Chamber and committees

I welcome the broad intention of the instrument, particularly given the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—and the commitments that were made around methane reduction, and also the need to improve the ecological condition of our fresh water resources.

My slight concern with the instrument is about the choice of cut-off point for transitional arrangements. Larger farms will have to move quickly in dealing with slurry in a more responsible way but, for smaller farms, there will be a delay. There will be a transitional period of up to five years, with the regulations not really taking effect until 2027. That leaves us just three years before we are meant to meet the 30 per cent methane reduction target.

I do not object to what we have before us, but I would like to find out more information from the Scottish Government about where it drew the line in allowing smaller farms to adapt over a much longer period. More information would be useful to understand the Scottish Government’s thinking on the matter, and to understand which trade bodies and others the lobbying came from.

Is there any potential threat from the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, or will we move towards alignment of regulations across the UK? Are any industry sectors or players still holding out for a market for drinking straws or anything else?

Will the member give way?

Post COP26, this is a critical time at which to double down on the climate science while ramping up action on a just transition. Of course, the oil and gas corporations have funded climate denial for decades, so it is no wonder that recent polling shows that the majority of the public do not trust them to lead the just transition.

However, the oil and gas workers deserve our respect, support and solidarity for the huge contribution that they have made to our energy needs since the 1970s. Those workers should be the people who lead the just transition, but for years they have faced uncertainty in a boom-and-bust sector.

Despite the UK Government’s having donated an eye-watering £13.6 billion of tax subsidy to the oil and gas sector since the Paris agreement was signed, major job losses continue; there have been more than 10,000 jobs lost in the oil and gas sector in the past year. That is in a sector that directly employs just over 30,000 people. Nearly three quarters of workers in it are now employed ad hoc, as contractors. It is no wonder that, in a recent survey, more than 80 per cent of oil and gas workers said that they would consider moving to a different sector, with over half of respondents being interested in renewables and offshore wind. Job security was cited as the biggest factor in that survey.

The UK policy of maximum economic recovery of oil and gas does not help with the just transition. It postpones action, drags investment away from renewables and creates a future cliff edge for workers. It also critically undermines the global UN climate negotiations, making it impossible to ask countries to adopt the language of phasing out coal when we will not phase out our own oil and gas.

That policy of maximum economic recovery could lead to a future sudden collapse in jobs, should climate impacts lead to a high carbon price shutting down production. If we can learn anything from the Tories’ brutal dismantling of the coal industry in the 1980s, it is that such sudden collapses punish communities for generations.

I do not have time, unfortunately.

It is absurd to say that stopping the Cambo field would mean turning off the taps on North Sea oil and gas and lead to that kind of unmanaged collapse. There are already 6.5 billion barrels of oil in more than 200 already-licensed fields in the North Sea. That is enough to see us through years of energy transition. It is clear that Cambo would be disastrous. The emissions from burning all 800 million barrels of oil in the field would be 10 times Scotland’s annual emissions and would last well beyond 2045, when we are meant to be a net zero country.

Where would the jobs from Cambo be? Siccar Point Energy has said that the engineering and construction work would be outsourced to a firm that is based in Singapore. The operation is designed to need just 100 to 150 staff, who could end up being drafted in from anywhere in the world.

Calling a halt to Cambo and other new fields is the start of a managed transition rather than the start of a future that is based on the economic chaos of stranded assets that we cannot afford to burn. There have been years of warnings—from those by Mark Carney to the ones from the International Energy Agency—about exactly that scenario.

The announcement of the turbine tower factory at Nigg last week was a hugely important step. It needs to be the first of many more announcements that build a high-value supply chain in Scotland with good-quality and fair jobs.

The just transition must follow the climate science, but it must be designed by the women and men whose livelihoods depend on its success, instead of our listening wholly to corporate boardrooms, which have continually let workers and our climate down for many years.

I will stay with Mr Leheny. Looking forward, do you see trade barriers going up across Europe and Ireland and the UK, or do you see them going down? We had evidence that suggested that, for example, a common veterinary area might be created, which would help with transportation of animals across Europe and the regulations associated with that. That would be outside and inside the European Union. What picture do you see going forward?

We are also concerned about the domestic regulatory agenda. We have the protocol on one side and the internal market act on the other. How is that affecting the discussion of domestic legislation at Stormont? Is there a nervousness about innovating? For example, we have had a discussion in Scotland about banning the sale of peat products. Is there a concern that any kind of innovation from Stormont might be caught between alignment with the EU and potentially falling foul of the internal market act?

Dr Melo Araujo, do you have any comments on that?

In many of the answers, our witnesses have touched on some of the questions that I was going to ask about interparliamentary scrutiny. Is there anything that you would like to add on that? We have a written submission from the Institute for Government that suggests having policy-specific chairs forums to mirror interministerial groups. Could that work for the circular economy or other areas where there are frameworks? I do not know whether the panellists have any more thoughts on what that architecture of scrutiny might look like.

As it seems that Professor Hunt and Professor McEwen have nothing to add, I will move on.

Your written submissions make a strong point about the potential chilling effect on innovation in regulation and on new policies. Is there any evidence of that happening already? Some policies are in train. This week in the Scottish Parliament, we have dealt with single-use plastic regulations, which have come to a committee for the first time. Is there any sense of where policy development is being stifled?

My final question is about our move away from EU policy development processes. I was struck by how involved various stakeholders—including industry bodies, unions and non-governmental organisations—were in the development of the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals regulation. There has now been a shift; we are out of Europe, and there is perhaps a different policy development process. Which voices will be heard in that process? Where do those voices come in? How should Parliaments engage with those stakeholders?