Seòmar agus comataidhean

The UK Government funds the Climate Change Committee.

Yes. The Government group’s purpose is to ensure that portfolios are aligned and contributing to climate change programmes. That supports collaboration across portfolios and resolution of issues across portfolios because there can be competing issues. Earlier, I mentioned the example of policy and legislation potentially having unintended consequences in relation to poverty.

The reporting process gathers information on progress and on the finance, resource and risk across portfolios, which is used to inform decision making. We recently identified a need to focus on addressing the climate change programme financial risk. The outcome of that work is that we are using the financial resources that are available to ensure that we achieve our climate change outcomes and net zero target while not taking financial risk or putting others at financial risk.

A variety of cross-Government initiatives are in place to support that. We provide transparency on the emissions impact of Government activity and spend—for example, there is carbon assessment of city region deals and growth deals—and we have strategic environmental assessments, the taxonomy assessment and high-level carbon assessments of the budget. There are a number of streams of work, even within that headline.

The net zero assessment provides insight into the emissions impact of policies and interventions, and obviously that is across portfolios. Quite a lot of the actions in Ms Hyslop’s portfolio—I think that she will be at the committee next week—are based on reducing emissions. The same applies to Mairi Gougeon’s rural affairs portfolio, in relation to forestry, peatland restoration and anything to do with land management, all of which have an impact.

The programme is governed by the GCE—global climate emergency—programme board. That is underpinned by many streams of work that help us to assess policy and the financial risk associated with it, as well as the budget and the emissions associated with it. All those things dovetail into one another.

It is an on-going process, and I do not know whether it will ever be complete; it will always be an iterative process, because new policies arrive and new risks could be apparent as a result of policy interventions. It is an on-going process, but the methodology underpinning it is established.

As Catherine Williams has said, throughout the year, if there is particular demand for one scheme and I see that there is money in another scheme that has already met its demand, I am able to pivot that money. That is really important, because it means that, if a scheme has a lot of people wanting to install something or to take energy efficiency measures and there are grants associated with it, and another scheme does not have the same level of demand, we are able to be flexible. We want action, and we want to get support to people when they want it.

I can certainly write to the committee with an assessment of where I think the demand is, because I have seen it over the year. Indeed, I might have had to make decisions about putting more money in one place rather than another. I would point to area-based schemes, in particular, as being very successful. The picture might be one of some local authorities doing this sort of thing much more than others, but those schemes, in particular, seem to be doing very well.

We are looking at all those things.

We are committing £4.9 billion in resource spend across Government for activities, and we have a supporting document that sets out how the budget will impact on our climate change priority. As a result of the work that we have been doing in the pilot, that document is divided into two parts: the first presents an overarching climate narrative and highlights the key spending areas from multiple portfolios across the budget that contribute towards emissions reduction or their response to climate change; the second has a carbon assessment commentary on the capital and resource budget. The aim of the net zero assessment is to embed carbon assessment in the early stages of the budget deliberations and policy development, as well as in the decision making on spending.

I can give information on the roll-out of that. Internal guidance was sent to all Scottish Government officials on preparing budget advice for ministers. That guidance was developed in October, and every portfolio got that advice. There was a requirement that, where policy proposals will result in a material change in greenhouse gas emissions, a net zero assessment should be conducted, and that the outputs of that work should be in the advice to ministers.

I will give an example from the rural affairs portfolio. Mairi Gougeon can talk to her budget lines, but carbon assessments would be associated with the £53 million for a forestry grant scheme and with the—I think—about £35 million for the peatland restoration budget. Even the capital part of the health budget, for things such as buildings and schemes for the estate, would have a carbon assessment associated with it.

That work is not really finished, but the approach has vastly improved as a result of the net zero assessment pilot. This will be the first budget to have that pilot approach integrated into the early workings and deliberations that are associated with it.

The document that I talked about—

We are working with local authorities and COSLA on that matter in particular, because quite a lot of that is coming at a local level. We have the heat network fund, but I am happy to have conversations about whether any more capacity is required.

One thing that Scottish Government money can do is leverage private investment, which you have seen already. I have had quite a lot of conversations, particularly with council leaders, who have said that that initial support from Government means that they can leverage private investment in heat networks. I will not give detail on whom I spoke to or on the conversations, but an awful lot of private investment out there can be leveraged as a result of what we are doing with the heat network fund.

There is £18 million in my portfolio for nature restoration. You are, however, right to point out that forestry and peatland restoration have a big impact on nature restoration. I have a limited amount of detail on another person’s portfolio but, if we look at it in the round, the peatland restoration budget has an uplift of 32 per cent, but that is Ms Gougeon’s portfolio. We have £53 million for the forestry grant scheme, which is an increase of about £9 million.