Chamber and committees

I will not answer on that particular point, because I do not know for sure what that scrutiny is. I would need to get back to the committee. We can have a discussion about that—maybe that is an area in which we can improve.

I want to talk about the practicalities of the independent review and what Mr Harvie is suggesting. The tight timescales for publishing the budget would not allow time for an independent review. Obviously, there is a window between the UK budget being announced and the Scottish budget being finalised. In practicality, the current carbon assessment work that is associated with the budget would be finalised only about 48 hours before the budget is announced in Parliament and published. That is the timescale that we are working with. I do not see where we would have time for an independent review of that work. Even if the information could be shared with Parliament, when would that independent review take place?

As I said at the outset, I understand the sentiment behind requiring more information, and I would like to work with Mr Harvie on how we can strengthen that.

I am sorry to end on a negative note, but the Government cannot support amendment 21. Sorry, I mean amendment 51—it has been a long day.

Amendment 51 would make all ancillary regulations, no matter how minor, subject to the affirmative procedure. Even something as simple as swapping the words “Scottish carbon budget target” for “interim target” in an SSI would take up more parliamentary time, including in committee.

Section 5 follows the standard model that has been used for all ancillary powers for several years, with the affirmative procedure applying to regulations that modify primary legislation and the negative procedure applying to everything else. That long-settled approach respects the balance between the importance of parliamentary oversight and the proper use of parliamentary time. It is also the approach that the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has endorsed generally, as well as specifically in relation to this bill, as that committee outlined in paragraph 47 of its stage 1 report.

I urge the committee not to support amendment 51.

I recognise that amendment 19 cannot be voted on today. The Scottish Government supports amendments 20 and 58, but cannot support amendments 22, 25 and 26. I am pleased to have worked with Sarah Boyack on amendment 55, and she has my commitment to lodge a small stage 3 amendment to tighten it up. I appreciate her co-operation with me on that, which has been great.

Amendments 55 and 22 would set different deadlines in relation to the first climate change plan. We have had a bit of debate on that, and amendment 55 is coming out as the preferred option, which I am very pleased about.

To continue on amendments that are linked to when a climate change plan would be produced, I cannot support Mark Ruskell’s amendments 25 and 26, as they would require a preliminary version of the draft climate change plan. My phrase “draft of a draft” has been used quite often. To produce them only to those timetables would sow confusion.

I am very conscious that, while we are engaged in the detail of the work, wider civic Scotland would not want to see an endless stream of drafts and interim plans. The options that have been discussed with Sarah Boyack and Monica Lennon are far preferable. The information that I have said I will produce in relation to amendment 53, which Graham Simpson moved earlier and which was voted on, will help that process.

Amendment 19 calls for

“public consultation to inform ... a climate change plan”.

The Government does and would do that anyway, but I have absolutely no objection at all to that being formalised. I know that we cannot vote on that amendment today, but I would have supported it if its subsection 2 had not been in it—I think that that subsection would require a financial memorandum. I say to Mark Ruskell that we could work with him on something ahead of stage 3.

I have absolutely no difficulty with amendment 20, which will formalise wider engagement on climate change plans with particular groups that the Government is already meeting and collaborating with in the regular course of business. I am very happy to support that amendment. There is a minor technical issue with the way that it refers to section 9 of the 2009 act, so I might come back to amend that at stage 3, but I can discuss that with Mr Ruskell, as we go forward.

Finally, I welcome amendment 58 from Monica Lennon, which would set the timescale for the Government to respond to parliamentary views on the draft climate change plan.

We will not support amendments 15 and 16, because they would set annual targets for 2030 and 2040. The Climate Change Committee has already made it clear that carbon budgets are preferable to a system of single-year targets. That is the approach that all other Governments across the UK take. I cannot support the amendments, because retaining single-year targets alongside carbon budgets would do the opposite of providing the clarity that is needed at this important juncture.

Thank you, convener.

Thanks for the opportunity to discuss the improvement plan that we laid on 3 September. We welcome Environmental Standards Scotland’s report on the support for local authorities in delivering their climate change duties. It is clear that local authorities play an absolutely critical role in tackling the climate emergency. The report’s recommendations were thoughtful, and we have worked constructively with ESS since it made them and, indeed, have resolved the majority of them.

