Mr. Stewart Stevenson:

I speak to Scotland's circumstances and not to Ireland's. It is important that I do not speak to Ireland's which must decide for itself. However, there was unanimity that having clear targets which applied equally to everyone created the kind of level playing field that was necessary but also gave the long-term certainty that was necessary. Let me give two examples of the need for long-term certainty. When one invests in a power station, one is investing in a piece of kit that has a 30 year or perhaps a 40 year life. Therefore, one needs to have some view as to what, in the long-term, life is going to look like. When one plants a forest, one is looking at something one will harvest. One will get the economic value from it in 25 or 35 years time.

The agriculture industry has been very much in on this as well because, as in other industries, at the very early stage of responding to climate change, there are very cheap ways in which one can get enormous benefits from responding to the agenda but one does so in a long-term environment where one sees where one is going.

Scotland has set an 80% target for 2050. For 2020, we have set a target that 100% of our domestically consumed electricity will come from renewable sources but that is appropriate to our circumstances where we have, in terms of renewable energy, huge tidal resource, hydropower resource and so on. It would not be a target appropriate for every country in Europe. If Europe is going to achieve targets, some countries will have to do a lot better than the targets. There are some countries in Europe where 95% of energy comes from coal. That is quite a different challenge.

Our national expert advisory board is independent. It reports annually and it recommends targets. Government sees the reports from the body 24 hours before they are published and that is only as a courtesy to allow Government to prepare for its response when the reports are published so, therefore, the board is independent of Government. That has a positive for the Government in that thus far, we have accepted the recommendations of that independent body and thus the politicians, who are never experts - perhaps it is different in Ireland - but who have to understand the practical consequences of policies, are not making decisions that are best made by experts. We have found that, politically and practically, to be a serious benefit. In coming to its conclusions, the economic impact of what is going on is part of what the committee must do. It is not simply environmentally driven. That is very far from the case.

In regard to targets, we have created a public sector duty which applies to all parts of the public sector. We have chosen to use the same list we have used for freedom of information so it is actually about 7,500 bodies because it goes right down to every general practitioner, medical practice, dental practice and so on. Right the way down, there is a general duty on everybody to support the agenda.

In terms of Government responsibility, it must sit for policy formulation and implementation within one Department but it must be a shared Government objective. Initially, I was Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, which meant the planning system, the water system and climate change. Transport and climate change were put together in one portfolio precisely because transport is an area of some difficulty, just as buildings and housing remain so. I was later the Minister for Environment and Climate Change.