09:32 Ian Murray (Labour)

The Opposition supported the order when it was considered both in the House and in the Scottish Parliament, but I have a number of questions. One of the key things for the ESS is to ensure that the laws that the EU used to impose on the country for the benefit of environmental protection are the minimum standard in the future and not the ceiling under which standards can be reduced. The Minister is right that Scotland has a rich environmental heritage that must be protected and enhanced, and the ESS must ensure that. Of course, we also have COP26 coming up in Glasgow, which will probably be the last opportunity for the planet to be saved when major leaders come together to reach not just agreement and targets, but action points. Would it not be great if the lexicon of environmental and climate change vocabulary included not just Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris but Glasgow, which became the byword for climate change? We must ensure that.

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09:35 David Duguid

On COP26, I totally agree that it would be great to have the Glasgow agreement listed along with Copenhagen, Paris and Kyoto. That is very much the intention. It provides a unique opportunity to support relationship building and collaboration between not just the UK Government and the rest of world, but within the UK and its devolved Administrations. It will be very important to collaborate across the UK on the COP objectives and to improve scrutiny of climate change by learning from international best practice. Scotland already has one of the world’s most ambitious frameworks for emissions reduction and the ESS mission statement is to

“ensure that Scotland’s environmental laws and standards are complied with, and their effectiveness improved—to achieve Scotland’s ambitions for the environment and climate change.”

As I said earlier, the ESS’s remit relates specifically to the domestic area of Scotland, but in common with every organisation in the UK, it will have something to say about COP26 and the management of climate change in the future.

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