Chamber and committees

The Scottish Bracken working Group last met on 27 June. The next meeting is due to take place on 19 September.

More information on the group, including meeting minutes, can be viewed at the following link: Bracken: Scottish Working Group - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

No application for the use of Asulox during 2024 was submitted.

Asulam, the active substance in Asulox, has been withdrawn in the UK for over 15 years. For 10 years Asulox was approved annually as an emergency authorisation, for limited and controlled use each season, following application by the Bracken Control Group. An application must be submitted in order for emergency authorisation to be considered. Emergency authorisation applications are then assessed on a case-by-case basis against the legislative requirements.

The planned in-service dates provided by CMAL in the June 2024 update to the NZET Committee were end November 2024 for MV Isle of Islay and end March 2025 for MV Loch Indaal.

Transport Scotland, CMAL and CalMac will keep these dates under review as the vessel builds progress. The dates will be subject to successful completion of construction, now entering the complex systems commissioning phases, and further crew familiarisation and berthing trails upon arrival in Scottish waters.

Further updates will be provided to Parliament in due course.

Advance works to a cost of £22.6 million have been undertaken for the A9 Dualling: Tomatin to Moy project, to de-risk the main construction works contract.

This cost is broken down as follows:

The Scottish Government has been working with AssistFM and Improvement Service to map existing breakfast provision across Scotland, including a survey to all primary and special schools to understand the scale and uptake of provision.

Director General is a senior grade within the Senior Civil Service (SCS) and pay and terms and conditions of employment are reserved to the UK Government. The Director General for Health and Social Care’s salary remains within the overarching pay range set by Cabinet Office for Directors General, which has a ceiling as at 1 April 2023 of £208,100. The salary for the current Permanent Secretary was also set by Cabinet Office when they were appointed to the Scottish Government and was set to be cognisant of the salaries of other Permanent Secretaries across the UK.

The Director General for Health and Social Care’s salary reflects the fact she serves as both NHS Scotland’s Chief Executive and the Scottish Government’s Director-General Health and Social Care. As such the salary is set in relation to relevant market rates in Scotland and the wider UK, and at a level that ensures the role is attractive to candidates with relevant experience, particularly senior healthcare leaders in the NHS. The Senior Leadership Committee in the Cabinet Office, and the Civil Service Commission both approved the salary approach for this role.

It is not unusual both in the public and private sectors for there to be overlap between salaries and grades where salaries for individual roles need to be set to compete in a specialist market.

The cost of the temporary propping, which is extremely complex, is expected to be between £126m - £152m. The cost is dependent on a number of factors, for example duration and extent of works. Our estimated cost range includes allowances for risk, contingency and inflation, which is standard industry practice for large infrastructure projects.

The work to undertake the temporary propping is extremely complex. Each of the 23 supports requires individual propping designs to take account of the varying column heights, span lengths and widths resulting in different loads to be supported by the props.

Additionally, the propping foundations are affected by a number of buried services, ground conditions and the SPT Subway tunnels beneath the viaducts, which has a major impact on the solutions available. There were also a number of public utilities diversions or protection measures required in agreement and partnership with the various utility owners.

The extent of the work on each support is, therefore, exceptionally difficult to quantify until it is underway.

As autonomous institutions, universities are responsible for their own entry requirements and admissions policies. As such, the Scottish Government has no locus or plans to review the system of student admission appeals.

During the development of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, which brought in the ban on pavement parking, Transport Scotland convened a Parking Standards Group to seek views on the policy. This group comprised of a wide range of key stakeholders, including the Federation of Small Businesses.

This group continued to meet during the evolution of the Act, along with the development of secondary legislation that was required to bring the ban into force. No concerns were raised by the Federation of Small Businesses during this process. A number of consultations were undertaken throughout this period and no concerns were highlighted regarding small businesses, either from the Federation of Small Businesses or any other parties.

Particular consideration was given to small businesses during the development of the Act which allows for a 20 minute exception for goods to be loaded or delivered, where 1.5 metres of clear pavement is left for the passing of pavement users.

Furthermore, statutory Business and Regulatory Impact Assessments were carried out for each piece of legislation and no impacts to small businesses were identified.