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Thank you, convener, and good morning to you, minister, and to your officials.

We all want to get this right; that is not in doubt. Mark Ruskell is correct to say that we are on the same page and that we want to get it right.

I will follow on from Douglas Lumsden’s questions. The committee has asked a number of experts to give us their views, and we are grateful for the responses that we have received. It is important that we try to learn from practice elsewhere. You can correct me if I am getting any of this wrong.

One of our witnesses, Jonathan Bray, a transport expert who advises the Welsh Government, said in his submission to the committee, referring to the English quality contract scheme, that the proposal for Scotland

“proposes powers that go beyond the English ‘QCS board’. The ‘QCS board’ was only required to make a recommendation, with the transport authority making the final decision on whether to proceed. However, the proposed panel in the draft legislation is given the duty to make the approval for a franchising scheme. This will put great weight on the decision of the panel and may leave the panel at risk of judicial review from incumbent monopoly bus operators. Again risking the panel leaning towards the safer option of rejection.”

I would be interested to hear your response to that, minister. If expert voices from elsewhere are saying that we should not follow that discredited route, would you not agree that this is a good time to pause and reflect? We want to get this right.

I know that we do not have all the time in the world today, but let us consider the submissions from Get Glasgow Moving and other organisations that have a lot of expertise, in which the strong view was expressed that the panel approach would not be the right one for Scotland to take. I hear your point about the fact that, if we do not approve the SSI and we cannot give guidance to the traffic commissioner for Scotland, they will go ahead and appoint a panel anyway. However, surely we—Parliament and Government together—have an opportunity to say today that we will have to take a different approach, having reflected and looked at the evidence and at practice elsewhere.

My concern is about whether, irrespective of whether they are given lots of guidance, the traffic commissioner for Scotland is the right individual to appoint the panel. Without getting into a big constitutional discussion, I see that the point is made in the submissions that this would undermine devolution. The Scottish Government is seeking to give the final decision to the traffic commissioner for Scotland, who is appointed by the UK Government. I know that you have said that annulling the instrument would take us back to square 1, but maybe it would not be a bad thing to use the time to get it right. Is that not an attractive opportunity for you?

So the process is still at an early stage. That is helpful.

I was not trying to trick you about due diligence. I am trying to establish what happens next, because that is what interests me, as someone who has to vote on the SSI today. I was hoping to hear a bit more certainty about the Government’s position. The Government understands that the committee might not vote as it wants it to vote today, so we want to know what will happen next.

Just so that we are clear, you have not discussed the issue with the cabinet secretary and it has not been discussed with key partners, including SPT. The committee would therefore have to have faith that you are going to go and talk to people, but we do not know what that conversation would be like. That is all; I will leave it there.

We have been talking about some of the capacity issues. In the improvement plan, the Scottish Government highlights that local authorities have “increasingly stretched resources”, but adhering to the reporting of scope 3 emissions will result in additional reporting and, possibly, the need for additional staff training. Silke Isbrand, do we know how much additional resource and training will be required to deliver mandatory reporting to a good standard?

Is there a risk that this will become a tick-box exercise? We have heard that there are training needs and that the methodology is underdeveloped. Local authorities could gather lots of data, but that might not result in much change on the ground. How do we minimise the risk of this becoming a tick-box exercise, particularly in the early years?

That is why I am interested in what resource will be required. Some local authorities are using external consultants, but that can be quite expensive. In order to be certain or confident that we are getting good value for taxpayers’ money, would it not be reasonable to start to provide some figures and work out what is needed to do this properly and well?

Action 4 in the improvement plan addresses the development and implementation of a training programme on emissions reporting for local authority officers. Could the new Scottish Climate Intelligence Service play a role in supporting that?

George Tarvit blinked.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. Given that you listened to the earlier session, this might be a case of déjà vu. The improvement plan highlights the fact that the Government recognises that local authorities have “increasingly stretched resources” and that adhering to the reporting of scope 3 emissions will result in additional reporting and, possibly, additional training of staff. When I put that question to our previous panel, we were told that it was not known how much additional resources and training would be required to deliver on mandatory reporting. Is that correct, or has the Government done an assessment of how much resource is required?