Chamber and committees

I have a final question about the EU emissions trading scheme. I think that you say in your tracker that you expect the scope of that to be significantly widened. Do you see the UK falling into the same scope, or do think that there might be tensions over aviation or other areas?

Is there a need for that consistency? You mentioned Inverclyde as an exemplar, but does there need to be guidance on the issue to all health boards or is it the responsibility of community planning partnerships? Should there be an expectation on authorities to do that mapping work and evolve the approach?

I see a fuzziness between the boundaries of what projects are doing. They might be delivering objectives in different areas.

I ask Diana Murray for her reflections on that.

That is particularly true with areas such as monitoring and evaluation of projects, and trying to share the understanding of how to do that.

I have a final question, which is a bigger one. The Government has a wellbeing economy bill slated to be introduced in this session of Parliament. Do you have any thoughts about that higher level of governance in Scotland and what could be in that bill to support the sort of initiatives that we are talking about? Is it about having the right kind of indicator? Is it about having a commissioner who can look at the needs of future generations? What would be useful to have at a legislative level to help to drive progress in the area and ensure that we do not forget about this work but prioritise it?

Do not worry if you do not have an answer, because there is time for you to feed into the Government consultations, but I am interested to know whether you have any top lines.

To put it simply, the issue is how we utilise the resources and the advantages that we have with energy in Scotland to maximise the opportunities for green investment here and create a focus under a green taxonomy. Does the potential exist for there to be a divergence or a particular emphasis in Scotland under a green investment taxonomy in the UK?

I will do my best, convener. I appreciate that we are going back to a lot of the fundamental arguments of the scheme that were debated back in 2019, but where will the funding go? Will it be in addition to the funding that councils have already allocated to public transport schemes to make people’s journeys to work easier? Some people will look at this and think, “I might have to pay more money to get to work. How will my travel to work be easier as a result?”

I can see concrete additional benefits such as the acceleration of existing programmes and schemes that councils are considering or bringing in new initiatives such as park and rides or better public transport facilities to make it easier for people, rather than having people think, “This is just another tax that I will have to pay.”

You are getting hung up on the word “modelling”. This is not a simple input-output spreadsheet, in which one puts the cost of WPL in and then gets a kind of output from it. All councils need to consider the experience of places where workplace parking levies have been introduced and need to have detailed discussions with employers that operate in their areas, and with communities, about how the scheme might work.

It is only through doing that work that we will understand the aspirations of employers and whether they might wish to move back to city centre locations that would benefit the local economy and might have lower numbers of parking spaces. We will not put all that data into a spreadsheet and suddenly get an answer. The process requires that discussion with individual employers—that local democratic process—to work out how a workplace parking levy could be introduced.

We have good evidence from places where the scheme has been introduced in England. The quicker we can introduce WPL in Edinburgh and Glasgow, the quicker we will have a solid base of evidence to empower other local authorities and decide whether the scheme is the right thing for them. We can only get to the end of the process by learning through doing and implementing the workplace parking levy on the ground.

I come back to what has changed since 2019. The climate emergency has accelerated, and we in the committee all know how hard it is to bring down transport emissions. The low-hanging fruit is gone; we have to make decisions. The Parliament decided in 2019 to put the levy in as an option for local authorities to deliver.

We also know that congestion is not coming down in our cities, which is damaging not just to our health but to our economy. Seven billion pounds were lost to the UK economy this past year through congestion, which does not benefit anybody—neither the businesses that have concerns about the workplace parking levy, nor any part of our economy or society.

Monica Lennon talks about the decline of bus services. We share some concerns in that area. I see the scheme as a way of investing additional resources and funding to give everybody a much better alternative to the car. That process needs work, and the existing programmes of local councils will not be enough to meet the 20 per cent vehicle reduction—

Yes, if I have time.

I need to make a bit of progress, Mr Simpson.

The purpose of the local transport strategies, which will have to link into the national transport strategy, will be to drive down congestion to meet the 20 per cent vehicle mileage reduction target. The investments that WPL will be used to fund have to be able to meet that target and work with that direction of travel. It is not a money-making scheme, Mr Simpson. It is a tramline-building scheme. It is a cycle lane-building scheme. It is a bus priority lane-building scheme. That is what WPL is for. It is about investing in the future, and it is high time that we got on and delivered it.