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The cabinet secretary may be aware that Scotland’s environmental watchdog, Environmental Standards Scotland, has raised concerns about the UK Government’s proposed ditching of national air quality laws, saying that Scotland would have no national programme on long-term air quality targets. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the Tories are now the polluters party? Having scuppered the deposit return scheme this week, they are now cancelling action to protect our lungs as well.

If I have time, Presiding Officer, I would be delighted to.

Yes, absolutely. The bus industry has faced a number of headwinds, some of which are being caused by Brexit, and the driver shortage is very much part of that picture. However, fundamentally, where there is not a good reason for services being cancelled and passengers experiencing poor services, we need to hold the companies to account. The bus open data system is a really good way to do that, and I think that that would be welcomed by the traffic commissioner.

Secondly, our buses must be affordable. From subsidies to concessionary travel schemes, millions of pounds of Scottish Government money is given to bus operators. Despite that, private bus operators have recently hiked fares. There has been a 9 per cent increase in Glasgow, a 12 per cent increase in the Highlands and a 15 per cent increase in Perth and Fife.

Earlier this year, the former transport minister, Jenny Gilruth, committed to a review of all public subsidies for bus, to look at how increased conditionality on public funding could improve bus services. Applying conditions to public grants is not new. We need to see conditionality applied to all Scottish Government funding for private bus operators to prevent profiteering, fare hikes and cancellations.

We need to see an integrated ticketing system that allows people to take the bus, train, tram or metro using one ticket or travel card. I hope to see that in the Scottish Government’s upcoming fair fares review.

I do not have time.

There is no long-term future in North Sea oil and gas. Research that was undertaken for the Scottish Government makes it clear that, under all scenarios, the North Sea is a rapidly maturing basin with little prospect beyond the middle of the century. A responsible Government and a responsible Parliament must grapple head on with that challenge and secure a well-managed, supported and just transition for all who work in the sector, and particularly for those communities in the north-east. That also means pushing ahead with site-specific just transition plans for Scotland’s largest industrial polluters, such as Mossmorran in Fife.

The decline in fossil fuels is irrefutable. Our choice now is whether to accept a slow withering of skills and expertise or to grasp the opportunity to maximise the expansion of jobs in renewables and all the supporting sectors. However, the Tories want us to ignore the writing on the wall for fossil fuels. The power over our future still lies in the hands of a UK Government that retains control of licensing and would prefer to sell out the north-east’s chance of a stable transition to maximise short-term shareholder profiteering.

There is no guarantee that an incoming Labour Government would be any better. Keir Starmer’s support for banning new licences for oil and gas in the North Sea is very welcome, but Anas Sarwar has said that Labour might still allow the 500 million-barrel Rosebank field to go ahead. That is an impossible circle to square.

We lie at a critical juncture. Less than two years ago, we all united over COP26 in Glasgow, and we committed to keeping 1.5°C alive. From what I have heard in this debate, there is a consensus—at times an uneasy one—among four parties in the Parliament that we need to move beyond oil and gas and that we can do that in a just way that takes workers with us and puts them at the fore. The only outliers in the Parliament are the extremist Tories, who deny the reality of climate change. However, the time for urgent climate action is now. There is no credible long-term future in oil and gas, and it is our duty as politicians—credible politicians—to map out the alternative.

People who have been campaigning for years to get a deposit return scheme will be, justifiably, incredibly angry and worried about the delay, which has been caused by the utter contempt that is shown towards the Parliament by the Westminster Tory Government. What does the minister say to people who are worried about the likely impact on Scotland’s environment and the impact on our democracy in Scotland?

Will the member take an intervention?

I think that that is a useful contribution from Mr Sweeney. Later in my speech, I will come on to talk about how we need to reform the system so that we have much more public control over and transparency in the way that our public transport is being run in Scotland.

My third point is that our buses must be accessible. That means ensuring two things: that communities have a bus service that they can access and that services meet the needs of all passengers. Rural communities are particularly vulnerable to the boom-and-bust cycle of profit-driven private bus services. From the withdrawal of the X53 service in 2021 to the recent axing of the 155 service connecting Tibbermore residents to Crieff and Perth, cash-strapped local authorities are expected to patch up what is effectively a broken commercial system.

Too often, rural communities are left with no public transport provision of any sort. However, communities such as the Glenfarg Community Transport Group are showing us what can be done. In April, the community group launched bus service 55, which runs on another recently axed route from Glenfarg to Kinross. I am pleased to say that it carried around 200 passengers in its first week. Such community-driven projects show exactly what buses can do when private profit is taken out of the picture. We need to see community transport groups such as that in Glenfarg integrated into Scotland’s bus network.

We also have one of the most expansive concessionary travel schemes in the world, with all under-22s, people over 60 and disabled people benefiting from free bus travel across Scotland, but we must aspire to go further to address the acute transport poverty that is faced by some communities. That means investing in a bus fleet that empowers anyone with a wheelchair, mobility requirements, a baby buggy or a bike to choose the bus, and extending free bus travel to people seeking asylum in Scotland, who are forced to live on only £45 a week—I commend Paul Sweeney’s leadership in that area.

Finally, we need system change, as I said earlier. Our buses must surely now be run in the public interest. Years of deregulation of bus services has left a fragile patchwork of services and operators in which the needs of passengers are secondary. From that broken system, we need to build an ecology of bus travel that shifts the balance of power away from for-profit models towards the public interest.

We already have some of the tools that we need to build this new system. Through the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, local authorities can franchise and set up municipally owned services. Those models will not work for all local authorities, but some of them are desperate to get things moving. Glasgow City Council has already taken its first steps in exploring public control for buses, and Highland Council has invested in a fleet of buses to serve community needs. I hope that the community bus fund will provide a source of start-up capital to accelerate the radical shift in bus ownership that we desperately need to see.

Full transformation of Scotland’s bus services will require significant investment, but Tory austerity has a stranglehold on Scottish budgets. Therefore, it is more important than ever that we consider all possible ways to raise revenue and finance this reform. That means diverting funds from high-carbon road building projects to public transport, putting the workplace parking levy back on to our agenda and using the powers available to introduce local road user charges. We need all members and people across our local and national Governments, in our communities, organisations and passengers to back our buses and deliver the transformation in local bus networks that people in Scotland want and deserve

I look forward to working with colleagues from all parties, the Minister for Transport and communities on the ground to deliver on that ambition. I also look forward to the contribution of other members and the minister in this debate.

I thank the member for explaining some of the challenges with integrating services when we have a very fragmented set of companies running those services.

Does the member acknowledge that, with the benefit of hindsight, the deregulation of bus services in the 1980s was perhaps a wrong-headed move?

The Scottish Greens will be taking that duty seriously.

Will the member take an intervention?