Chamber and committees

I appreciate your taking the intervention, cabinet secretary. I do not think that you have acknowledged this yet but, when I spoke to amendment 7, I said that many people had seen the target of a 75 per cent reduction by 2030 as hugely important in signifying the early action that we need to take to tackle climate change. How will that sort of thing work with the carbon budget? How easy will it be for somebody to look at where Scotland is and say whether we are on or off track to meet the 2045 date? Is there a way to articulate the budget in terms of the important milestones that people campaigned for on the streets and which this Parliament delivered? All of that is about the changing date for when we might actually meet the targets.

In relation to the risk, you will understand that there is concern about the panel model, and there is not good evidence that that kind of system has worked well across the United Kingdom. However, your key argument is that going down the panel route reduces the risk of legal challenge. What evidence do you see for that?

Yes—briefly.

Would it not have been better for the Government to have come to the committee today with a far clearer articulation of what will be in the guidance? I know that preparing it would have put a lot of pressure on the minister and officials, but it would have been better to see the guidance. Then we could have made a judgment about whether it offered some reassurance on the integrity of the panel.

I appreciate the minister giving way. It has been a very challenging session.

You are rolling with it; that is great. I have just one point for clarification. Your official mentioned in the earlier discussion that one more piece of legislation is required to bring in the provisions for franchising. I would like to hear a commitment that that work will continue.

I welcome you saying that, even if you do not need to supply the guidance if the SSI is annulled, you will still work on the guidance and it will still be available for the traffic commissioner.

Some of the concerns that are being raised today come down to the independence of the traffic commissioner and their appointment. The minister will remember that the previous commissioner did an interview that appeared to be quite prejudicial towards franchising. That has really riled people, who want franchising to happen because that is in the public interest. What assurances can you give that the incoming traffic commissioner clearly understands their responsibilities and clearly understands that the policy priority of Government and this Parliament is for franchising to work successfully in Scotland, as is the case in Wales, where there has been a strong public commitment to that?

I will come back briefly to the third group of scope 3 emissions, which are the emissions that are hard to measure and that councils do not measure at the moment. There is a question about whether you think it is worth measuring them in the future. I suppose simplistically, it looks as if measuring is worth while in order to create leverage in procurement contracts and other areas. If you do not measure—if you do not have a figure for what the catering franchise delivers, how the social care that you engage with will reduce its emissions, or how the bus franchise will reduce its emissions—what are the levers for contractual obligations and negotiations? Is public procurement so far advanced that that does not matter and we do not need to measure that stuff because it is built into the procurement process and it will always deliver a reduction in carbon emissions, or are we trying to use reporting to strengthen an inherently weak public procurement system in local government?

George Tarvit and Clare Wharmby want to come in.

The examples that we discussed earlier were public transport, social care and catering. Those are big areas of council spend. I am interested in how many councils are currently able or willing to provide that information.

Do you have 14 franchises down there?