Sarah Boyack: People always want cheap hits – I’m not that type of politician

When MSPs recently voted to scrap annual targets for reducing carbon emissions, Sarah Boyack was on the other side of the world, having flown roughly 10,000 miles to attend a meeting of Commonwealth parliamentarians in Sydney. Boyack, who doesn’t own a car and cycled to our interview in parliament in near-freezing temperatures, is clearly unimpressed when I ask her about it.

“I turn my gas central heating on when I go home at night,” she says. “I’m not perfect. I try to cycle, use the buses all the time, trains when I can. We all need to be doing this – not just those who advocate that we tackle the climate emergency.” 

Details of Boyack’s trip, which was also undertaken by an SNP and Tory counterpart, emerged in the Daily Record as the government introduced legislation that tore up its previous commitment to annual and interim targets on reducing emissions. Earlier this year ministers admitted the 2030 target of reducing emissions by 75 per cent against 1990s levels was no longer realistic following a damning assessment from the independent Climate Change Committee. An unnamed source told the newspaper that Boyack, Scottish Labour’s net zero spokesperson, had made a “poor decision” to attend the conference, although apparently had no comment to make on her parliamentary colleagues who also made the trip down under.

The Labour MSP says most of the meetings of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association are done online but adds that it was important to be in the room to discuss big topics such as climate change, the role of female parliamentarians, and the threats posed to safety by social media.

“Yes, I thought about it – I thought, should I just cancel this because that’s the week we’re going to get stage 3 of the climate bill?” Boyack says. “I didn’t think about the negative headlines; I was more thinking about whether I should be here for the climate bill.”

If there are those who will see a politician who holds the environment brief flying to Australia as hypocritical, then few can accuse Boyack of not taking her role seriously enough. After winning the Green Giant category at this year’s Holyrood Political Awards, the Labour MSP used her acceptance speech to remind a room full of politicians, journalists and business leaders on the importance of all doing our bit to fight climate change. Her leader, Anas Sarwar, later joked that Boyack was so committed that she couldn’t even take a night off from hammering the green message. 

Sarah Boyack photographed for Holyrood by Anna Moffat 

Indeed, Boyack is not some late convert to the climate cause. First elected to Holyrood in 1999, she held the transport and environment brief in the then Scottish Executive under First Minister Donald Dewar. As Minister for Transport and Planning, she introduced free bus travel for the over-60s and following her re-election in 2004, became convener of the parliament’s environment committee. In 2009, Boyack was among the MSPs who voted for the Climate Change (Scotland) Act, which committed Scotland to reach net zero emissions by 2045 – five years ahead of the UK as a whole.

But grand ambition has not been met with the sort of radical action necessary to make it a reality. After failing to meet a series of annual targets on reducing emissions, the government was rebuked earlier this year by the CCC, which described the looming 2030 goal as “beyond what is credible” and therefore not likely to be met. It was the first time the CCC, which advises both the UK Government and the devolved administrations, had said a target would not be achieved amid concerns over the limited progress being made on reducing emissions associated with housing, in particular.

“We as a parliament voted for those targets and they were always ambitious, but we had COP26 in Glasgow and Scotland wanted to be centre stage of the climate challenge,” Boyack says. But when asked if the government – rather than the parliament – is to blame for failure to meet the targets, she says: “Absolutely. There’s so much more they could be doing now. My criticism of the current crowd is they haven’t done the heavy lifting.”

She points to progress that’s been made on renewable energy, local heat networks and on transport – much of it done by local councils or private companies and says the government has failed to join the dots.  

“One of the lessons of 25 years of the Scottish Parliament is that we’re very good at passing legislation but not so good at implementing it. And not very good at going back questioning what has happened since we passed the legislation. On climate, I think that is the big issue.”

