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At some point, the Climate Change Committee indicated the need for a 20 per cent reduction in private car use. That then points in the direction of the real need for reliable public transport infrastructure that you have mentioned. There are certainly challenges there. I take public transport to and from work. Sometimes a train is cancelled and I have to take the bus instead, as happened last week. The bus was late initially because the driver hit traffic coming out of Aberdeen, which meant that he had to have a longer break when he reached Inverness, which then meant that the bus was 40 minutes late overall. I am used to that. However, if people have to choose between the convenience of either getting in their car and getting home or waiting for a bus on a cold night, there is a difficulty there.

Are the roll-out and potential expansion of the under-22 bus pass scheme helping? The aim is to get young people used to using public transport and understand that it is reliable to a point, even if it is not 100 per cent reliable.

Thank you for that clarity.

Craig Hatton talked about the need for investment in this area. Are we making the best use of the Scottish National Investment Bank? Could it support the funding of retrofitting social housing stock? The money needs to come from somewhere and it could end up coming from people’s rent increases, which would be terrible in many situations. Could we get investment from the Scottish National Investment Bank in the form of a long-term loan? Can local authorities tap into that?

I have a couple more questions to ask, and I will give you a little hint about them. I will ask one question on waste outcomes and another on transport—which we have touched on already, but I would like to explore a bit more—and on renewable energy.

Have you a sense that the draft plan gives clarity on what will be expected of local authorities in delivering outcomes on the waste aspect and on how that work will be resourced?

So we are winning on waste in general.

Earlier you spoke about a farm—not the Ayrshire solar farm, but a community one—where they had a date that was shifted from 2028 into the 2030s and then back to 2030. Were you, or they, able to scrutinise why that change happened? Can we get to the bottom of why National Grid is being so—

Craig Hatton, the question is being passed to you.

Does anyone else want to come in?

I will bring in Evelyn Tweed to go deeper into funding, skills and capacity.

We are going to move on. You started to touch on the regional partnerships, which is an area that Alexander Stewart is curious about.

I want to pick up on a number of things. I remind us all that we are talking about the climate change plan and about what the committee can recommend that the Government needs to do—one question is what we can recommend on your behalf. If people pulled their answers back to what needs to change in the plan in general, that would be super.

On the car share piece that Clare Wharmby brought up, the Government’s just transition transport plan says that it wants more car shares, but I was involved in a car share scheme that had to wind up a year ago in October for insurance reasons. Craig Hatton talked about physical infrastructure, such as the grid, but we need to ensure that other kinds of infrastructure are in place so that we can carry out the climate change plan.

Another thing that has been sitting with me in the conversation, which Craig Hatton touched on, is the idea that social care is with us, whereas people are just starting to get climate change. However, climate change is with us. I am a member of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee and I know that, if you come into contact with farmers or people who work on the land, they are really seeing the flooding, drought and wildfires—they are at the front end of that. That is filtering through, and more people are understanding that we are in the midst of a climate emergency—it is here with us.

Clare Wharmby talked about the need to involve communities that are getting left behind, but a bit of a message seems to be entering this space that we do not need to deal with net zero, yet all of us who are in this room today and all the people you are representing today understand that we absolutely need to deal with it.

I will ask a general question before we move on to specific policy areas. In your responses to the next questions, will you give your thinking on how we can support the Scottish Government to run with this? I do not know whether this might involve the Scottish Climate Intelligence Service, but what do we need to do to bring more people on board with recognising that we are in the midst of climate change? It is not starting—we are in it and we should have been taking action 30 years ago. The situation is so difficult now because we are having to act all of a sudden. In my region, Highland Council is dealing with so many wind farm applications, and people are—understandably—distressed by the intensity of what needs to happen.