Nicola Sturgeon has announced a £500 million plan to persuade drivers to take the bus as part of a sweeping package of reforms to make Scotland a world leader on climate change.

The First Minister made a “Scottish green deal” the centrepiece of her annual legislative programme at Holyrood as she ramped up steps to tackle the world’s climate emergency.

The measures are intended to end Scotland’s net contribution to carbon emissions by 2045 by making green goals an integral part of public spending and the economy.

“Responding to climate change is not simply a moral obligation, it is also an economic and social opportunity,” Ms Sturgeon told MSPs.

The First Minister also said she intended to ask the UK Government for the power to hold a second independence referendum within months, prompting opposition claims she was neglecting government to pursue her constitutional obsession.

The green reforms include a “step change” investment in priority bus lanes to speed up public transport and convince commuters to leave their cars at home.

The five-year £500m plan will start with parts of the motorway network around Glasgow being allocated to “high occupancy vehicles”.

Scotland’s rail network will also be “decarbonised” by 2035, with electric trains replacing the last diesels, and work undertaken on battery and hydrogen-powered engines.

An extra £17m will help buyers of ultra-low emission vehicles, while measures to phase out all new diesel and petrol cars by 2032, such as installing electric charge points, continue apace. 

From 2024, traditional gas boilers will be banned in new-build homes, which will be required to use “renewable or low carbon heat” to help deliver zero-carbon buildings.

The £2 billion Scottish National Investment Bank, designed to give long-term loans to expanding businesses, will have the move to net zero carbon emissions as its “primary mission”.

Businesses will be incentivised to reduce carbon emissions and district and communal heating systems will be encouraged.

Other legislation will allow charges on single-use coffee cups.

The 14 bills in the Programme for Government 2019-20 also included measures to tackle hate crime, empower councils to levy a “tourist tax”, deliver an overdue reform of defamation law and create a new system for compensating victims of historic sexual abuse in care homes.

Other announcements included the acceleration of a new devolved benefit intended to lift 30,000 children out of relative poverty.

The £10-a-week payment for low-income families will be brought forward from early 2021 to December 2020 for under-6s, and from 2023 to 2022 for all other children under 16.

An extra £20m will be spent to help tackle Scotland’s record drug deaths, which hit 1,187 last year. 

In the wake of the delayed opening of the Edinburgh Sick Kids hospital, the power of health boards to oversee large projects will be diluted.

A new national body will instead be given responsibility for the oversight of the design, construction and maintenance of major infrastructure developments in NHS Scotland. 

The first wave of a £1bn investment programme in schools building is expected to start with Woodmill High School in Dunfermline after it was gutted by fire last month.

However, it was the green measures, many long-term, which Ms Sturgeon emphasised.

She said: “This Programme for Government will put health, prosperity and wellbeing at its heart and will reinforce Scotland’s place as a dynamic, open, innovative economy.

“Earlier this year, I acknowledged that Scotland - like the rest of the world - faces a climate emergency. 

“We are now committed to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 at the latest - earlier than any other UK nation. This programme is an important part of our response to the climate emergency, containing measures which will reduce emissions while supporting sustainable and inclusive growth.

“It sets out actions which will make a difference for years to come. It meets the challenges of the future, while staying true to our enduring values.”

The Scottish Greens said the programme was a “cheap imitation” of their own plans for a new Green Deal to put carbon reduction at the heart of Scotland’s economy.

MSP Patrick Harvie said: “Ms Sturgeon’s version lacks the ambition, scale and courage required of an emergency response. 

“We welcome her adoption of the idea that the Scottish Investment Bank should prioritise the climate emergency, but the funding is limited. 

“This is not system change. The Scottish Government also seem infatuated with consumer choice and unproven technologies that apparently promise a quick fix - carbon capture and storage, electric aeroplanes and hydrogen trains – yet the technology we need to solve the climate crisis is already here.” 

Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard said he welcomed climate change being “woven into every aspect of government”.

Dr Richard Dixon of Friends of the Earth Scotland said: “This package includes some very welcome commitments but is not nearly enough to address the desperate climate emergency the world is facing. 

“The obvious contradiction at the heart of this Programme is its commitment to some new measures in transport, heating and agriculture while continuing to back the offshore oil and gas industry to keep on drilling and destroying our climate.” 

David Liddell, CEO of the Scottish Drugs Forum, said the £20 extra for treatment services would be welcomed across the drugs field.

He said: “For decades drug treatment services have operated as Cinderella services. We look forward to seeing this money invested and used to drive improvement in services in terms of access and retention that follows the evidence base.”

John Dickie, Director of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, said: “Too many families are struggling now to simply provide the basic necessities for their children so it’s great that introduction of the new Scottish Child Payment is being brought forward. It’s now vital that everything possible is done to promote take up.”

Dr Liz Cameron, chief executive of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, welcomed the pledge to improve the bus network, but said a tourist tax would be “met with caution by businesses across Scotland”. 

She said: “Many of Scotland’s communities depend on our world-leading tourism and hospitality sector. Therefore, what is absolutely clear, is the need for business communities across Scotland to be fully engaged before the introduction or implementation of any additional tax burden is placed on the private sector.”