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The Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday April 09 2025 #Politics
The Scotsman
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09/04/2025
The Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday April 09 2025 #Politics
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00:00
Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Wednesday.
00:05
My name's Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Deputy
00:09
Political Editor, David Boll.
00:12
And David, I've got a couple of stories that I want to talk through with you today, but
00:17
firstly the front page of today's Scotsman, which leads on finances unsustainable.
00:24
This is the Scottish Government as the number of elderly increases research or analysis
00:31
effectively put together by the Scottish Fiscal Commission, which has said that the budget
00:39
black hole or the extra deficit could be as much as $14 to $16 billion under a worst case
00:45
scenario as the number of elderly are set to increase more here in Scotland than south
00:51
of the border, and that is due to issues around the number of babies being born and pressure
00:58
around migration as well.
00:59
So it's a pretty fascinating analysis from the Commission.
01:04
There is a best case scenario where the Scottish Government could end up with more money, but
01:09
that seems pretty unlikely, the Commission says, based on recent trends of where things
01:15
are heading.
01:15
So yet another financial headache for the Scottish Government to deal with.
01:20
David, you've also written about some new figures around the climate that were out, and at a time
01:28
where we're trying to get our emissions down or our carbon footprint down, it didn't make
01:32
for great reading for the Scottish Government.
01:35
No, I mean, it's an analysis that's come out yesterday, which was for 2021.
01:41
So it does feel like a long time in the past, but these things take a while for the experts
01:45
to kind of dig into.
01:46
But it showed that basically our carbon footprint jumped by almost 15% as we kind of lifted that
01:52
lockdown.
01:53
And it wasn't just compared to the year previous, where obviously we weren't going about using
01:59
cars and transport and using up a lot of emissions, but it was the highest level since
02:04
2015.
02:05
And it's just another blow to the kind of the Scottish Government's climate credentials.
02:09
We've seen in recent weeks their legal climate targets for 2030 being scrapped.
02:18
They don't have a climate change plan at the moment.
02:20
They've delayed it a year to kind of embed these new sort of methods of targets.
02:25
So they're working off a very old document.
02:28
We saw last week Patrick Harvey's kind of controversial plans that would have seen Scots have to be
02:35
scrapped their boilers by certain points.
02:37
That's been done away with in place of more government targets.
02:42
And they've missed sort of the majority of their last sort of annual targets in reducing
02:47
emissions.
02:48
So it's just another sort of blow.
02:50
And it basically proves that that cut during the pandemic that Michael Matheson, who was the
02:57
net zero secretary at the time, very much said would be sort of a culture change in the
03:02
start of something different.
03:03
And this kind of proves that it's all been lost and it's been kind of a waste opportunity
03:08
as some of the charities reaction to this yesterday and a bit more frustration, really, given that
03:13
John Swinney has made it one of his core priorities to tackle the climate crisis, that more action
03:19
hasn't happened at the scale required.
03:21
David, it is remarkable about how much has gone back to normal since the pandemic and the
03:27
way I think we go about life.
03:30
That is probably a conversation for another day.
03:32
But putting your analytical hat on without incentives for homeowners to actually move to
03:39
cleaner energy initiatives that will then bring the carbon footprint down.
03:44
How do you see the Scottish government ever meeting some of these targets?
03:49
Well, the renewable heating targets for boilers and things are extremely difficult to meet
03:55
anyway.
03:56
There's been a lack of progress on installing heat pumps and so forth in Scotland.
04:02
I mean, they have scaled up, but not to the extent that was promised.
04:06
It's worth saying that Scotland does have kind of some of the most generous grants and loans
04:11
in the UK for heat pumps.
04:14
But without that incentive that people need to do it, particularly there were sort of trigger
04:18
points put in about when people were selling their house or a new tenancy was brought in
04:23
that they would have to meet these new standards.
04:26
That's kind of been done away with.
04:28
So the onus is very much on the Scottish government to deliver it targets.
04:32
And without funding, again, this whole scheme to decarbonise heat was estimated at $33 billion.
04:40
And this was before we've had, obviously, the rise of inflation.
04:43
And who knows where that's going to head now?
04:45
So it is likely to be substantially more.
04:48
And that money isn't coming from government.
04:50
So without the incentives, it's going to be very difficult for Scotland to meet these clean
04:55
heat targets.
04:56
And, David, just separately to that, you've written on another subject, Douglas Ross, former
05:02
Scottish Tories leader.
05:05
A big initiative, one that he spoke a lot about, was his right to recovery bill.
05:09
Now, I know that was to help particularly with the drugs deaths crisis, and it came out of
05:16
the back of concern of just how high the ongoing drug deaths rate was.
05:22
Douglas Ross is no longer heading up the Tories party, but that legislation is still sort of
05:29
making its way through Holyrood in the various stages.
05:33
But there's some criticism around it and whether it will actually achieve what it's set out to.
05:38
Yeah.
05:38
So it's his members bill on sort of a right to recovery for those addicted to alcohol harm
05:43
and drug harm.
05:44
And I think a lot of the groups that have responded to this and raised concerns understand that
05:51
he's coming from a good place and they're all kind of on the same page about what they
05:54
want to achieve.
05:56
But they're worried his members bills is quite narrow in the fact that it would instill a
06:02
right to recovery for those that are sort of clinically addicted, which actually makes
06:07
up quite a small proportion of people who are sort of dependent on substance abuse.
06:12
And there are concerns that it would have unintended consequences to those people.
06:17
They would be kind of deprioritized in some of the treatment.
06:20
And also the fact to embed a right to treatment without the funding or the actual capacity there
06:27
is maybe not going to be that helpful.
06:29
And it kind of stigmatizes some of the people that are needing that support.
06:34
But obviously it comes, as you said, at a time when Scotland is still the drugs death
06:38
capital of Europe.
06:39
We've got the highest alcohol deaths in, I think it's 15 years.
06:43
So I think there's some good intention there from Douglas Ross.
06:47
But I think some of the medical experts and groups are a bit concerned about how this would
06:51
be implemented and maybe some of the unintended consequences.
06:55
And he'll need a lot of support from other parties, including probably the Scottish Government
07:00
to get this member's bill through.
07:02
So it's maybe a bit unlikely that it will at this stage.
07:06
We don't know.
07:07
He said he's open to lots of amendments and he'll look at them fairly to see if he can
07:12
get this through.
07:12
I think he wants it just to be delivered in the best way possible or at all, to be honest.
07:17
So I think he's open to conversations with anyone who's got concerns about it.
07:21
You can read both those stories at scotsman.com.
07:25
If you ever can't find our political coverage, there is a politics tab in the navigation bar
07:30
at the top of the site where you'll read some of David's work and that from his colleagues
07:36
across Westminster and Holyrood as well.
07:39
Please follow us on all social media channels and pick up a copy of the paper tomorrow where
07:44
we'll have all the latest on tariffs.
07:46
It continues with global tariffs coming into effect against countries like China from the
07:52
US, China facing a tariff of some 104%.
07:56
You'll find out what the reaction is from the markets and political leaders to that in tomorrow's
08:02
Scotsman.
08:03
Thanks to you, David.
08:04
Thanks to everyone else for joining us.
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