Seòmar agus comataidhean

Yes, thank you, convener. I will be very brief.

I am very pleased to be here this morning as the committee continues to take evidence on its inquiry into air quality, and I welcome the opportunity to try to highlight the wide range of policies and initiatives that the Scottish Government and our partners are implementing to further improve air quality in Scotland. Things have improved markedly in recent years and Scottish air quality, in particular, compares well with that in the rest of the UK and the European Union.

I expect that we will get into some of that but, just on that point, I am really pleased to be able to say that, for the first time outside of recent lockdown periods, there are no monitoring sites in Scotland exceeding air quality objectives. We referred to that in our improvement report in response to Environmental Standards Scotland, but at the time, we had to caveat it, because the figures had not yet been quite ratified. They have now been ratified and the position is confirmed, and I think that it shows that the actions that we are putting in place are delivering for the people of Scotland.

However, as our knowledge of the effects of air pollution on human health continues to develop, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to build on those successes, never be complacent and continue to drive down air pollution. That is what we are doing. Indeed, as we have set out in our improvement plan, we welcome and accept all six recommendations from ESS.

In May 2022, low-emission zones were established in Scotland’s four largest cities, which is a key initiative in improving urban air quality. We are also taking forward many of our actions under our cleaner air for Scotland 2 air quality strategy. Finally, I would just add that Scotland was the first country in Europe to include in legislation the WHO 2005 guideline value for fine particulate matter, which of course is a pollutant of particular concern to human health.

All of that is helping support our vision of a Scotland with the best air quality in Europe, a quality of air, of course, that aims to protect and enhance human health, wellbeing and our environment.

One of the examples that I pulled out in response to Jackie Dunbar was the updating of guidance, which supports local authorities in meeting requirements under the 1995 act. We have made changes in response to ESS, but I also point out that our cleaner air for Scotland 2 strategy already contains a commitment to establishing a working group to look specifically at some of those questions. In that group, we worked very closely with local authority representatives and SEPA, and it was an appropriate forum for discussing a lot of the issues.

I suppose that there are two quite simple responses to that question. First, it was a case of making a judgment about the appropriate balance to be struck between making changes and giving them the opportunity to bed in and monitoring them thereafter. Secondly, the approach aligns with the same judgment that we made in the cleaner air for Scotland 2 strategy that five years was the appropriate time for that to be done. We believed that it was the same thing here.

SEPA is an independent environmental regulator and it is very important that I do not encroach on its discretion when it comes to using its powers. Our concern is to ensure that it is empowered in the correct way by ensuring that the legislation is correct, that supplemental guidance is where we want it to be and that funding is in place. Incidentally, SEPA has assured us that it is able to fulfil additional requirements on it as part of our improvement plan, within existing budgets.

I suppose that the point particularly comes to mind when we consider the recommendation for a monitoring body. I am sorry, but I did not catch the earlier discussion—I was caught up in other things—but we considered closely whether an additional body was required. Looking to the Environment Act 1995 and everything that SEPA is empowered to do, our view was that it was not appropriate or justified to have an additional body, because the underpinning legislation is there. For example, in section 85, there is a whole list of powers that SEPA has. I do not want to read them all out, but it can carry out an air quality review and an assessment, and it can make an order designating an air quality management area, revoke an air quality management area order, prepare an action plan, modify any action plan and implement any actions in an action plan. Those are wide-ranging powers.

I take on board ESS’s comments—I think that it said that we need more than an administrative body or administrative functions. That is not personally how I see the environmental regulator operating. It is a great deal more than that.

Of course. I see our job as to absolutely make sure that everything is there to facilitate the regulator to make the decisions as it sees fit. We have made changes. I cannot find it just now, but we have changed the guidance so that SEPA’s enforcement powers should be used as a matter of course when a local authority is failing manifestly to complete its obligations. I think that that is right, and I see that Andrew Taylor agrees. That was a change in the guidance from something that was more case by case. We are looking for ways to strengthen our expectation, but I cannot encroach on SEPA’s judgment on environmental issues.

I suppose that the previous example that I gave is one of the key ones that I would draw out. Members of Parliament and others have raised a concern about SEPA’s readiness to use the powers that it has. As the Government, we have at our disposal things like the guidance—as I said, we have strengthened that in places where we felt that we were able to do so. That should make a difference but, as I said, we are doing so without encroaching on SEPA, not just for reasons of its discretion and flexibility, but because it has the expertise to make the judgment, which the executive is not placed to have.

There are a few things there, and I do not want to forget to come back to any of them. First, on whether there is an understanding of what is already covered, as part of a review of data that we were undertaking as part of CAFS2—ESS noted in its report that we were undertaking that—we worked with SEPA to produce a data sheet showing exactly where all the monitors were, including the automatic ones and the diffusion tube monitoring locations, and to note against that where there had been any breaches. Therefore, we have that data. We have about 100 automatic monitors and about 1,100 diffusion tube monitoring locations.

Talking about who has the expertise in all of this, when I speak to officials, they tell me that, for the first time out of lockdown periods, at none of those 100 monitors are the objectives being exceeded. My question to them is, “Can I have confidence that that represents the spread of experience in the country?” In layman’s terms, how I think of it is that the monitors are placed in the areas where we expect air quality to be the worst—where we expect the highest coincidence of poor air quality with people being present. Some of those will be schools. When I am told that we are not exceeding objectives at any of the monitors, which are in some of the most problematic locations in the country, we can confidently expect the rest to be a more positive picture. That gives even greater credence to the position that we are not exceeding the objectives.

Vincent McInally has just told me that he is not placed to discuss bus policy. Moreover, we are not really here to discuss the impact of the loss of local services. However, in so far as the issue has been brought up in the context of LEZs, I would say, first of all, that the commercial decisions made by bus operators are not something for which the Government is always directly responsible. We do assess transport emissions and, indeed, have done so as we have developed our policy to reduce car kilometres driven or to phase out, as we have pledged, petrol and diesel vehicles by a certain date. In all of that, we monitor travel patterns very closely, and the availability or otherwise of public transport is very much part of that.

You will forgive me, as I do not know the exact details of the case that you have highlighted. I suspect that I will come to look at it as I get into the transport brief more fully, but the fact is that local operators make decisions for their own reasons and not always on the basis of emissions reduction requirements.

I have mentioned the national exemptions that we have; the exemptions in the cities will be up to the local authorities. I cannot think off the top of my head whether there are any hospitals in any of the one-square-mile low-emission zones. [Interruption.]

There are no hospitals within the low-emission zones, as far as we think off the top of our heads, but we can confirm that in writing with the committee.