Chamber and committees

Each year Scottish vessels land around £100 million worth of fish outside of Scotland, often for species for which our nation already has ready processing capacity. This represents a lost opportunity to bring additional investment and downstream benefit to our coastal communities from Scotland’s fishing quotas.

Our fish quotas are a national asset and I want to ensure that fishing opportunities allocated to our fleet, for the most important Scottish species, deliver a substantial economic return to our businesses and communities in Scotland.

That is why today, I am announcing changes to the economic link condition contained in Scottish sea fishing licences. This change to the economic link conditions is a key policy in Scotland’s Fisheries Management Strategy, which supports sustainable and responsible fisheries management in Scotland. The delivery plan which supports the Strategy and outcome of consultation document for changes to the economic link, will be published today at 2pm and can be found at [ Publications - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Changes to economic link licence conditions will take effect from 1 January 2023 and will require vessels that catch stocks of key economic importance to Scotland to either:

• Land a set minimum percentage of these stocks into Scotland.

Or

• Return some fishing opportunity to the Scottish Government for re-distribution amongst the Scottish fishing industry.

These changes will help to redistribute economic returns from Scotland’s fishing opportunities to the Scottish Seafood sector and our coastal communities.

The Scottish Government is currently progressing a programme of reform of Scotland’s planning system, including implementation of the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019. The 2019 Act included provisions which prohibits elected members from carrying out certain planning functions (e.g. sitting on a planning committee) if they have not completed specified mandatory training. We have commenced work on the development of mandatory training requirements which will help to ensure that local decision makers are equipped to make sound and legally robust planning decisions.

The ongoing delivery of a regulatory review of aquaculture in Scotland aims to develop a more joined up approach between consents, including piloting of multilateral pre-application discussions, which should lead to enhanced communication and better-informed decision-making at each stage of the consenting process. Government officials continue to maintain a close working relationship with Local Authorities that deal with aquaculture applications as this work continues.

Decisions on non-domestic rates, including the poundage and any reliefs or supplements, are generally considered in the context of the Scottish Budget in line with other government priorities.

The Scottish Budget 2022-23 delivers the lowest poundage in the UK for the fourth year in a row, ensuring that over 95% of non-domestic properties continue to be liable for a lower property tax rate than anywhere else in the UK.

It is not clear what is meant by peatlands being ‘lost’.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on how many hectares of peatland have been ‘lost’ in each of the last 15 years but we have committed £250 million to restoring 250,000 hectares of degraded peatlands by 2030.

The information requested is provided in the tables entitled “Planning appeals allowed, broken down by planning authority and by year since 2007", a copy of which has been placed in the Scottish Parliament’s Information Centre (Bib number 63605).

The Scottish Government committed in the Programme for Government, to explore how to ensure the interests of future generations are taken into account in decisions made today.

Ministers and officials have been engaging with a wide range of organisations who have an interest in embedding sustainable development, wellbeing and the interests of future generations in policy. I have held a series of meetings with key stakeholders in this area.

The Scottish Government is also considering the case for a Future Generations Commission alongside other ways of embedding the interests of future generations in policy, such as placing duties on public authorities to take account of the impact of their decisions on wellbeing and sustainable development and future generations.

The Scottish Government will take this into account as part of the development of a proposed Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Bill.

We intend to set out more detailed proposals later this year.

The Scottish Government has no direct role in the provision of student accommodation nor any capacity within the private rental market. However, we are aware of the ongoing difficulties faced by students in accessing accommodation this academic year.

We are currently undertaking a review of Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) which will look at a number of issues, including affordability and supply and the findings from this report, along with findings from the New Deal for Tenants Report which considered similar issues in the private rented sector, will inform a student accommodation strategy for Scotland.

Individual Placement and Support assists people requiring more intensive support to enter and sustain employment. The Independent review has considered the current delivery landscape and outcomes achieved by this specialist employment support programme, and made recommendations to build on best practice as well as identifying areas for further improvement. The Scottish Government intends to publish the report of the Independent review of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) before the end of 2022.

The following table details the number of recorded crimes of theft of a pedal cycle for the March year end data for reporting years 2016-17 to 2021-22.

Table: Number of theft of a pedal cycle crimes recorded by the police, Scotland, 2016-17 to 2021-22

Scotland’s Redress Scheme is delivered jointly by the Scottish Government and Redress Scotland – a new non-departmental public body which assesses and makes decisions on redress applications. Redress Scotland is an independent body, which is not part of Scottish Government and is monitored by the Redress Scotland Sponsorship Team, within the Children’s Rights, Protection and Justice Division.

Scotland's Redress Scheme is delivered within the Scottish Government's Redress, Relations and Response Division. Across the division 44 staff are currently employed in a variety of roles including Operations, Survivor Relations, Contributions, Policy, Service Design and Delivery, Business Management and Communications to provide an efficient, robust and trusted scheme for applicants, partners and stakeholders.

As part of the administration of the Scheme, a bespoke Case Management System (CMS) has been developed. The CMS is hosted in a secure environment and holds sensitive, personal information relating to applications. Not all colleagues in Scotland’s Redress Scheme have access to CMS, which is restricted to ensure only staff with a specific need to access the applicant data are able to do so.

Certain staff in Redress Scotland also have access to the CMS, meaning that information does not generally need to be shared via multiple systems.

The Privacy Notice for Survivor Applicants and the Privacy Notice for Next of Kin Applicants provide details on how the information collected by Scottish Government, as administrators of Scotland’s Redress Scheme, is managed and how it is used.

It is a matter for Redress Scotland to determine their resourcing within their budget, however some details on their staff are available on their website . In addition, Redress Scotland also have a privacy notice in place.