3. To ask the Deputy First Minister when the Cabinet will next meet. (S5F-00984)

The Cabinet will next meet on Tuesday.

Given the volume in the chamber a few minutes ago, when the other political parties debated their shared desperate attachment to the economics of the fossil fuel industry, people might find it hard to believe that later this afternoon the parties will join together to promote earth hour and demonstrate a claimed shared commitment to action on climate change. Yet over recent weeks, parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s draft climate change plan has exposed serious omissions and contradictions.

We have seen the environment secretary defending a plan that includes nothing to improve bus use and saying that car journeys are destined to go up by 25 per cent, whereas the transport Minister said no, that is only the worst-case scenario. We have had the environment secretary telling the chamber about a Government policy for compulsory soil testing to reduce fertiliser use. A fortnight later, the rural economy secretary wrote to committees to say that no, that is definitely not happening.

Although the finance secretary admits that there has been no attempt to build a credible economic case for his plan to cut aviation tax, he tells us that the rest of the economy can make up for the extra emissions from all that flying—even though the climate change plan is utterly devoid of detail on how that is to happen.

The draft climate change plan is barely half baked. Is it not clear that major changes are needed if we are to ensure that the ambitious choices that Scotland needs to make are actually written into the plan?

The Government committed to publish a climate change plan in 2016-17, and the draft plan was published on 19 January, as Patrick Harvie knows. The detail that Mr Harvie has gone through demonstrates the rigorous scrutiny that parliamentary committees exercise on the Government, as they should—these issues should be properly tested in committee. My experience of interacting with Parliament committees is that we have that rigorous interaction.

The Government’s climate change plan includes a huge number of measures and interventions across Government to enable us to meet the targets that we have set for ourselves. I remind Patrick Harvie that the Government has already met—early—the 2020 targets for carbon emissions reductions that we put in place. We should all, as a Parliament, be proud of that. We passed that ambitious legislation a number of years ago, and we are now seeing it fulfilled as a consequence of the Government’s leadership and actions.

There is a process of parliamentary scrutiny to be undertaken, but I ask Patrick Harvie to consider the achievements that have been made so far and to work with the Government on taking forward measures that will have a substantive effect on reinforcing the targets in years to come.

The low-hanging fruit are now pretty thin on the branches, and I suspect that the Parliament will need to see far more consistency and detail from the Government before this climate plan passes. The four parliamentary committees that have produced reports on the plan are due to publish tomorrow, but even looking at the submitted evidence that is already in the public domain and the questions that MSPs have asked, I think that it is very clear that there is serious concern and that there will need to be equally serious changes to the draft plan.

I will say, though, that the situation is not as bad as it is with the United Kingdom Government, even if that is setting the bar pretty low. Climate change was the elephant in the debating chamber during yesterday’s budget statement, with not a single mention of climate change by the Chancellor either on the challenges that we face or on the opportunities arising from the low-carbon economy that the UK Government’s policies have done so much to undermine.

I regret the fact that the Scottish Government’s criticism of the chancellor with regard to the North Sea is probably that he is not doing enough to support the polluting oil industry in extracting fossil fuels that the world cannot afford to burn. Can the Deputy First Minister give us one commitment, which is to ensure that the extra capital funding that is going to be available will be committed to low-carbon infrastructure to help break our reliance on fossil fuel consumption and build up the new industries and genuinely sustainable jobs that the country will need in the post-oil era?

I am very surprised that Mr Harvie thinks that my criticism of the Chancellor might be limited to one issue—I have lots to criticise the chancellor about.

I certainly agree with Mr Harvie’s analysis that the United Kingdom Government has not done all that it could have done to help us advance the agenda that this Parliament has been interested in advancing, principally in respect of renewable energy. The First Minister was in the Western Isles on Monday, and on Tuesday she reported to Cabinet the frustration in the Western Isles at the lack of progress that is being made, despite the sterling efforts of Fergus Ewing and Paul Wheelhouse over a number of years with the support of many parties in Parliament, on securing an interconnector to enable the renewable potential of the Western Isles to be fully realised.

I am quite happy to balance out the criticism to ensure that those issues are properly put on the record. We will work with the United Kingdom to try to make progress on that interconnector; indeed, it is an issue on which the Conservatives here, if they have influence with the UK Government, might be able to help us. That would allow an economic opportunity that could really transform lives and attack Fuel Poverty in the Western Isles to be realised for the people in the Western Isles.

Mr Harvie asks me whether I will commit the extra capital that was announced by the United Kingdom Government yesterday, but I have to say to him: times have changed. I no longer control the purse strings in the Government; indeed, I am now a supplicant entering with trepidation the office of the finance secretary to try to secure capital assistance. If it is okay with Mr Harvie, I will properly respect the role of the finance secretary, who will make announcements to Parliament on these questions in due course. However, I will commit to putting in a good word for Mr Harvie’s objectives.

The Audit Scotland report on the failed i6 project makes grim reading. It is yet another botched information technology project on the Scottish National Party’s watch, and it clearly should have been abandoned far sooner. True to form, the Scottish Government’s response has been to welcome a number of areas of good practice highlighted in the findings while shamefully ignoring the conclusion that

“Police officers and staff continue to struggle with out-of-date, inefficient and poorly integrated systems.”

Does the Deputy First Minister recognise the difficulties that police officers and staff face as a result of this IT shambles, and what reassurance can he give officers and staff who face the prospect of using these worn-out systems for years to come?

The first thing that I would say is that I acknowledge the importance of the system redesign that has to be undertaken. That work has to be done, and it has to be done in an orderly fashion to ensure that our police services have access to the high-quality information technology that can assist them in their work. The Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland are absolutely committed to doing that.

I think that the best thing for me to do to answer Mr Ross’s point is to quote the Auditor General for Scotland, who said on the radio this morning:

“One of the positive things about this particular project is that because of the strength of the contract that Police Scotland has signed with Accenture, they were able to recover both the £11 million they had paid over to their contractor and also to recover an extra £13.5 million ... to reflect staff time and payments that had been made for hardware and software. So in purely cash terms Police Scotland isn’t out of pocket.”

That is what the Auditor General for Scotland said this morning in reflecting on the fact that although, because of the scale of the challenge between Police Scotland and the contractor, the programme has not been taken to completion, the public purse has not suffered as a consequence. As we would expect, Police Scotland will now take forward an organised approach to ensure that we have in place systems that give police officers access to modern IT in the period to come.

With the substantial reduction in oil revenues, it is surely time for a new oil and gas bulletin. The last publication was in June 2015, and the First Minister promised me in June 2016 that the new one would be published soon. Frankly, if the Scottish Government was on performance-related pay, it would get nothing. Will the Deputy First Minister ensure that a new bulletin is published before June 2017 and before another year passes?

If the Labour Party was on performance-related pay, it would be paying back for that IT system that Douglas Ross talked about.

The Government has published a range of information on oil and gas. We published a compendium of energy statistics and analysis on 23 February; I encourage Jackie Baillie to refer to that document, which is a substantial compendium of statistical information.