{"id":8013,"date":"2020-09-24T11:55:09","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T10:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transform.scot\/?p=8013"},"modified":"2020-09-24T11:55:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T10:55:09","slug":"september-newsletter-campaigns-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transform.scot\/blog\/2020\/09\/24\/september-newsletter-campaigns-update\/","title":{"rendered":"September Newsletter &#8212; Campaigns Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><a href=\"https:\/\/transform.scot\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/2020-21-PfG-cover.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright wp-image-7991\" src=\"https:\/\/transform.scot\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/2020-21-PfG-cover.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"421\" \/><\/a>Programme for Government<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our focus over the past month has been the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.scot\/publications\/protecting-scotland-renewing-scotland-governments-programme-scotland-2020-2021\/\">2020-21 Programme for Government (PfG)<\/a> which was published on 1 September. <a href=\"https:\/\/transform.scot\/blog\/2020\/09\/01\/genuine-commitment-to-green-jobs-will-be-found-in-infrastructure-investment-plan-spending-priorities\/\">Our main observation<\/a> is that whilst the focus on green jobs is laudable, the transport components of the PfG are unimpressive, generally restating commitments made twelve months ago on which progress has yet to be made<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Furthermore, although \u00a3100 million a year is committed to active travel, this only represents 4% of Transport Scotland\u2019s budget and there is no detail on how the rest of the transport budget will be spent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We <a href=\"https:\/\/transform.scot\/blog\/2020\/09\/15\/programme-for-government-helpful-policy-commitments-but-spectacularly-vague-on-spending\/\">presented a detailed summary<\/a> of the PfG to members on a videocall.\u00a0 Our commentary can be summarised as:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The PfG contains some helpful policy commitments &#8211; digital connectivity, 20-minute neighbourhoods, active travel spending commitment, bus fleet decarbonisation \u2013 but these are generally not accompanied by spending commitments.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We are pleased to see the retention of some previous PfG commitments, but the excuses provided for the lack of progress on these are generally not very credible. For example, t<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">here has been no progress on the Bus Partnership Fund or Managed Motorways commitments and no new rail electrification.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Climate framing has been lost. Last year\u2019s PfG took the Climate Emergency as its theme. This year, the phrase gets mentioned only ten times, and none in the context of transport, despite transport being the largest source of emissions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The PfG is spectacularly vague on spending commitments. We can see c. \u00a3105m committed funds for 2020-21, but Transport Scotland\u2019s budget is over \u00a32,500m per annum.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is strange that railways and ferries get almost no attention,\u00a0 especially given their prominence in Transport Scotland\u2019s budget.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is no reference to existing high-carbon spending commitments, and no information on whether the outputs of the Infrastructure Investment Plan, Strategic Transport Projects Review, etc will follow climate priorities.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Aviation<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We prepared a <a href=\"https:\/\/transform.scot\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/2020-09-16-Sustainable-aviation-beyond-COVID-19-Briefing-from-AEF-Transform-Scotland.pdf\">joint briefing<\/a> alongside The Aviation Environment Federation on Scottish Labour\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.parliament.scot\/parliamentarybusiness\/28877.aspx?SearchType=Advance&amp;ReferenceNumbers=S5M-22711\">\u201cSustainable Aviation Beyond COVID-19\u201d motion<\/a> in the Scottish Parliament.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was some merit in the Labour motion, particularly the references to \u2018climate\u2019 and \u2018Green Recovery\u2019. However, we oppose further financial support for the aviation sector without action to tackle emissions. Aviation is the most polluting form of transport, and transport is now Scotland\u2019s largest source of climate emissions, contributing 37% of the total. We also noted further equalities issues s with providing financial support to the aviation industry, including:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Flying is a discretionary activity undertaken largely by those in the top half of the income spectrum. The 15% of the UK population who fly frequently are responsible for 70% of all flights.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Aviation is already very lightly taxed. Airlines pay no tax on aviation fuel, there is no VAT on tickets, and airports benefit from duty-free retail.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Travel abroad should not be incentivised at a time when the UK\u2019s domestic tourism and hospitality sectors need to rebuild.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Roads<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/transform.scot\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/EQFXXC_X0AEGc1j.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright wp-image-6792\" src=\"https:\/\/transform.scot\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/EQFXXC_X0AEGc1j.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"172\" \/><\/a>The last month has seen yet more calls for new road-building projects with calls from the Scottish Conservatives to widen the M8 to three lanes between Glasgow and Edinburgh and more news stories on the Sheriffhall Flyover and the Cross Tay Link Road. More clarification on the Scottish Government\u2019s long-term plans is expected in the Infrastructure Investment Plan to be published later today. Last year a report by the <\/span><b>Scottish Parliament<\/b><strong> Information Centre (SPICe) <\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">showed that infrastructure spending remains skewed towards high carbon infrastructure for future projects. It is difficult to see this changing if road projects like these do go ahead, alongside the expensive dualling projects on the A9 and A96, instead of fixing our existing roads and investing in sustainable transport.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We will continue to put pressure on the Scottish Government to abandon unnecessary road-building projects during a Climate Emergency and look forward to seeing whether any progress has been made in the Infrastructure Investment Plan.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Programme for Government Our focus over the past month has been the 2020-21 Programme for Government (PfG) which was published on 1 September. Our main observation is that whilst the focus on green jobs is laudable, the transport components of the PfG are unimpressive, generally restating commitments made twelve months ago on which progress has&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.7.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>September Newsletter - Campaigns Update - Transform Scotland<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/transform.scot\/blog\/2020\/09\/24\/september-newsletter-campaigns-update\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"September Newsletter - Campaigns Update - Transform Scotland\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Programme for Government Our focus over the past month has been the 2020-21 Programme for Government (PfG) which was published on 1 September. 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