Chamber and committees

The additional allocation that we have made this year for the tree-planting programme is to see 16,500 hectares of tree planting, which will be taken forward by Forestry and Land Scotland. When you ask me specifically how we are going to achieve that, do you mean in terms of areas or something else?

Based on the budget allocation that we have made for this particular element and the discussion that we have had with Forestry and Land Scotland, the expectation is that it can meet that target of 16,500 hectares.

The public performance measure is not often closely associated with the financing of the frequency of services. It is often affected by the impact of infrastructure failure on the operation of rail services or by staffing levels. I am confident that we have sufficient funding in our resource allocation to allow ScotRail to be able to sufficiently staff services.

However, as the committee will know, historically, infrastructure failure has the biggest impact on PPM. The question might therefore be whether sufficient investment is going into infrastructure to reduce the adverse impact that its failure has on PPM. That continues to be an issue, and my view is that Network Rail can do much more to get value for money from the amount of investment that goes into rail services infrastructure and the costs associated with that. Anyone familiar with the detail about the rail industry knows that infrastructure failure is the factor that has the greatest impact on PPM. Reducing the number of failures requires investment from Network Rail, not just by introducing new technology and updating and digitalising systems, but also by ensuring that there is a proper maintenance programme to reduce the risk of failure.

Is there more that we can do to help achieve the PPM? Yes. Industrial action will be having a big impact on the PPM just now. However, I am confident that we are making enough investment in ScotRail to allow it to operate the level of service that there is a demand for, and also for it to have the staffing levels to achieve that. However, Network Rail could do more to get greater efficiency from infrastructure investment.

Yes; there is no point to having a bus pass if you cannot get access to a bus. I recognise the challenges that communities have. Our rural communities are probably more adversely impacted than some of our urban communities, where there are alternative options. I recognise that.

I made the point that I do not think that the existing model is sustainable, and Covid has brought that into even sharper relief. That is why an alternative approach is necessary, and I think that the powers in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 can deliver a much more sustainable and consistent form of public transport.

If we are to make public transport attractive to people, it needs to be safe, reliable and priced at a level that people feel is affordable. Over the next couple of years, there will be a big opportunity to reset the way in which bus services are provided in the country. From engagement with local authorities, I am encouraged to learn that some of them are increasingly determined to consider how they can change the model that is operating in their area. I think that there is the potential to change quite considerably the way in which services are operating.

Earlier last year, we ran a public information campaign about the range of help and support that is available to people having challenges with their energy bills. Within that, there was provision for energy efficiency measures. It was part of a wider Government programme. What we ran in November was very specifically about trying to create greater awareness of this particular programme, because the level of demand was not in line with what we expected it to be. I do not know why that was the case. It is not that we were doing nothing about making people aware of the help that was available, but we did even more in November and we will do more this year.

I do not know whether it was partly about the timeline between people thinking about the impact and then getting their bills and seeing the impact. In my personal circumstances, there was almost a lag, in that you knew that things were going to become much more expensive before the costs actually hit you. That might have had a bit of an impact, in that people were thinking about it before it happened and then it was possibly not as bad as they thought it would be—I do not know.

However, we had a public information campaign last year, including the website that Shona Robison developed, about the help and support that were available to people in relation to that wider cost challenge on the community side. However, what happened in November was very bespoke and specific in relation to trying to get more people to understand what was available on the energy efficiency side. I hope that that reassures you that it was not a case of doing nothing; it was just that we did something much more bespoke in November because we had not seen the level of uptick that we had hoped for.

We have gone through a period in which, because it is a demand-led budget, demand has not quite kept pace with budget allocation, which meant that the level of demand was not quite using all the budget that was available, whether in the warmer homes programme or the area-based schemes. There are a number of reasons for that. The sector has highlighted to us that a combination of skills and materials had an impact on delivering some of the programmes.

We have tried to raise public awareness. In November last year, we started a publicity campaign to highlight the schemes and increase awareness of how people can access them. Since then, we have seen a bit of an uptick in demand and the industry is trying to develop the breadth of skills that it needs to drive forward some of the programmes. We also plan a further public information programme later this year to highlight to people the scope of the programmes.

The purpose behind the policy is to reduce fuel poverty. The cheapest form of fuel that you can get is the fuel that you do not use, so greater efficiencies are a key part of the policy. Warmer homes Scotland, which is the Home Energy Scotland programme, the Business Energy Scotland programme and the area-based schemes are all about reducing energy demand and making properties more heat efficient. That will continue to be a priority during the coming years, not just this financial year, given the need to reduce fuel poverty and the demand for energy.

