Chamber and committees

I have a question about the older persons scheme. It has been very challenging to get that age group back on to the buses after the Covid pandemic. Is it expected that there will be less of a draw on the budget that has been allocated for that concessionary travel scheme, given predicted demand, or are we expecting people who are aged 60 and over to increasingly get back on the buses in the next year and for demand to rocket up?

Okay, thank you.

It is good to hear about the increased budget for NatureScot and the strategic focus on bringing down consenting times and contributing to that renewables growth.

I want to ask Mairi Gougeon about the pressures on the marine directorate. You talked about the increasing revenue that is coming in through licensing, which is good, but are there particular pressures in relation to the breadth of work that the marine directorate is undertaking now? I am thinking about fisheries and the need to make good on the commitment to introduce a cap on inshore fisheries. That is science based and will require an investment in fisheries science. Will the marine directorate face being particularly stretched in the next year?

I think that it would be useful to have more detail. When I looked at annex J last week, I noted that some adaptation elements are included. For example, I think that £60,000 is being spent on bee health. That is fantastic, but that is in the same pot as the hundreds of millions of pounds that are going towards active travel, public transport and major investment in public infrastructure. The biggest challenge is trying to get a sense of scale and impact, because, at the moment, we have baskets of good things and challenging things.

I will ask specifically about local government. The classification that you mentioned now covers about 81 per cent of our resource spending, but it does not incorporate local government spending, which can be significant in taking us in the wrong direction or in propelling us towards tackling the climate emergency. Will you look at the classification of that spending, or would that require a change in the legislation?

The committee has heard about a lot of innovation from local government, which was certainly not there when we were considering the 2019 legislation. It is work in progress, I guess.

I will move on to strand 3 and the net zero test. We had a very useful discussion in Parliament last week with the Climate Emergency Response Group, which was hosted by Monica Lennon. I think that Mr Raines was there. We were looking at the guts of how the net zero test actually works within Government.

I would like some clarity about where the strand 3 work sits right now. I think the Deputy First Minister told the committee last week that the form and timing of how that work will develop in the future were unclear. Some of your comments in your letter to the committee have been interpreted to mean that that work might not be part of an annual budget process. That was not my understanding of the work that was being progressed; my understanding was that it would be integral. Are you able to explain where we are with the pilots and how the work will be part of the annual budget-setting process? That is surely where meaningful decisions are made.

Do you need more legislation to embed it into the work of Government?

I actually wanted to go back to the bus partnership fund. It is disappointing that the fund has been paused, but my understanding is that it is a pause: the Government has not scrapped it. The intention is to bring it back when capital budgets allow.

My question to the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Net Zero and Just Transition is on what councils and transport authorities should be doing. The funding is not there for this year, but should they continue to develop projects to allow buses priority access, and can that work continue in the next year? There has been a lot of nimbyism in relation to some of the schemes that have been put forward, and it has taken a while for councils and transport authorities to work through objections and that side of things to get to a point where they can put in an application and develop a scheme.

I have a follow-up question about the pipeline of onshore wind projects. It appeared to be quite clear in last year’s draft energy strategy how we would meet the 2030 target for doubling onshore wind capacity—slightly more than half of what we need was in the planning system and slightly less than half of what we need had been consented. I am trying to understand what the big bulk of work for planners is that we do not understand at this point. If that holds true, pretty much everything that we already have in the system will meet the target.

I do not know the extent to which the onshore wind pipeline has developed in the past 12 months since the onshore wind sector deal and whether we are seeing far more applications or whether there has been a reduction. In the draft energy strategy, it seemed that there was certainty about what was coming down the pipeline. I am interested in your perspective, or Susie Townend’s perspective, on whether that has changed in the past 18 months. Clearly, the onshore wind sector deal has been fantastic for the industry and a major thing that the Government has pushed forward.

However, for this year’s budget, the focus is offshore wind and building up the capacity in that supply chain, and that is where the jobs will come from.

I would like to rattle through some questions about the joint budget review with you and your team, Deputy First Minister. I will start by asking for clarity on whether you or the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Net Zero and Just Transition is ultimately responsible for that? We have had correspondence from you and Màiri McAllan.