Chamber and committees

I think that Diane McGiffen mentioned the point about the lack of seamlessness between Audit Scotland’s IT and that of the bodies that you audit. To what extent will that continue to be a challenge? Will it get better? It could slow down the auditing process and mean more in-person visits if you cannot exchange online the data that you need, or whatever. Is that a bit of a headache or is it something that will resolve itself as we get into the new normal, which is to work more online?

In previous discussions with Audit Scotland, it talked about the importance of being able to get the taste and smell of an organisation—to use Audit Scotland’s words—when auditing it. Are you confident that you were able to get a taste and smell of Audit Scotland through doing the work remotely, or, in hindsight, do you think that you could have done with going in there and spending time on X or Y, or doing things slightly differently?

Thanks, convener. On that point, to what extent will the change to the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets’ remit—particularly the incorporation of climate change into its remit—make a difference to the way that our whole energy system is regulated and investment is incentivised?

Given what you have just said, Chris, with regard to your analysis, what are the next points that will come to the committee? Earlier, you mentioned the Green-SNP policy programme. Will you do an analysis of that? Will you provide the committee with analyses at other points in the next year, so that we can critically examine the work of Government?

Is that the right balance? A couple of weeks ago, we saw that the UK hydrogen strategy, which mirrors the Scottish Government strategy in many ways, looks at putting 20 per cent hydrogen and 80 per cent natural gas into the gas grid. Are the right policies in place at the moment? Will that build in a dependence? Does that meet your tests?

Thank you—I am a big fan of logic and reason.

I move on to hydrogen. Lord Deben perhaps hinted a bit at the different pathways for development of hydrogen. The CCC said previously that blue hydrogen is

“a necessity not an option”,

but there are concerns that, if we invest too heavily in solutions such as putting blue hydrogen into the domestic heating grid, we could extend the use of fossil fuel reserves and our dependency on them. It is a difficult balance to strike. What are your thoughts on blue hydrogen now? Are we now building in dependency and locking in emissions or is the use of blue hydrogen an effective stepping stone towards green hydrogen and completely decarbonised use of the technology in domestic buildings?

Good morning, convener; it is nice to see you again.

I will pick up on Liam Kerr’s questions about a just transition. In the SNP-Green policy agreement that will be presented to Parliament today, there is a line about better understanding what our fossil fuel requirements will be as we make that transition and how that relates to field development in the oil and gas fields that are already being exploited and which may come under licence.

How would you see such a programme of work to better understand the speed of that transition? How could that be done, and what could be the role of the UK CCC in coming to a conclusion around how much fossil fuel resource we need to meet our domestic needs and how that will change over time?

I have nothing to declare.

Thank you, convener. I congratulate you and Fiona Hyslop on your appointments. I look forward to working with colleagues across the committee. It is good to hear some early areas of consensus emerging.

I served on the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee in session 5. It was a hard-working committee, as you can see from our 119-page legacy report. We faced some particular challenges, and it is good to see that one of the key recommendations—that there should be a dedicated net zero committee—has been picked up on. That is a great first step. It is important that some of the key sectors where we face new challenges in terms of a just transition have been brought into the remit of this committee, and that our remit mirrors the cabinet secretary’s responsibilities.

Members have already spoken about some of the challenges around energy and about the public energy company, which I am also interested in. There are massive issues around how we scale up delivery. Particularly in relation to heat, there will have to be an unprecedented increase in effort and installations if we are to meet the targets and deliver the progress that is needed.

On transport, a few key points have come up. The strategic transport projects review, the national transport strategy and the national planning framework are all hugely important, alongside the climate change plan, when it comes to how we build future-proofed infrastructure that will tackle the climate emergency. It makes sense for us to deal with all of that.

As other members have said, there are a number of other cross-cutting areas that we need to address. I point in particular to the need to work with the committee that has responsibility for farming and land use, because that is another sector where there must be a transition. That process must support farmers and managers, but we need to see cuts in emissions in that sector.

I am interested in how we might work creatively with other committees. For example, we have to think about whether we could appoint reporters or conduct joint inquiries, for which, I think, there is some precedent. In order to avoid the siloed scrutiny that has been mentioned, we will have to work across the Parliament, and we faced some challenges in that regard in the previous session.

Housing and planning are two other areas where, again, we will need to do some further work to get the most out of our time.

I am looking forward to the discussions ahead. We are dealing with the biggest issue that faces us, and we need to tackle it.