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Minister, you talked about how tax rich oil workers are as a proportion of the Scottish economy. You also talked about the need for a green transition. What evidence do we have that people are transitioning from the oil and gas industry into green jobs at the same salary levels as they enjoy from working in the North Sea? In terms of taxation, that is critical.

I would appreciate that.

That concludes questions from other members of the committee, but I have one or two wee issues to raise.

Biodiversity is one of my great concerns. In the past couple of weeks, I have read in The Economist that, excluding our seas, 96 per cent of the biomass of all vertebrate creatures on earth is either human or the livestock that we raise to feed us. For example, 70 per cent of all bird life on the planet is poultry.

Some of the measures in Sweden with regard to lynx have been touched on. I know that a lot of work is being done to try to restore the Iberian lynx, which was on the verge of extinction.

What more can we do on biodiversity? For example, you have spoken about perhaps up to half of tree plantations being native woodland. We have done a lot in Scotland since the first world war, when our tree cover was down to 2 per cent. That is now up to around 17 or 18 per cent. It is not quite like that of Japan, which is 73 per cent. It has been like that in Japan for centuries because Japan has never denuded its forests. What more can we do to try to restore biodiversity, which has halved worldwide since the 1970s?

Good morning and welcome to the 10th meeting of the Finance and Public Administration Committee in 2022.

Agenda item 1 is an evidence session on environmental fiscal measures for Scotland. The committee will hear from Callum Blackburn, an independent consultant, on the findings of research that was commissioned during session 5 of the Parliament by the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee and which has recently been completed.

I welcome Mr Blackburn. He will present his findings for approximately 20 minutes and then we will open up the meeting to questions from members.

No, you are fine.

You have talked about overarching issues and the complexity of current fiscal measures. It is important that we ensure that the winners do not win by too much and that the losers do not lose by too much if we are to take people with us, but that can sometimes slow down the pace of change.

I know that John Mason is keen to talk about carbon tax, so I will not ask about that. Do you think that, while resources are being shifted towards net zero solutions, increasing the percentage of the overall tax take can happen only by increasing the amount of tax revenue that is available, or can that be done within the current envelope, broadly speaking?

If we look at the largest area of expenditure, which is on the national health service, we might ask how we can move the service towards net zero without shifting money from patient care to insulating buildings, or whatever. There could be long-term savings, but we would still have to invest in the short term. How can that be done in a practical, pragmatic way, or is it inevitable that the Government will have to increase its overall spend?

Douglas Lumsden touched on the issue of ferries. Ferries are now being designed to be hybrid but, given that they can last upwards of 25 years, smaller ones are now being designed so that they can be retrofitted. They might be fitted with hybrid power systems now, but in five years’ time they might have to switch to electric, and in 10 years’ time they might change to hydrogen or whatever. That is now being built into the design of ferries. After all, it is not just buses, cars and trains that we have to make more environmentally friendly.

John Mason is next.

You can ask another, if you like.

Scotland’s only no-take zone is in my constituency, so we can do a lot more in the marine area. However, I will stick to land at the moment.

You have said that it would be great to increase the number of squirrels, pine martens, birds and so on, but what about increasing the number of apex predators? Wolves died out in Scotland in the 17th or 18th century, and bears died out perhaps 1,000 years earlier. Minnesota has reintroduced wolves, but the move was viciously opposed for understandable reasons by farmers and people who were brought up on “Little Red Riding Hood” and so on and thought that wolves would have a severe impact on human populations, which they do not. I do not think that Scotland is quite ready for such a reintroduction, but might it be palatable in the decades to come? The red deer population in Scotland is high because there is a lack of predation. Is that an argument for introducing a predator that could reduce their numbers, so that we could protect the trees—an issue that we have just been talking about—without introducing culling?

I am sorry, but I must interrupt you. I neglected to give apologies from our deputy convener, Daniel Johnson, who is unable to be with us because he has Covid and is quite unwell. I apologise for forgetting to say that and for interrupting you, Mr Blackburn, but I wanted to put that on the record.