– in the Scottish Parliament am ar 21 Mawrth 2024.
Humza Yousaf
Scottish National Party
Tuesday.
Alex Cole-Hamilton
Democratiaid Rhyddfrydol
Yesterday, the Climate Change Committee delivered a devastating verdict on the record of the Scottish Government. The key 2030 emissions target just will not be met, and the Government is off course by a country mile on heat pumps, electric vehicles, recycling and more. Yesterday, the committee’s chair, Chris Stark, said that the strategy is just not there.
Take tree planting, for example. The committee says that Scotland needs to do twice as much on that area, but the Government has just reduced spending on it by nearly half. It is going to put people out of work, and tree nurseries have already signalled that they will have to torch hundreds of thousands of saplings because of the cuts. To think that the environment secretary once boasted that global leaders were looking to her Government for advice—well, her phone is silent now.
I ask the First Minister: where is the Green party in all this? There are fewer bus and train services, we are going nowhere on renewable heating, and we have a botched deposit return scheme. Does the First Minister not recognise that bringing the Greens into Government has done precious little to help us to combat the climate emergency?
The First Minister:
First, we take the report from the Climate Change Committee extremely seriously. Chris Stark is well respected, and his opinions have been given the due weight and consideration that they deserve. He raises a serious point around the 2030 target. Of course, at the time when that target was being debated, the Climate Change Committee made it clear that meeting it would be extremely difficult—if not, to be frank, impossible—and that the target was stretching credibility at that time.
Nonetheless, as a Parliament—all political parties—we came together to embed that target in legislation.
With regard to tree planting, I remind Alex Cole-Hamilton that around 75 per cent of all new woodland in the UK is in Scotland. In addition, we launched the world’s largest floating offshore wind leasing round through ScotWind; we ensured that Scotland has the biggest concessionary travel scheme in the UK, with more than a third of the population benefiting from free bus travel; we invested £65 million in the installation of more than 2,700 public electric vehicle chargers; and we continue to offer the most generous package of grants and loans in the UK to support the move to clean heating.
However, I will say to Alex Cole-Hamilton that what makes more difficult our job of reaching our targets, including the overall 2045 target, to which we are committed, is the fact that, every time that we bring measures to the chamber to tackle the climate crisis, be it the deposit return scheme, l ow-emission zones, the workplace parking levy—
The Presiding Officer:
Briefly, First Minister.
The First Minister:
— proposals for carbon capture or our standards around heating and reducing emissions, the Opposition opposes those measures.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
The Opposition are the political parties in the House of Commons other than the largest or Government party. They are called the Opposition because they sit on the benches opposite the Government in the House of Commons Chamber. The largest of the Opposition parties is known as Her Majesty's Opposition. The role of the Official Opposition is to question and scrutinise the work of Government. The Opposition often votes against the Government. In a sense the Official Opposition is the "Government in waiting".
