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My last question is about the value of having divergence in different markets. Does that come through in the evidence that you get from businesses? Is divergence just seen as a barrier, or do businesses consider that, if there is a different market for a certain product in a particular area, they are responding to local needs? Is there value in that kind of diversity within markets, or is having different markets operating in difference places just seen as a bit of a pain?

This summer, across Europe, we have seen some of the most extreme weather events in history. It is clear to us all that we need deeper, faster action to tackle both the climate and nature emergencies. That is starting to come through now, with the work of this Government, particularly the programme for government and the forthcoming climate change plan.

For example, today’s launch by my colleague Lorna Slater of the biodiversity strategy and delivery plan will unlock huge investment in our land and seas that has not been seen in generations, while the heat in buildings strategy, led by my other colleague Patrick Harvie, will address the vast scale of change needed to make homes warmer, cheaper and low carbon.

I listened to some of the criticisms earlier from Brian Whittle, but, effectively, he is describing an enormous economic opportunity as a problem. He fails to grasp that it is the role of Governments to create new markets and to send clear signals to industry that there are markets that are investable and that can drive progress. That is exactly what this Government is doing. To be honest, who would not want to invest in the heat-pump market across the UK at the moment, because it is clear that it is going to have an incredibly strong future?

There is a need for a wider political reset involving all parties, especially after the wobble on climate policies that we saw across the political spectrum this summer. Therefore, I am really pleased that the First Minister has shown leadership and answered my call for a climate summit to allow us all to address challenges and opportunities together. Climate leadership and the desire for change are also building in our own communities. I also welcome this programme for government’s commitment to roll out climate action hubs, to help communities to lead the change themselves and to build up action programmes in areas such as home energy advice.

We know that a just and fair energy transition is critical to Scotland’s economic future. Offshore and onshore wind energy and solar power will be needed to supercharge our transition, provide secure green jobs and make Scotland a powerhouse of Europe’s green revolution. I highlight the role of onshore wind, because what has been achieved so far in Scotland has been truly remarkable. We have seen a doubling of renewable capacity in the past decade, led by onshore wind, but that needs to double again to meet our growing need to electrify transport and heating and to urgently decarbonise industry.

Sadly, projects have been stifled by long waiting times for consents, while modern, more efficient turbines have faced unnecessary planning hurdles. Therefore, a new sector deal for onshore wind is very welcome. It will help to speed up the consent process and deliver more critical certainty for business. Of course, it is a two-way street—where industry delivers economic growth, it should have a responsibility to share the rewards with communities that host developments. The wind industry also has a responsibility to work with Government to deliver those supply chain opportunities, skills and new jobs. We need that critical partnership.

The onshore wind sector deal will match the ambition with action, working in partnership with business, to drive Scotland forward to net zero. I contrast that with the anti-science, anti-green business position of the Westminster Government, which has effectively banned onshore wind farms in England for a decade. Only two wind turbines were installed in England last year. That is an absolute disgrace, and it is wildly out of step with public opinion. There are young people in England who should have been leaving college and university to start jobs in the wind industry over the past decade, but they have had their career dreams destroyed by the actions of the Westminster Government. The decisions that are made today affect not only current jobs but future ones.

Going forward this year, we will not be taking lectures from the Tories about oil and gas. While they scaremonger about turning off the taps and mass jobs losses, the reality is that the SNP-Green Government values every dedicated worker in the oil and gas industry. We will not leave any oil and gas worker behind in this just transition.

However, given that nearly a quarter of our climate emissions now come from industry, that rapid and just transition needs to happen now, across all industrial sectors. Sites such as Mossmorran in my region in Fife offer exciting opportunities for workers and local communities. We need to get everybody around the table to achieve the just transition and to do it fast.

I welcome the progress that the Government has made around Grangemouth, working with industry on a just transition plan there. However, Mossmorran represents 10 per cent of Scotland’s climate emissions. There are also cement works at Dunbar and other sites of point-source industrial emissions that, with the right partnership approach, could be delivering change and decarbonisation.

The United Nations secretary general has said that, with respect to climate, we need to be doing

“everything, everywhere, all at once”.

We cannot afford to hold back on progress. I will be looking critically at the green industrial strategy and the work that the Government is doing in the run-up to next summer. We need to move quickly on all these opportunities.

This is a programme for government that doubles down on the urgent action that is needed to tackle the climate and nature crises, while at the same time delivering the fair and prosperous economy that everybody deserves. I urge all members, if they can, to unite behind it.

Yes. Political will is a precondition, and that does not exist.

I will pick up on a couple of specific issues. On the deposit return scheme, you say in your response to the committee that

“the Scottish Government was following the agreed and published process to obtain an exclusion to the Internal Market Act ... when UK Ministers intervened and created new procedural steps that are not part of that process”.

Can you go into a little more detail on that?

What is the process? We have just heard that the process for the deposit return scheme was, in effect, being made up as we went along—not by the Scottish Government, but by the UK Government. Is there any certainty as to what the process is now? Is it about repeated meetings between ministerial counterparts who are all trying to win the argument? Is there a point at which things can be escalated, and to whom would they be escalated? Who leads on that? It feels as though we are running out of time with the bill. September is the real deadline, is it not?

Local autonomy and partnership working are obviously critical. However, as a principle, should creative and cultural organisations have a voice in community planning partnerships? Should that be the rule, in terms of individual decisions about what programmes run locally and how funding streams are developed? Should cultural organisations be baked into community planning partnerships?

Is there a balance there, and have we got it right?

You talked about the need to return to a constitutional norm. The evidence that we had from retired former civil servants suggested that the situation that we are in right now is anything but normal. What does that path look like practically? Going forward, what does a renegotiation or a new basis or understanding look like, and how would you get to that point?

I am interested in the detail of how the additional procedural steps were brought in, because I do not think that that has been examined.

I will move on to another issue that the committee has looked at—the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. Cabinet secretary, you have previously voiced to the committee your concerns about the laws in schedule 1 to the bill that might be thrown off the cliff edge. One of them concerns air quality. When the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Net Zero and Just Transition spoke to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee this week, she said that a director general had declined a request to remove from the schedule the relevant laws in relation to air quality, and that she would be seeking to escalate a further request to her ministerial counterparts. She pointed to the fact that you will be leading the work on that. Can you give us a sense of what the process now is? You have made a request to retain the important laws that you do not want to be removed through schedule 1 of that bill. Where do you go now that you have had a flat refusal to retain those laws? What does that process look like?

I am glad that you mentioned WHALE Arts, cabinet secretary, because one of the themes that have come through in the inquiry is the power of such community creative organisations, which are driving and developing community and are hitting a lot of objectives around regeneration, education and inclusion. Those objectives would sit well within community planning partnerships, but another aspect of the inquiry is that we have found that there is a bit of a mismatch there. Cultural organisations and the cultural and creative sector are not always represented in the CPP structure. Do you recognise that? If you see creative organisations as being critical to the delivery of community in place and those wider objectives, how do we embed what the creative sector does much more into the planning structure, where discussions about funding, outcomes and partnership working can be taken at more of a strategic level?