I have made broad mention of skills and materials. Part of the issue around materials is a result of the closedown in some areas during the pandemic and, as demand has started to increase, there have been challenges in accessing some material. However, that is not so much of an issue now.

The other issue is access to skills. There is no doubt that there is a real constraint on labour in the sector. I think that I might have told the committee before that, from a discussion that I had with one of the companies that are involved in the area-based scheme in the central belt, it is clear that it is really struggling to recruit the staff that it needs to roll out the programme even faster. The principal reason for that is because the company lost access to a significant number of staff from eastern Europe.

The company has an apprenticeship-based scheme through which it trains people, and the hope is that they will stay in the industry. However, the company flagged to me—I will paraphrase what I was told—that, even were the budget to be doubled, the company would not be able to utilise that as it does not have access to skills, despite the training that it is doing and its work with industry, because it has lost access to labour from eastern Europe. That constraint has had a direct impact on the company. That is a fact; there is no getting away from that.

We must work with the training organisations, the industry and our colleges to make sure that we are focusing on the skills that are necessary to support those industries. However, labour constraints is still a significant issue.

That was a good piece of work, although it has taken some time. It was led by the Fraser of Allander Institute and it is a joint piece of work between Government and Parliament. I am keen to make sure that, across Government, there is much greater transparency around spend on meeting our climate change targets. In this year’s strand 1 work, if you take the carbon taxonomy that has been used, you can see that the proportion of spend on low carbon has increased while the proportion of spend on high carbon factors has declined. We are starting to get greater transparency around that.

That is the challenge for the high-level strand 1 work that we have this year. That provides a bit more detail, in overview, of how we are spending our resources in tackling climate change. Strands 2 and 3 will give us much more detail and will also make it more bespoke to individual portfolios.

I am conscious that a lot of the burden falls on this committee when it comes to climate change. However, I would have thought that the Economy and Fair Work Committee would have a particular interest in what is happening in the economy portfolio on investing in tackling climate change—likewise, other portfolios. It is important that we get strands 2 and 3 delivering that level of detail, so that individual committees beyond this one will be able to see more clearly exactly what an individual portfolio is doing to deliver on our climate change targets, and how it is investing in funding to support that.

That is what strands 2 and 3 should help to deliver. I think that strand 1 has been helpful in being applied to this budget, but there is clearly more that we need to do. That will be done over the course of the year.

Just to be clear, we are providing £62.5 million to support bus services. Within that there is £1 million in resources and £5 million in capital to support councils to explore providing bus services in their areas.

I would like to have seen faster and greater progress. Bus is the most flexible form of mass public transport. It is a very flexible resource and real priority for us, as reflected in our policy programme. However, it is important that we allow local authorities to consider what is the most appropriate model for their area. Something that works in a big urban area might not be effective in a more rural area.

There are several different options available to local authorities. One model that some local authorities are interested in is franchising: having a franchise service in the local authority area would allow the authority to set out the services that it wants, their frequency and the fare rates. It would give local authorities much more control and remove the need for them to own and run buses, although they would control the service. That takes away a lot of the capital cost that is associated with running a service. We need to allow local authorities the space to identify what would be the best way to go about that. The funding that we are providing is to support the development of some of that work.

It is fair to say that the bus industry is going through a really difficult time because of Covid, and that patronage levels have not fully returned to their previous levels, which is causing financial challenges. It is in all of our interests to find a more sustainable approach. If you were to ask me whether the current model is working in our interests, I would say that it is not. That is why the provisions were put in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 in order to give us options. I would like to see some of those options being developed and becoming active models that are being used. I hope that we will start to see that happen over the next couple of years.

We have more than 3,000 public charging points in Scotland, which does not include the number of private charging points. There will be several thousand private charging points, including those that have been put in at workplaces and so on, which are not part of the public sector network. There is a distinction. The 3,000-plus figure relates to public sector charging points. I do not know what the figure is for private sector charging points, but several thousand on top of that will be available. That is a growing network as well.

We have committed to doubling the public sector charging network from the 3,000-plus units that we have at the moment to more than 6,000 units over the next couple of years. We have allocated £30 million to support that and we are working with the private sector to lever in an additional £30 million to deliver that expansion of the network. A combination of further private sector investment, which will continue to grow, alongside the public sector investment in the public charging network will give us sufficient coverage for the charging network overall.

I have heard a number of times the figure of 30,000 charging places that the CCC believes is necessary. I am not entirely sure how that figure was arrived at. However, we believe that a combination of public and private investment will provide us with sufficient coverage, alongside encouraging people to make greater use of public transport.