Seòmar agus comataidhean

Despite the huge investment in bus from the Scottish Government, from Covid recovery funding to the extension of concessionary travel, many of our constituents still face poor services. I understand that receipt of the network support grant plus is conditional on operators meeting particular terms and conditions, from freezing fares to protecting service levels. Will the minister provide further information on whether any current recipients of the fund have been penalised for not meeting its conditions?

Grazing pressure from deer continues to halt Scotland’s ambitions to restore native woodland and regenerate our environment. Does NatureScot’s use of powers under section 10 of the Deer (Scotland) Act 1996 this week represent a shift in gear on the Scottish Government’s approach to deer management? What further action is planned ahead of the natural environment bill?

I want to switch to the process of the development and climate proofing of the budget and the implementation of the joint budget review on climate. I welcomed getting the letter yesterday updating us on the progress that the Government is making on that.

I want to ask you about each of the three strands. The first strand that was introduced into this year’s budget is the climate change narrative. I welcomed seeing not just a carbon assessment but much more of a narrative that explains some of the policy choices that were made this year. What are your reflections on that? How might that narrative change in future as more work is done to develop more data?

That would be welcome. Previous committees have looked at the climate change plan and found it absolutely impossible to work out where the cuts in emissions were coming from. At the time, we were told that, because the TIMES—the integrated MARKAL-EFOM system—model that is used is extremely complicated, there are so many interdependencies that it is impossible to work that out. It would be good to have transparency in future.

This area is recognised as being one of international interest. The Fraser of Allander Institute’s report highlighted a number of international examples. Is your department continuing to make connections with other Governments, including the New Zealand Government, about their approach and how we can learn from one another? In some ways, it feels as though we are groundbreaking, yet we are also learning from Governments that have already broken some turf in this area.

In terms of strand 2, the taxonomy feels a bit rough and ready at the moment and it is very much restricted to capital rather than looking at resource spend and what that does. The future taxonomy will be the next big addition to the budget process—the next tool that committees such as this one will have—and it is going to have a greater breadth, covering both capital and resource spend, but what kind of depth can it get into? Will it be possible for us to look at individual capital infrastructure projects and say, “Oh, we can see now not just what the climate impacts will be in terms of construction but what that contributes in terms of net zero”? Will there be a clarity at the appropriate level of budget spend so that we can get our heads around the direction of travel of spending and what the choices have been within that?

I appreciate that the work with strand 2 will be taken forward in strand 3 to give much more granularity. You mentioned the climate change plan and the recommendation from the Climate Change Committee that the next climate change plan, which we will develop this year, should set out explicitly the carbon impact of certain policies. Does that give an earlier opportunity to take things that will go into the draft climate change plan, in particular, and assess those through the budget process?

If the plan has to be very clear about what the carbon impacts of policies will be, surely it would be relatively simple to extrapolate from that and say, “If we are spending on this particular policy in a given year, this is what the climate impact will be.” Does that give us a starting point with the climate change plan this year, whereby we can start to build some of that work into the budget, so that we can see a follow-through from the plan right the way through to spend?

You mentioned earlier the importance of increasing the scale of the roll-out of area-based schemes. How important is the national energy agency in helping to deliver that? Is it possible to accelerate the development of the national energy agency? It feels as though we could be waiting some time before it is up and running to full capacity and it can marshal some of the opportunities that are there for energy companies, councils and the private sector to come in and do things at the scale that we need.

Thank you for the evidence this morning—it has been pretty sobering.

I want to ask you collectively about the policy that your organisations have on reserves. I know that the impact on Creative Scotland’s reserves will be quite big this year, but I am thinking of the policy on reserves more widely. Does the budget, and the headwinds that the cultural sector are encountering, mean that there needs to be a rethink of the reserves policy? Are there particular demands on reserves beyond the budget that organisations will face in the future?

Perhaps Iain Munro can start, and then we will go round the table.

That is useful.

I, too, welcome the opportunity to debate the future of the Caledonian sleeper service. I thank Richard Leonard for securing the slot.

Fundamentally, I do not think that we can deliver a people’s ScotRail without a sleeper service that is fully integrated, operated in the national interest and run by a public company. Like many members, I am uncomfortable that a company that is better known for running detention centres and evicting people who are seeking asylum is currently the operator of a national rail service. I am pretty sure that that on its own is not a valid reason to pull Serco out of the running of the franchise, but I would certainly get a better night’s sleep on the train knowing that it was being run by an operator that reinvested its profits back into the national interest.

A nationalised sleeper service should not just be at the heart of the Government’s vision for rail; it should also be at the heart of its vision for aviation, because there is no credible way to meet our climate targets without a reduction in unnecessary air miles. The number of short-haul flights within the UK and to continental Europe can and should be reduced, and the sleeper service should play its full part in that.

We have already seen rail overtake flying as the most popular mode of transport between Edinburgh and London. Rail’s share of that market rose from 35 per cent before Covid to 57 per cent last year. Rail operators have been smart; they have understood the market well on the east coast and have geared their marketing and pricing to what people now need and can afford following Covid.

There is the opportunity to replicate that success with the sleeper service, but better integration is needed, and that must start with better ticketing and fair fares. With single ticket prices in the hundreds, the sleeper is simply not an affordable service at the moment, so we need to do all that we can to ensure that the sleeper—nationalised or not—is a low-cost option that is competitive with aviation.

Since the Eurostar terminal shifted to St Pancras, there has been the opportunity for seamless connections with Europe for rail passengers coming to and from Scotland. For example, a passenger getting on a sleeper at Inverness has only one platform change to get to Paris, Brussels or now Amsterdam by the morning of the next day, but the lack of an integrated and affordable ticket remains the biggest stumbling block. Therefore, we need to think big. The Irish Taoiseach and the French President have already announced that, starting this year, there will be a combined ferry and train ticket to link the two countries. A big discount for young people should also be a feature.