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I will switch to a totally different area: national insurance. Various changes have been made by both the current Labour UK Government and the previous Conservative UK Government in its final couple of years, including tweaks around national insurance. A lot of the chancellor’s changes seem to be driven by the main objective of raising revenue without making the most politically unpalatable income tax changes.

Why do you think that the Government has not touched the upper earnings limit? There could be political pain from any of those options, but revenue could be raised by adjustments to the upper earnings limit. A lot of the other changes that have been made on salary sacrifice will result in a much lower yield for what is probably the same amount of political pain.

Not for the first time.

Thank you very much.

Indeed. Before I start talking about the council tax, I will hand back to you, convener.

What about the question on fuel duty? There will be a gradual reversal of the 5p temporary cut to it, but after that it will still be at 2010 levels.

I will follow up on the point about being able to track from the input to the output, disentangling policies and their impact. I was a little bit surprised by the IFS’s reaction to one particular policy, on road user charging for electric vehicles. If I recall your comments at the time correctly, you welcomed the chancellor doing something in that space, albeit that it was heavily caveated in that she was probably not doing it in the ideal way.

To me, there is quite a disconnect there. There is an argument for road user charging across the board, but if we single out EVs the UK Government’s own projection shows that such an approach will depress EV uptake by about 300,000 or 400,000. That blows a hole in the UK Government’s climate targets as well as in the Scottish Government’s climate targets, both of which are heavily dependent on reducing the use of combustion-engine cars. The Scottish Government had a 20 per cent car reduction target and has dropped that, but it still has the ambition in that space. The chancellor has taken that measure while still freezing fuel duty, effectively. She will gradually reverse the 5p temporary cut from the Sunak Government but, even after that, fuel duty will still be at 2010 levels.

Is there not quite a disconnect there? Okay—that policy will raise revenue, albeit through an administratively complex mechanism, but it will take the Government backwards in other areas where it has put itself under strict statutory obligations.

The graph gets jagged in the way that it is here.

I suppose that goes back to the point you were making to the convener earlier. If the chancellor had just bitten the bullet and made the substantial tax reform that has not been made in 40 years, we would not need to resolve that much bigger question about the interaction of national insurance and income tax.

I appreciate entirely the case that the cabinet secretary has laid out. Like her, the Greens support the principle of an ecocide law but recognise that there are issues that need to be resolved with the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill.

My concern is about sequencing, because the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill might well fall and, by the point that Parliament has made that decision, the consideration of the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill will have already concluded. Is there not an argument for us to collectively come back to the issue at stage 3 to ensure that, at the least, amendments are made to the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill to give the Government regulation-making powers that allow us to do something in the event that Parliament cannot agree to the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill? If we find ourselves unable to resolve the issues with another bill, it would be a shame not to have the opportunity to come back under this bill and create something in a space in which I think there is broad consensus.

I understand, to some extent, where the cabinet secretary is coming from, but my comments are similar to those that Maurice Golden made a moment ago. It is frustrating for the Parliament to be asked to wait again, particularly given that, with some of my amendments, I am trying to rectify a situation that has been out of date for more than four decades now and which gets more and more out of date the longer we wait.

Some of what I propose is very specific and, I would argue, quite minor—for example, giving the marine directorate the opportunity to issue fixed-penalty notices to the charterer or the owner of a vessel, and not just to vessel’s master. Is the cabinet secretary saying that there is no way that the Scottish Government would be amenable to working on at least some of my amendments for stage 3, and that the Government’s position is that they cannot be dealt with in this session of Parliament and must be dealt with in the next session?