the route map is essential. That was one of our key recommendations, which you probably welcomed. Are any of the other recommendations particularly strong and helpful to your agenda? Also, if you could be quite frank with us, are any of the recommendations that we put forward more challenging, such that you might want to push back on them or, indeed, question them?

Does anyone else want to contribute on the recommendations in our report that you welcome but think might be more challenging for you?

If you could do that—

If you could, we would also be interested in what you see as the advantages and disadvantages and whether you think that there is an adequate system of carbon accounting as part of it. There are advantages and disadvantages, but we need a system that works for the private companies that are doing the investment as well as the geographic space, and one that means that we do not end up with everybody double counting the carbon sequestration. That would be misleading for everybody.

You also mentioned in your opening remarks the importance of building a resilient economy. You may be familiar with the committee’s report “Scotland’s Supply Chain”. We need to build a resilient supply chain not only so that it can withstand risks but so that we address issues such as embodied carbon, carbon miles, smart procurement and advanced manufacturing. We also need to create domestic supply chains that are shorter, greener and more resilient. Is that something that you will look at? If so, will you draw on the committee’s report when you do so?

However, as a UK minister, you are responsible for all the United Kingdom, and it is clear that, on energy policy, the UK Government has a key power in relation to carbon capture, utilisation and storage. Is that the case?

Green hydrogen represents a considerable opportunity, not least because of the extensive renewable energy that can be released from ScotWind and so on. You talked about energy security, which is obviously important not just for the UK, but more widely in Europe. We have been told by industry that the export of green hydrogen represents a real opportunity. How seriously is the UK Government taking the opportunity to export green hydrogen to meet the demand from our colleagues in Europe?