Mr. Stewart Stevenson:

At the early stages of engaging in the agenda and making positive change, one need not spend lots of money. We have some demonstrator farms, for example, to look at some of the things associated with climate change. The farm I visited spent £10. Its owners bought a whiteboard and some pens.

They stuck the whiteboard on the side of the fuel tank from which they drew fuel for all the vehicles on the farm. There were quite a lot of vehicles as it is a big farm. It cost them £10. Every time someone went to draw fuel from the tank, they wrote on the whiteboard how much fuel was taken, when it was taken and what vehicle it went into. They took no other action. There was no instruction to do anything. Fuel consumption dropped by 10% because the very fact of recording it made people conscious that fuel is an expensive resource and an important polluter in climate change terms.

It does not cost money to take the baby steps, from a psychological perspective, that cause people to think in their own contexts. I do not want to over-egg the pudding by pretending that buying a whiteboard for every farm will magically transform things. It can be compared to how the Government can take the lead by setting binding targets and making life difficult for the Minister. This does not make life easier for the Minister. I have been there, so I tell the committee that. It is a means of saying "We mean it - you can start".

When I came into office as a Minister, my second public engagement involved talking to Confederation of British Industry. I thought it was a tough gig. When I went into the room, I found that every one of the 80 people there had already started to do positive things to address the agenda and, more fundamentally, save them money. They were cutting back on their electricity consumption, for example, or sending a manager to look at the electricity meter every week and write down the relevant figure. They were doing things like eco-driving, which involves a little bit of investment on the part of the Government. I would like to mention the example of a company that paid £500 to send its entire fleet of white van drivers on a course. It got its money back within seven weeks through fuel consumption savings alone. It was making a profit on its investment for the rest of the year. It also noted a decrease in the number of accidents involving its drivers because they were paying more attention to what they were doing. As a consequence of that, its insurance costs also decreased. If one does the right thing by the climate, it will have beneficial effects at the second and third levels. I cannot possibly tell the committee about things that will apply to every domain of activity, but the experts in each domain should to be able to do so.

I would like to speak briefly about food and agriculture. Like Ireland, Scotland is a significant exporter of food and drink, particularly at the premium end of the market. I do not think Ireland or Scotland are likely ever to be the cheapest food producers in the world. People buy our food because they believe it comes from a pure, pristine, environmentally good environment. Part of that agenda for us - we have seen our food and drink exports increase by 50% in the last five years, within the period of this legislation - is that we are responding to climate change as a means of reinforcing the environmental credibility of Scotland as a place where good quality, environmentally friendly food can be bought and thereby helping the industry as a whole.