One area that we have not been able to accept in full is, as the committee knows, the pathway proposed in response to the recommendation on making the reporting of scope 3 emissions mandatory for local authorities. As our plan sets out, there are technical and resource challenges with regard to reporting all categories of scope 3 emissions, which I recognise account for a significant proportion of local authorities’ emissions.

I hope that the committee agrees that the improvement plan sets out a phased and proportionate approach that will help improve the information available to support local decision making on reducing emissions. At the same time, the plan avoids placing an unreasonable additional reporting burden on local authorities, one that might not actually drive action.

I thank COSLA and local authority officers for their valuable input in developing the improvement plan. Our reporting duty has helped drive climate action and enables the tracking of progress across the public sector. The actions set out in the improvement plan seek to enhance reporting by local authorities and to help accelerate action without, as I have said, putting an undue burden on them.

Thank you, convener.

You say that that is an easy question, but the answer is actually quite complicated. There are obvious benefits to reporting any emissions, including scope 3 emissions, which account for about 70 per cent of the emissions arising from the work that services do. The benefit of putting in place a system that monitors and measures such emissions is that it could allow local authorities to make more informed decisions about, for example, what they procure. At the same time, it would have to be done in a way that ensured that they were not having to measure absolutely everything to the nth degree, as that would take away from the actions themselves and, indeed, the capacity required to deliver on them.

I was struck by what the previous panel were saying about the fact that just talking about reporting on scope 3 emissions has engendered conversations with their supply chain and people with whom they have been working with for many years about their carbon footprint and what they do. It could have a positive domino effect in that respect. After all, local authorities are among the biggest procurers in any country. If Governments and Parliaments are starting to talk about measuring scope 3 emissions, even our having that conversation at the moment is probably making suppliers think, “How do we measure our emissions? What can we report on? When we bid for a contract, what can we say about what we are doing to reduce our carbon footprint that might make us more attractive?” If local authorities are looking at their scope 3 emissions, that might make suppliers start to look at their own carbon footprints and put in that sort of information when they bid for contracts. It could have a big domino effect.

Not if it is worked through. A focus group is going to be put together that will have all the experts in the field and work with local authorities on what is required. We will then have to commission larger pieces of research to inform what happens as the methodology is put together.

At the moment, our colleagues in the—[Interruption.] I am sorry. Is it climate improvement Scotland?

The members of your previous panel were entirely accurate: we cannot tell. We come back to the fact that, until the methodology has been bottomed out, we will not know what kind of training will be required in relation to that methodology. It will be necessary to assess the systems that the local authorities already have and how much of a step change it would be to put in new systems, what those systems would cost, what training would be associated with that and what capacity the relevant departments would need to have.

We need to go through the process that we have put in train, which involves the focus group that is comprised of various academics and experts in the field, to bottom out what the methodology could look like and to do that wider piece of research. At that point, we would have to say to COSLA and local authorities, “This is what has come back from the focus group. This is what has come back from the research. How feasible is this, given your current capacity? How feasible is this, given the expertise that you have available within your organisation? Would your current systems support such reporting and the methodology for that?”

At the risk of quoting Silke Isbrand too much, she kept on saying, “How long is a piece of string?” That is the territory that we are in here. The methodology must come first, and then we will be able to work with COSLA and local authorities to answer your question.

I do not have the information in front of me. It is a perfectly acceptable question, but I do not have the information. To my knowledge, they have not.

That is quite easy to answer because, with the exception of the scope 3 emissions part, everything in the ESS report made absolute sense. It was great to see that the report was looking at particular sections of Scottish society such as local authorities where there is an awful lot of procurement and buying power in relation to a lot of services and goods, and was asking whether the legislation and the compulsions are fit for purpose, given that we have a net zero target for 2045, and what more we can do to accelerate action around mandating that organisations create climate change plans, and monitoring their work on that.

We were grateful for the recommendations—that is why the service was set up after Brexit, so that we had environmental standards that were being looked at by an independent arm’s-length body that could make recommendations to the Government and Parliament, and I think that it did its job well. The scope 3 emissions situation is tricky, but it is right that that was there, because all Governments need to think about that.