Chamber and committees

It is probably fair to say that Emily Nurse was nodding there. I assume that it was in agreement.

Thank you. That brings us to the end of the session. Graeme, I apologise for overrunning; the timescale is marginal, but I apologise for that. I warn all the witnesses that there will be letters in the post to you—not legal ones, but ones that will perhaps ask more questions, and we would appreciate receiving your views. Given the length of this morning’s evidence session, if you think we have missed out some points and you want to add them, please include that in your submissions.

That is helpful. I will ask the first question. Before the sixth carbon budget was set, what role did your committee have in assessing and commenting on it?

Philip, your audio is dropping in and out. We will suspend the meeting briefly and look to our information technology people to see whether we can get a more stable connection.

Jackie Dunbar has been sitting quietly and waiting patiently to ask her questions, so I must ensure that she gets in.

That is interesting. What about the issue of expenditure? It could be quite difficult to see how much money is being spent during the period of a carbon budget on the items that are needed to achieve the target. Is there something that we should be considering in relation to that?

Our next item is consideration of a statutory instrument that has been laid under the negative procedure, which means that it will come into force unless the Parliament agrees to a motion to annul it. No such motion has been lodged. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee made no comment on the instrument.

Since no member of this committee has any comments, I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument.

Members indicated agreement.

Item 3 is evidence on the new Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Bill, which was introduced on 5 September. The bill seeks to amend the current approach to setting interim and annual greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets in Scotland.

The committee has been anticipating the legislation since the Scottish Government’s announcement in April of this year, and we conducted a pre-legislative call for views over the summer recess. I thank all those people who took the time to share their views with the committee. A summary of those views will be placed on our website shortly.

We have two panels of witnesses today. I am delighted to welcome the first panel, which is Dr Emily Nurse, the head of net zero on the Climate Change Committee; Professor Graeme Roy, the chair of the Scottish Fiscal Commission; and Professor David—I am going to get the pronunciation of your name wrong. Help me with this.

Ulph. There we go. I got it right at the second attempt, with a prompt. Professor Ulph is a commissioner for the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Finally, I welcome Professor David Hawkey, who is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research Scotland.

Because there is a group of you, we will go straight to questions, and I will ask the gentle warm-up question, which will be for Emily Nurse first. Briefly, what are your thoughts on the bill as introduced to Parliament last week?

I could not see anything in the financial memorandum on that, but perhaps that will come later. David Ulph, do you want to add anything?