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The minister will be aware that, before the summer recess, the First Minister gave assurances that his Government would “welcome the ferry route” and do

“everything that we can to remove any obstacles that are in the way.”—[Official Report, 5 June 2025; c 20.]

Four months on, the biggest barrier remains the border control post designation. I believe that that is resolvable. The ferry route is a significant opportunity for the local community, the Scottish economy and our connection to Europe. How will the Government support the delivery of the ferry route in the coming months? Time is ticking away; we will lose the ferry route and the direct connection to Europe. We cannot afford to lose this opportunity, and I think that the First Minister knows that, too.

I find it incredible that Parliament is being asked to back a set of carbon budgets with no accompanying plan that spells out the action that is needed to deliver them. Members have talked about learning the lessons from 2019. Surely the biggest lesson from that was that, if we are going to set ambitious targets, we need to face up to the action that is required to deliver them and the benefits that will come from doing so.

I must tell the cabinet secretary that, when Douglas Lumsden, Sarah Boyack, Patrick Harvie and Willie Rennie are all reflecting the same concern, she has lost the confidence of the chamber on the issue. It is really important that we give sectors the confidence to go forward, but that requires detail. We have sectors that are prepared to step up, such as the air-source heat pump industry. Willie Rennie mentioned other sectors that want to go further and faster, but they need certainty now about what will be in the plan.

I do not believe for one minute that the draft climate change plan is not ready. Of course it is. Of course it has been signed off by the Cabinet, because it will be laid in a matter of weeks. Why does the Government refuse to let Parliament see its proposed action ahead of setting the carbon budget? Is it because the plan spells out policies that are so radical that the fear is that members of the Scottish Parliament would not back the budget, or is it that the commitment to real action on buildings, transport and agriculture is so weak? Time will tell, but we are being asked to back a level of ambition without a clear, credible plan for action. It is for those reasons that the Greens will abstain on the regulations tonight.

The Government has taken a pick’n’mix approach to adopting the Climate Change Committee’s advice—and it is entitled to do so. However, action must still add up to the carbon budget. To be clear, the Government has ignored the Climate Change Committee’s advice on reducing livestock numbers. On that policy alone, 1 megatonne of emissions will now have to be cut from somewhere else in society. Who will deliver that missing megatonne?

The cabinet secretary for net zero said in committee that transport will pick up the slack, but when the Cabinet Secretary for Transport came to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee yesterday, there was no clarity—there was just hope and enthusiasm for the sale of electric vehicles. There will not even be a commitment to incorporating the findings of the A96 climate compatibility assessment into the climate change plan. How do we know where we are going? How do we know that the Government’s actions will add up and that we will be able to deliver the reductions in the budget?

It is not good enough. A lack of ambitious action already means that we will not reach the goal of cutting emissions by three quarters until 2036. We have lost six years in the middle of a climate crisis. Without credible action, Scotland risks overshooting the even weaker carbon budgets. We cannot afford to do that. The planet cannot afford to wait. People cannot afford to wait for a greener, fairer Scotland. We need climate action now to deliver that. That is why it is important that the detail comes forth. It should have been here, ahead of the regulations being laid in Parliament, but it has not been delivered. We will wait to see whether the Government’s actions add up.

A lot of money was spent on a climate compatibility assessment of the full dualling of the A96. Will that be reflected in the climate change plan in some way?

Millions of pounds were spent on a climate compatibility assessment to guide the Government towards a balanced set of options for improvements to the road. What was the conclusion of that and will it be reflected in the climate change plan?

I will turn to the route to franchising. Obviously, SPT is now on that pathway. When the committee last looked at that, the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity, Jim Fairlie, said that by the end of 2024 we would have sight of the statutory bus franchising guidance and also the memorandum of understanding on the bus franchising panel and how it would operate. We have not had that. When can we get it?

I would hope that, sitting where you are sitting now, you would feel a little bit more empowered to deliver some progress, notwithstanding the challenges that you have laid out.

There is a huge frustration about how slow the process is in Scotland. We have heard already that the UK Government has announced £15.6 billion to be put into public transport. Many of the metropolitan regions in England will be looking at franchising and municipalisation as a way to develop their bus services that are in the public interest. I do not want to get into budget decisions that are yet to come, but I presume that we would expect Barnett consequentials as a result of that announcement of £15.6 billion in England. Do you see franchising and municipalisation as important parts of the transformation in bus services that we expect to see funded in the next budget?

Okay, but we have only a few weeks left before that date. There we go. I hope that the bus fare cap does get delivered.

Just before you move on, I will say that the timescales are important, because the quicker we can make changes that have an evidence base showing that lives will be saved, the quicker we can save lives. That is an important point.

I will continue in that vein. In the plans that you expect local authorities to come up with—particularly those of urban local authorities, which will need to have a target in mind for traffic reduction—what kind of measures will you support? Will you support traffic demand management measures? How would the Scottish Government respond if a council came to it with a form of congestion charging or workplace parking charging and said, “We want to do this. Can you support us, help us to explain the benefits and help us with modelling it?”

I do not mean to interrupt, but I am sure that a lot of that detail will be in the climate change plan. My concern is that the Government as a whole has made decisions not to accept CCC advice on a number of matters, such as livestock production. The cabinet secretary with responsibility for net zero has said that the transport sector will be picking up the slack. We understand that the megatonne of emissions for which plans are currently missing in the CCP will—ostensibly—be picked up by transport. I am trying to understand how that gap will be filled by transport plans if demand management is not rolled out quickly enough. Will we see that in the climate change plan? Will transport plans step in to address the deliberate policy decisions that the Government has made not to take action in some areas because it thinks that transport will pick up the slack?