First Minister's Questions - Carbon Capture

2. Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP): Yesterday the Chancellor made the disgraceful decision to pull £1bn funding from the development of carbon capture and storage technology in the UK – which could have created the world’s first commercial scale gas powered CCS plant in Peterhead – has the First Minister been in touch with the UK Government regarding this, and does the First Minister have any observations as to the effect of this on the negotiating position that the UK might have at the upcoming Paris talks on climate change.

First Minister: I think Stewart Stevenson is absolutely correct to describe this as a disgraceful decision and I think it’s a shocking example of how the Conservative UK Government is treating businesses. We have two FTSE 100 companies entering a £1bn capital funding competition in good faith, committing resources, time and money towards a bid that was due at the end of this year only to be told at the very last minute that the money is no longer available. We weren’t consulted on this before this decision was announced and as everybody will have realised, the Chancellor actually neglected to mention this in his autumn statement and we were only told afterwards.

Fergus Ewing has already made clear to the UK Government our opposition to this decision – which is the latest in a long list of UK Government decisions which harm energy generation in Scotland. And as Stewart Stevenson rightly says ahead of the Paris talks undermines our efforts to tackle climate change. So I would call on the UK Government today to reverse this decision because it is utter folly, it is unfair to business and it is downright wrong.