Chamber and committees

The Scottish Transport Statistics report an increase in car use from 35,362 to 36,747 million vehicle kilometres driven in Scotland between 2016 and 2019. We do not yet have these figures for 2020, which will have been impacted by the Covid-19 restrictions. This happened alongside significant population and economic growth. During this time period, Scotland’s population grew by almost 60,000 and the country’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 3.6% in real terms.

Transport is Scotland’s highest carbon emitting sector, and the largest source of transport emissions is cars. This is why in the Climate Change Plan Update (published December 2020), we committed to reduce car use in Scotland by 20% by 2030. This is monitored as part of the Climate Change Plan monitoring and evaluation framework , which the Scottish Government reports on annually.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to significant uncertainty for transport, with future trends and people’s work and lifestyle choices difficult to forecast at this point in time. Subject to this uncertainty, we will publish a route-map that sets out how we will meet this target by the end of this year. This is a cross-government and sectoral effort – not all the policy levers and answers rest in transport.

The most direct levers on the attractiveness of buying or running a petrol or diesel car – fuel duty and vehicle excise duty – are reserved to the UK Government. Additionally, transport demand derives from other factors – where people live work, learn and access goods and services are all key to their need to travel. Meeting the commitment will involve reducing people’s need to travel with more local access to goods and services, digital connectivity and flexible and remote working approaches.

Asylum is a matter reserved to the UK Parliament. This includes the provision of asylum accommodation, which is delivered by the Home Office through contracts with private sector companies, known as Asylum Accommodation and Support Services Contracts (AASC). In Scotland this is being delivered by Mears Group, who operate the mother and baby unit in Glasgow.

Scottish Government officials have no direct role in the delivery and management of the Home Office’s Asylum Accommodation and Support Services Contract. We have made it clear that the Scottish Government's preference would be for asylum accommodation to be delivered by the public sector or the third sector.

Please find the requested information set out in the following table:

The Scottish Government has and will provide funding to support the chartering of suitable vessels to assist resilience on our ferry networks, as demonstrated by the current charter of MV Arrow by CalMac Ferries Ltd.

Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL) and CalMac Ferries Ltd continually search the market for suitable second-hand tonnage.

The Standing Committee on Pandemics will be established by 25 August 2021.

The Standing Committee on Pandemics will be an advisory group to the Scottish Government, with a remit to advise on the future risks from pandemics and the steps we should take to address those risks. The Committee’s membership will bring together a range of scientists and clinicians with relevant expertise.

The New Scots refugee integration strategy is built on partnership and collaboration, led by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council.

The second New Scots refugee integration strategy was published in January 2018 and runs until December 2022. Partners have begun discussions on arrangements to develop the third strategy, with the aim of publishing this in 2023.

Scotland’s first long-term national housing strategy ‘Housing to 2040’ was published in March 2021. It outlined the Scottish Government's ambition to deliver 100,000 affordable homes by 2032.

We are committed to ensuring that new homes, consented from 2024, must use heating systems which produce zero direct greenhouse gas emissions (at the point of use). While our approach will be technology neutral, it is envisaged that the electrification of heat will increase substantially through the use of technologies such as heat pumps in new homes.

To illustrate this: in 2019, 83% of all electrically fuelled properties were fitted with a heat pump - rising to 89% in 2020. In line with this trend, whilst noting that not all of the 100,000 affordable homes to be delivered by 2032 will be new build, it is anticipated that the majority of the newly-constructed affordable homes consented from 2024 would be served by heat pump technology - with the remainder being served by an alternative zero direct emissions heat source, such as heat networks.

We have commissioned a heat pump sector deal expert advisory group to outline how government and industry will work together to grow the supply chain and scale deployment of the heat pumps to the ambitious levels required. The group provided an interim report in June and are due to publish a final report later this summer. We have committed to responding to their recommendations in our final Heat in Buildings Strategy.

The Scottish Child Payment team are working closely with the DWP Scottish Devolution Programme to refine the scope of the delivery, including the data sharing requirements, to ensure the safe and secure roll out of the Scottish Child Payment to eligible families with children under 16 years of age by the end of 2022.

The information requested is publically available from PHS. This release provides information on alcohol-related inpatient and day case activity within general acute and psychiatric hospitals in Scotland. The release covers general acute hospital activity for the financial years 1981 to 1982, until 2019 to 2020 and psychiatric hospital admissions from 1997 to 1998 until 2018 to 2019. Due to limited data completeness the psychiatric hospital admissions were not updated for the financial year 2019 to 2020.

The most recent publication is available here Alcohol related hospital statistics - Scotland financial year 2019 to 2020 - Alcohol related hospital statistics - Publications - Public Health Scotland.

More detailed information on alcohol treatment will become available for future years following the full implementation of the DAISy system which went live from 1 December 2020.

Employee matters including the promotion of third-party financial products including salary advances for its staff remain the operational responsibility of Abellio ScotRail and therefore does not require permission as such from Transport Scotland.