Nicola Sturgeon under pressure over climate change spending cuts

Nicola Sturgeon is facing renewed pressure over her Government’s commitment to fighting climate change, with MSPs using today’s FMQs to question planned reductions in spending on mitigation.

The Scottish Government plans to reduce spending on climate change mitigation from £502m in 2015/16, to £456.2m in the 2016/17 draft budget, representing a cut of nearly ten per cent.

Last week the Committee on Climate Change raised concerns with Scottish Government officials over the planned cut.

Facing questions in FMQs, Sturgeon said: “It is a widely recognised fact that the United Kingdom Government is hampering the renewable energy sector and putting at risk millions of pounds of investment in the Scottish and UK economies.

“If the UK Government had kept its previous commitments, the viability of many projects would not now be in question and Scottish Government support would have been maintained.”

The First Minister argued that if changes caused by UK energy policy are excluded from calculations, Scottish Government spending on climate change increased by £13.3m.

But the FM faced fierce criticism from opposition parties, with Green co-convener Patrick Harvie questioning whether Scotland’s commitment on mitigating climate change can still be taken seriously.

Meanwhile Lib Dem MSP Jim Hume claimed climate change funding has been “hammered”.

He said: “This is not the first time that the green energy budget has been the victim. In 2013, we were told that money was released for other projects; in 2015, we were told that funds were reallocated to other priorities; and, in 2014, the budget was not cut, it was “reprofiled”.

“When the First Minister got off the plane from Paris and said that the rest of the world should be like her, did she want them to hammer their climate change budgets, too?”

The proposed £456.2m in spending on climate change mitigation makes up 1.23 per cent of the total draft budget.

Meanwhile the draft budget will see fuel poverty and energy efficiency spending reduced from £119m in 2015/16 to £103.3m for 2016/17, a 13.19 per cent reduction.