Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you for your time. I would like to start by asking you whether you think the goal of 1.5ºC is still alive. Who would like to start?

That is fine; I will continue with my questions.

For context, Gabi Hegerl, you are saying that there are only two or three years left of the budget to stay within 1.5°. Where are we with the peaking of global emissions? If we are to have any chance of staying within, say, 2° or 2.5°, when do global emissions need to peak, and what policies and actions need to be taken globally in order to have any chance of achieving that? Do you want to come in before I turn to others?

Just to be clear, this committee, and other committees, may make recommendations about the climate change plan, and the Government’s intention is to reflect on all the recommendations and finalise the plan ahead of the next election, so that there will be a cast-iron, agreed climate change plan. There will be nothing for the new Government to do in reopening that plan, and it will be tasked with delivering the actions that are in it.

Will the exact balance of actions that the Government can take during the next five-year carbon budget be forthcoming in the climate change plan?

You have rejected regulation. There is now a heavy reliance on the UK Government making decisions about the wholesale price of electricity, and other stuff may or may not happen. Will all those policy options be spelled out transparently in the energy strategy and the climate change plan, so that we can see what the impact will be?

The emissions impact of the legislation.

Go ahead.

I am reading the submission from the Institute for Public Policy Research in Scotland. It says that MSPs will have to decide to approve the carbon budgets

“effectively in ignorance of the policies they would then have to support in order to see the budgets delivered.”

The lack of information is concerning, and it perhaps plays to those, such as Mr Lumsden, who want to weaken ambition for the carbon budget, rather than people such as me, who want to strengthen that ambition.

No climate change plan—not even a draft one—has been submitted. We have only an incredibly thin indicative statement. The Government has rejected the advice of the UK Climate Change Committee on livestock and on peatlands, and policies on heat and on traffic reduction have been dropped. There is no energy strategy as yet. When it comes to Peterhead power station, there is uncertainty about the existing power station, let alone the prospect of a second one.

There are a lot of unknowns here and, quite frankly, I do not know whether this carbon budget is ambitious enough, because it lacks the transparency that successive committees of this Parliament have called for in advance of setting targets, objectives and aspirations around climate change. Although I will not vote against the budget, I find it very difficult to vote for it, because, without that detail, I do not know what it is that we are voting on at this point. I will therefore abstain.

Would the member reflect on the fact that that has been a failure of the privatisation of the rolling-stock companies? They have kept trains running for far longer than they should have done—those trains should have been scrapped far earlier and replaced with a modern fleet.

I thank the Scottish Government for giving us the opportunity to acknowledge the progress that has been made in the devolution era to restore our railways and to run them in the public interest. It is a timely debate, coming just one week after peak fares were finally scrapped for good.

The debate is also an opportunity to look forward to the kind of railway that everybody in Scotland wants and can feel proud of: one that is genuinely affordable, safe and accessible, low carbon and pollution free; that provides a reliable service that is welcoming and comfortable; and that reaches many of the communities that were abandoned after the Beeching cuts and need to be connected once again.

There is much to be said about our railways, but I will start where we left off last week. The scrapping of peak fares is what people want. They do not want complex, overpriced ticketing whereby they have to sprint to the ticket barriers to get the last off-peak train.

The days of making rail exclusive and only for the few are coming to an end, but we need to go further. Research from the Scottish Greens shows that the vast majority of ScotRail’s first-class capacity goes unused. Last year, 98 per cent of first-class tickets were unsold.

Our railways should be for all of us. Every journey on a ScotRail service should be a first-class experience. It should not be determined by our ability to pay extra. We have all been in the situation of struggling to find seats or being forced to stand in cramped carriages while the first-class carriage is almost completely empty. Anyone who has got on a busy commuter train from Glasgow to Edinburgh during the festivals in August knows that that can be particularly uncomfortable in the heat and can lead to people feeling unwell. Rail companies across the UK are reducing their first-class services, and it is time for ScotRail to do the same. If we are to have a rail renaissance in Scotland, we need low-cost, reliable and accessible rail.