Chamber and committees

I will move from water to air. The committee did an inquiry on the back of ESS’s first air quality report. I note that you have now produced a subsequent air quality report, which recommends the adoption of the World Health Organization’s very stringent limits for particulates. That was not an improvement report on the Scottish Government, so I am interested in what that report’s headlines are—the top asks—and also what the conversation with the Government on air quality now looks like, given that you have, in effect, produced an advisory set of recommendations with a slightly different status to the first report on air quality.

I was going to ask about how long the older and disabled persons scheme has been in place, how many times the cap has been breached, and what happened, but I think that Bettina Sizeland—

This is obviously an issue of great public concern, and I note the number of submissions that ESS has received. The primary focus of those submissions has been SEPA’s discretion under the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 to regulate in that area and take enforcement action. Can you give the committee the top line from your investigations and spell out the next major steps for regulators and others in that area?

Are you talking about CSO monitoring?

What practical changes are needed on the ground? Is it greater regulation of traffic and of wood-burning stoves, for example? Will a lot more work need to be done in terms of the Government and stakeholders coming up with an action plan to make progress towards a much more stringent WHO target, or is it pretty clear what the next steps will be?

Could the Scottish Government fill the gap unilaterally, or would it have to work within the UK framework?

Could you stay with your crystal ball for a minute, minister?

Scotland is trailblazing here. There are not, to my knowledge, any other countries in Europe that offer a free travel for young persons scheme.

I want to ask about a potential extension to the scheme to people who are in the asylum system. We have heard about the benefits for young people. Young people who are asylum seekers are currently using the young persons scheme and people who are eligible are using the older and disabled persons scheme. However, the Government made a commitment to extend concessionary travel to everybody who is languishing in the asylum system in Scotland. It might be a bit early to say, but would those people fall under an extension of one of the concessionary schemes or would it be a bespoke card or something separate to the current concessionary travel legislation that would enable them to get on the bus? I think that the commitment was that every asylum seeker, regardless of age or disability, would be able to access free travel because of the crushing circumstances in which they find themselves.

I am trying to get my head around how this will incentivise industry to electrify—hopefully—and move away from oil-powered systems. Does the exemption act as an incentive or is it more about reducing the costs to industries that already have high electricity costs rather than about fuel switching or decarbonisation plans and that kind of thing?

Yes, I get that. I am trying to work out how the exemption helps industry to make the investments that it needs to make to reduce energy costs or to switch to low carbon sources. The original UK policy was called the “British industry supercharger”. How does all this help to supercharge industry in the transition to reduce energy costs and move into a low carbon space? At the moment it seems to be saying, “This is all quite expensive. Let us not put more costs on,” but what is the solution to that? Surely, it is reducing energy and investing in the future.