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I entirely respect Mr Ruskell’s views, but I disagree that there is low-hanging fruit left. I suggest that the actions that we now need to take to close the remaining half of our targets are some of the most difficult, as they go right to the heart of the way in which people live their lives.

On the legislation that you rightly refer to in respect of decarbonising our homes, the Government is legislating for what will happen in every home in the country. That is not low-hanging fruit; it is deeply complicated, multifaceted and not entirely deliverable by public money, and it requires genuine cross-working. It is absolutely essential for making the progress that we need to make in emissions reduction, and therefore we must take it forward.

I push back against the point that anything that must be done now is low-hanging fruit. I will never say that the Government has done everything that it can or that we have absolutely maxed out and nothing else is required. That is simply not the case, and it will not be the case until it is 2045 and we have reached our mid-century target.

However, I do not accept that there has been inaction by the Government, not least because of everything that we have achieved in recent years, but also because we all know that the target was beyond what was credibly deliverable in the eyes of climate scientists at the time.

No. The facts of the matter are there in black and white from the time when the CCC advised Parliament on what was credible and what was realistically achievable. However, the Parliament, on a cross-party basis, set the targets. Thereafter, it was the Government’s responsibility to do everything within our power to see that we got as far towards meeting them as we possibly could, hence our desire to strain every sinew to find policies that would meet the targets and to herald the fact that Scotland had been so ambitious. That reminds me that it was not necessarily a bad thing for the Scottish Parliament to have done, because it drove progress. However, I now have a legal obligation to produce a plan that can—like for like and policy for policy—meet that target.

That target was never within a pathway that the CCC could find. If I do not change it, I will not be able to produce a climate change plan that is capable of fulfilling my legal obligations. I have to do that now. The target drove progress in the past, and setting it was not the wrong thing to do at the time to demonstrate ambition, but I have to undo the impediment now so that we can keep moving forward.

Under the current statutory regime, we obviously have to produce a climate change plan, but I need to change that statutory regime to tweak the 2030 target and a few other bits and pieces. However, it is still very much my intention that, once the bill is passed, the obligation to produce a plan will remain and we will do it against the new carbon budgets as set.

As it stands, my intention is to use the new legislation to, among the other things that I have noted, change the timing for the production of the climate change plan so that it can come once we have the new trajectory and the new targets. A huge amount of work has already been done to produce a plan against the existing framework. I cannot solve the existing issues and, therefore, I cannot publish that plan. However, it is my intention that we should move very quickly to recast the emissions targets around carbon budgets and, very soon after, have a climate change plan that meets the targets with policies that are capable of reducing emissions.

Yes. I was not in Parliament when the act was passed. I joined Government shortly afterwards, however, so I was involved in the pandemic response and, of course, in the exit from the European Union, which we all remember happened right in the middle of the pandemic. I do not think that it should be forgotten how much of a drain on capacity and resource that was for the Scottish Government, local government and the UK Government, as resources were pivoted to quite extraordinary and—at least in one of those cases—unexpected events. There is no doubt that that had an impact, not least on Government capacity, public finances and the public’s ability to absorb further change and shock. We were talking earlier about the very important—albeit complicated—work on heat in buildings, and I have to consider the extent to which households are currently grappling with the cost of living as we work to take that forward. It must be considered.

However, I will end by saying that climate change and our associated goals have remained a front-running priority of the Scottish Government. Our economic recovery plan from Covid was about a green recovery; I know that the deputy convener will remember some of that work, too. We have, at all stages, put our actions in pursuit of climate and nature at the very front of the Government’s commitments, even through that difficult period. We continue to do so, not least with the First Minister setting out last week that tackling climate change is among his four top priorities.

I cannot confirm that. That will be confirmed when the document is published.

I am probably not old enough to remember.

I noted Mr Barn’s comments on that. I think that we would all welcome what he set out in respect of that very busy pipeline of work in Scotland in the next 10 to 20 years. I absolutely welcome it, and the Government does, too.

That speaks firstly to why the upgrade of the A9 is so important. As well as the safety points that I made at the start, there is also the issue that the A9 is a key economic route connecting Scotland. It is an arterial route—the spine of Scotland—and it will be critical to facilitating the economic opportunities that you have spoken about.

The delivery plan that we have set out now provides a degree of certainty on the direction of travel. I know from my engagement with industry on this issue and other matters that having a clear articulation of the Government’s direction of travel is one of the most useful things in creating certainty in the market. The move to the NEC4 contract as amended will be welcomed by industry. I think that Mr Barn welcomed it, and I hope that its use will do as Mr Ewing says and make matters attractive and hopefully speedy.

Finally, we already have close engagement with industry, and that will continue as the market becomes busier and busier, as Mr Ewing rightly pointed out will be the case.

Again, I might bring my officials in to ensure that I am accurate on this. It would be fair to say that there was always an expectation that there would be a combination of capital and private financing for the project. Indeed, the Scottish public finance manual requires the Government to consider private financing for projects. Of course, the non-profit-distributing model had been used in a number of major projects that the Government had taken forward. The reclassification in 2014 was quite a turning point, I would say.

Thank you for the question. I do not want to point to the experts that you are referring to, so I will answer the question in the generality. Ministers welcome the advice that we rely on from our officials, and I have always been very satisfied with the advice and support I have had from Transport Scotland. That is always better when it is complemented by views from people from industry or those who work on these matters on the ground. From my perspective, we take advice and information in the round.

I mentioned before that there was always an understanding that an all-capital, increasingly disruptive approach could be taken until late 2022, when that was no longer a possibility. All the while, we were doing work to consider a better combination of actions. I think that some people in the industry would accept that there was an opportunity to do it very quickly and very disruptively. Grahame Barn, when he was in front of the committee, mentioned how quickly he thought that it could be done. He talked about how Inverness could potentially be cut off, which nobody would want, but physically it still could be done. That is what I mean by a diminishing likelihood.

There are different views. Ministers take them all on board, but I would not want to diminish the quality of advice that we get from Transport Scotland, which I very much value.