Despite Labour’s general election win in the summer, the party has nevertheless endured a difficult few months as the reality of what it actually means to govern hits home. Not only were there riots in England and Northern Ireland to contend with, but the new government bungled its message on scrapping the winter fuel payment for millions of pensioners. The decision made life difficult for Labour at Holyrood where the SNP was able to raise concerns about a new era of austerity at Westminster as Keir Starmer’s party also opted to retain the two-child benefit cap.

Last week, Sarwar said his party would reintroduce the fuel payment in Scotland if it wins the 2026 Holyrood election, a position described as “Orwellian double-think” by the SNP.
Boyack says the party is now slowly beginning to find its feet at Westminster, particularly following the Budget in which Chancellor Rachel Reeves set out a record funding settlement for the Scottish Government, with an additional £3.4bn in Barnett consequentials coming to ministers in Edinburgh in 2025/26. Indeed, there has been little mention of “austerity” from the SNP in the weeks since the Budget, with finance secretary Shona Robison due to set out her own tax and spending plans at the start of next month.

“I remember back to my time in government,” Boyack says. “In the first few weeks, you’ve got a lot of people who have not been in that position before – it’s 14 years since Labour was in power. It was really exciting going out on the doors [before the election] talking about GB Energy, investment in the NHS, investment in homes – things that will actually make a difference. You have started to see that happening now. 

Boyack (far right) with the rest of Donald Dewar's cabinet in 1999 | Alamy

“The lesson is that you need to get your messaging perfect all the time. It’s one thing running a campaign to be elected, but then the first few weeks [in government] is very different. Look at what we’re doing and what we’ve done already – that’s where the game-change is really beginning to happen.

“On things like the winter fuel payment, I wish we had talked a bit more about the triple lock on pensions, the fact that there were a huge number of pensioners not getting the pension benefits that they are entitled to. That’s with the benefit of hindsight, but you’ve got to get on and do the difficult day-to-day job. For me, increasing people’s pensions, giving people more affordable bills, making their houses warmer – that’s the heavy lifting and yet that was not the focus of the first few weeks.”

Following the Budget, Labour has attempted to turn the tables on the SNP with Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner going as far as accusing the Scottish Government of “inflicting austerity” when she stood in for Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions.

“In Scotland, we’ve got a government that’s been here for 17 years and has not used its resources properly,” Boyack says. “People talk about the ferry fiasco – it’s not amusing for people who live in those islands. Their economy is hit, their tourism is hit, their food supplies… On the housing emergency, there is no excuse for that. Cutting back a housing budget when homelessness is going up in not acceptable. Edinburgh, in particular, has missed out.

“You’re going to have a Labour government delivering and a Scottish Government that is still complaining. I think they were taken aback by that extra money in the Budget because they were predicting Labour austerity and that’s not what you’re getting.” 

Despite that, Boyack says there has been a tangible difference in intergovernmental working since the election, with a significant thawing in relations between the governments in Edinburgh and London. “That cross-government work – we’ve not had that for years.”

I sense Boyack’s frustration at spending a good chunk of our time together discussing her trip to Australia. She’d rather talk about her member’s bill on wellbeing and sustainable development, which seeks to introduce a statutory duty on public bodies to make sure decisions taken do not adversely impact future generations. The bill also seeks to create a wellbeing and sustainable development commissioner, a role that already exists in Wales. Boyack uses the example of a hospital in Cardiff where developers were initially reluctant to integrate renewable energy. Now a solar farm is making a profit which is going into the Welsh NHS. 

When I ask whether she’s angry that someone felt the need to call up a newspaper about her Sydney trip, she just says: “That’s politics”. 

“People always want cheap hits – I’m not that type of politician. When I get angry about something, it’s because I’m really angry. 

“You’ve got to be constructive, and you have to work together. That’s what we did with the [recent] climate bill. We got our amendments passed, amendments that groups like Stop Climate Chaos asked for. We got them because the cabinet secretary was prepared to work constructively. She knew she was having to dump the climate targets. Ministers don’t have a lot of time in office, as a rule. It’s about holding people to account but making sure you do it in a way that’s constructive.”