3. I associate the Scottish Liberal Democrats with the remarks that have been made about the passing of Henry Wuga and the election of Vaughan Gething.

To ask the First Minister when the Cabinet will next meet. (S6F-02952)

Tuesday.

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.