Seòmar agus comataidhean

I need to progress. I am sorry.

Ticket prices for the most popular Edinburgh to Glasgow route will more than double, from £14.90 to a staggering £31.40. That is a step in the wrong direction. It cannot be right that it is cheaper, easier and simpler to choose private cars over public transport.

The Government’s fair fares review recognised that rail fares are extremely complex and act as a barrier to encouraging a modal shift from car to rail. Simplification of fares and tickets is key to encouraging people on to public transport, and the off-peak all-day scheme was a great start to that. Returning to a complex picture of multiple ticket prices sends us back in the wrong direction and risks passengers abandoning rail altogether and getting back on the road again. We might also see a return to overcrowding on either side of the peak fare timetable, as passengers scrabble to avoid eye-watering prices, leading to a poor customer experience, which would further fuel frustration and a decline in the use of rail.

If passenger numbers go in reverse because of the decision to bring back peak fares, ScotRail’s fare box income will plummet. The cabinet secretary will then have no option but to finally scrap peak fares permanently. In that context, the Scottish Greens are content to back the motion and the Labour amendment in today’s debate, and I look forward to reflecting on members’ comments in my closing speech.

I think that I am short for time.

The reality is that those are the choices that people, if they are fortunate enough to own a car and be able to drive, have to make every single day. Do they pick up the car keys or do they pay upwards of £30 to travel between Edinburgh and Glasgow on the railway? The reality is that, if people want to drive between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley, it is actually free—there is no pricing on the roads. However, we all know that private use of motor cars results in cost to the economy, cost to the environment and cost to communities through congestion.

To be honest, people in France are quite frankly astonished that we do not have road pricing here, because they have road pricing. We can see the impact of that investment on the quality of the autoroutes and the roads in France, as well as on the quality of public transport there, so I hope that the cabinet secretary is preparing to launch the much-wanted 20 per cent vehicle mileage reduction route map—to give it its long title—in the weeks to come, because we need to get a grip on what the acceptable measures are to drive down demand.

Graham Simpson says that he does not back demand management, but we have to address the other side of the coin. I will give one example—again, it is from France, where residents of Montpellier have had free public transport since December 2023. In the first few months of the scheme, passenger numbers have increased by about a quarter. The scheme is paid for by a mobility payment from companies that have more than 11 employees and by ticket sales from those visiting the town. There is still significant public investment, which is funded by higher tax payers, but a model has been found to invest in public transport that gives people a real choice to leave their car keys at home and get on to public transport.

We need to be open to new ways in which we can invest in our capital infrastructure and support revenue measures such as scrapping peak fares. The cabinet secretary made a heroic attempt to market the new plethora of tickets that are being introduced, including super-off-peak tickets, which most people do not use because they are at times of the day when nobody needs them. A lot of the longer-term tickets need a longer-term commitment from people to invest up front. As Beatrice Wishart said, if we were going to design a ticket system to be a barrier for people to adopting public transport, this would be it—it is too confusing.

The cabinet secretary made the point that the people who have benefited from the pilot are those who are on an above-average income, but we will not encourage people whose income is below average to start using the railways by increasing prices. Richard Leonard and Alex Rowley made that point strongly. If we look at who gets the trains these days, we see that it is middle-income earners, nurses and front-line workers. They are the people I see on the railways day in and day out, and I know that they are the people Fiona Hyslop sees on her journey to work.

I urge the cabinet secretary to look for opportunities to fund a scheme such as this and to reconsider it. Last week, she made a commitment in the chamber to reconsider the policy if a better budget deal comes from the Labour Government in Westminster. We need to open the conversation about how we fund such measures. I look forward to that coming in the route map for reducing vehicle mileage.

Is there time in hand, Presiding Officer?

Do the witnesses from the SFC and the IPPR think that the Scottish Government needs more information in order to devise the first carbon budget? Is any crucial information lacking?

In many ways, it feels like we have been looking at only half the picture. We have been looking at climate and carbon but we have not been looking in sufficient detail at the action, the planning and the fiscal environment to deliver those actions.

Does the way that the bill is structured provide enough time between the CCC offering the technical advice and the Scottish Government—in a chicken-and-egg way—then having to devise a carbon budget that includes all the considerations about what actions are necessary and whether they are affordable to deliver? Is there enough time allowed in the bill to work up that detail, which is essential to our staying on track? Should a specific timeframe be set out in legislation? Is there enough time at the moment?

Emily Nurse, do you have any thoughts on the process post the CCC advice?

I am not sure where we are with time, convener. Is there time for other panel members to come in?

Our witnesses have already touched on aspects of my question in what has been a really great evidence session so far. I want to ask about the way in which the Scottish Government constructs its budgets. You will be aware of the recommendations of the joint working group between the Parliament and the Government, which resulted in colour coding of some budgets, which Professor Ulph alluded to earlier. How far does that approach now need to deepen within the Scottish Government, so that we get the transparency that you have been describing and clarity on the impact of carbon on certain budget decisions and how that might translate into long-term action? Have you any brief reflections on the Government’s progress on its journey towards carbon proofing its work and its considerations?

I presume that that outturn will also tell us about, say, the public sector’s capacity to deliver on low-carbon infrastructure.

I ask you to hold that thought while I move on to ask David Hawkey and Emily Nurse for their reflections on how we got here—on whether public bodies, the Scottish Government and the civil service could have done things differently on the 2020 target. Did certain policies fall off the cliff, perhaps because they were not being developed fast enough between the setting of the 2019 target and where we have got to today? Your brief reflections on that would be useful. Perhaps David could start.

I will go back briefly to Emily Nurse’s points about the interim targets for 2030 and 2040. There was a great sense of loss, particularly among people in the climate movement, about the interim 2030 target being, in effect, dropped. Obviously, it is now being replaced by a budgeting mechanism. Do you have thoughts on how it can still be articulated? It was about getting three quarters of the way to net zero by 2030. Even if that is not now possible, albeit that we might be three quarters of the way there by 2032 or 2033, people are perhaps still looking for a kind of metric—a measure—although, obviously, the actions are far more important than the targets. Do you have thoughts about how that could be articulated in the bill, if that is not already done?