Chamber and committees

Do any of the other witnesses want to comment before I hand back to the convener?

Good afternoon, Philip. Thank you for supporting our evidence sessions. As a former committee convener, I feel your pain about getting Government ministers to attend committees. I struggled persistently to get UK ministers to attend Scottish committees.

I was interested to hear about a draft climate change delivery plan being published at the same time as the five-year carbon budget. Are there any health warnings in relation to that? How detailed could it be, given the year-to-year budgets that the Scottish Parliament gets? Would there be an understanding that a draft budget might have to change to a degree because of the uncertainties with the fiscal framework, which we heard about from Professor Ulph earlier?

How much of what you are talking about is related to the five-year carbon budgets, and how much of it is related to the climate change plan that will follow? The high-level stuff might be in the five-year carbon budgets, but the plan needs to contain the day-to-day brass tacks of delivery. Should the committee have as much data on both those things before we consider the five-year carbon budgets?

Is all that doable? I am conscious that projecting what capital expenditure will be required to tackle climate change in Scotland for the next 15 to 20 years is challenging in the first place, given how the Parliament’s finances work. In your earlier remarks, you mentioned the interaction between reserved and devolved spending. Will you say a little more about that?

Is it your underlying point that it is important to demonstrate what the impacts are likely to look like ahead of setting the five-year budget? We are scrutinising the bill rather than that bigger picture. You think that it is about the data that the Parliament should have ahead of those five-year budgets being set. That was a general comment, but is there anything specific that you want to say on that?

I will move to my third question. I will bring in Dr Nurse to mop up on any of those previous points but also to answer my third question, which is on the affirmative procedure. It is a very dry parliamentary point about whether the Government consults on its proposals and then seeks parliamentary approval or whether it lays drafts of secondary legislation, consults on those and then potentially changes that draft legislation based on the views of Parliament and wider society. That would be a super-affirmative, rather than an affirmative, procedure. That is what I was trying to draw you on, Professor Roy.

I see that Dr Nurse wants to come in.

This is not a constitutional point, because it is about the UK Government and the Scottish Government, but it is also about the Scottish Government and local authorities, which also have a statutory role.

Thank you.

To go back to my initial question, does David Hawkey want to comment on the data or information that the Parliament would need to see before it agreed to a five-year carbon budget?

I will move on to the next question, but if you want to mop up any of those previous points, that is fine. The Parliament will have to scrutinise the five-year budgets, which is currently intended to be done by the affirmative procedure. Are you content with that approach, or does it need to shift?