Chamber and committees

No decisions on the future regulation of gene edited crops have been taken at this stage, and we will ensure that any future position is both informed by the evidence base and is in Scotland’s national interests.

We are both closely monitoring developments on gene editing in the EU, and liaising with Scottish stakeholders, and will decide whether or not to allow gene edited crops to be grown, or food using gene editing techniques to be produced, based on what is in the best interests and needs of the Scottish people.

No one should have to compromise on food or other essentials. Food insecurity is driven by insufficient and insecure household income

State Pensions remain reserved to the UK Government, and it is crucial that they remain committed to retaining the Triple Lock, in its current form, to ensure that basic State Pensions keeps up with the cost of living and allows pensioners to live with dignity.

The Scottish Government knows that the cost-of-living crisis hits pensioners hard and that women, especially those who are divorced or single parents, people from BAME backgrounds, disabled people and carers are at greater risk of hardship during their retirement. The UK Government must take responsibility for this inequality, and do more to encourage people to take up benefits they are entitled to including Pension Credit which continues to have one of the lowest take-up rates of all UK benefits.

Our “Cash-First: Towards Ending the Need for Food Banks in Scotland” Plan sets out the nine actions we are taking to achieve our ambition to improve the response to financial hardship and to reduce the need for emergency food parcels. The actions include the Cash-First Programme, which provides ready access to emergency income when someone had no money for food delivered alongside welfare rights and income maximisation advice and support to prevent future hardship. This Cash-First approach enables people to choose the essentials they need whilst maintaining dignity.

For anyone struggling financially, support is available through a number of resources. This includes the Scottish Welfare Fund, which is administered by local authorities, and provides assistance to help meet people’s emergency and immediate short-term needs. The Scottish Government’s cost of living website also provides information on support available.

The Scottish Government will allocate at least £15 million in 2025-26, for the provision of free income maximisation support, welfare and debt advice. This includes expanding provision of advice within services that people already go to, such as community centres and hospitals, in order to increase the accessibility and awareness of advice.

Between April 2024-September 2024, investment from the Equalities and Human Rights Fund resulted in a total of 16,087 individuals helped directly with the provision of support, information and advice, with the Age Scotland Helpline providing £1,184,367 of income maximisation with a further 1,039 organisations have also been supported via capacity building and information sharing.

We are working at pace to develop the systems needed to effectively mitigate the two-child cap in 2026. We recently carried out an online consultation to inform policy development and are engaging with the Department for Work and Pensions to develop the necessary systems and data sharing arrangements needed to deliver the payments effectively. Impact assessments will be published in due course to inform Parliament’s consideration of the required legislation.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that finances remain on a sustainable trajectory and that we continue to reach a balanced position each year. We will continue to take forward our strategy for doing this, which will be updated in the next Medium Term Financial Strategy due to be published later this year, alongside the fiscal sustainability delivery plan.

Scheme allocations are not routinely published, however, Ms. Martin wrote to the convener of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee on the 28th of February 2025 detailing the 25-26 budget allocation across the Heat in Buildings Schemes, including an allocation for the Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund. As many of our schemes, including the Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund, are demand-led, allocations may change within the financial year.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency monitors the water quality of Scotland’s rivers and designated bathing beaches and publishes its classification results annually.

87% of Scotland’s entire water environment is assessed by SEPA as having a high or good classification for water quality, up from 82% in 2014, and for rivers the figure is 85%.

SEPA’s most recent Bathing Waters classification shows that 97% of Scotland’s bathing waters currently achieve the bathing water quality standards with 87% being rated good or excellent, up from 84% in 2023.

Scotland is renowned worldwide for the quality of our rivers, lochs and seas, supporting our tourism economy with our natural environment attracting millions of visitors every year with a total of 109 million tourism visits to Scotland in 2023.

As this is an operational matter for Scottish Water I have asked them to respond. Their reply is as follows:

Scottish Water has already published this data at https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/Your-Home/Your-Waste-Water/Overflows/Live-Overflow-Map.

Currently, data from around 1,100 overflow monitor locations is included on the overflow map. As additional monitors are installed and data from these is checked, more monitor locations are added to the overflow map.

Rather than deploying permanent monitoring, which is the common approach for water companies in England, Scottish Water has taken an outcomes focussed approach by carrying out comprehensive Scotland-wide environmental modelling (in partnership with SEPA) to assess the impacts of its assets on water quality during the 2015 to 2021 investment period.

The models which Scottish Water developed allowed it to understand when CSOs will spill, under what rainfall conditions these spills occur and the impact these will have on the environment. This work has allowed Scottish Water and SEPA to prioritise environmental focus and Scottish Water to target its investments accordingly. Adopting this approach has seen consistent improvement in Scotland’s water quality with 87% of all waterbodies meeting Good Status or beyond and 97% of bathing waters meeting or exceeding minimum standards as assessed by SEPA.

In addition to the progress made in improving water quality, Scottish Water recognised the need for more transparency in overflow operation and set out the commitment to install more monitors and to publish the data from these in its Improving Urban Waters routemap.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is responsible for monitoring the water quality of Scotland’s rivers and designated bathing beaches and publishes its classification results annually.

87% of Scotland’s entire water environment is currently assessed by SEPA as having a high or good classification for water quality, up from 82% in 2014.

SEPA’s most recent Bathing Waters classification shows that 97% of Scotland’s bathing waters currently achieve the bathing water quality standards with 87% being rated good or excellent, up from 84% in 2023.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) currently licences and regulates 345 sewer networks operated by Scottish Water, carrying out inspections on a rolling basis under the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (CAR).

SEPA is currently consulting on its proposals for a new Environmental Performance Assessment Scheme to improve overall levels of compliance, which is available at https://consultation.sepa.org.uk/compliance-and-beyond/epas/.

In 2025, the Scottish Government is incorporating CAR, along with the authorising regimes for industrial emissions, radioactive substances, and waste, into an integrated authorisation framework called the Environmental Authorisation (Scotland) Regulations 2018. One of the main benefits of an integrated authorisation framework for SEPA is more effective enforcement tools to better deal with non-compliant sites and protect the environment. Other benefits are improved efficiency and a more risk based, targeted approach to enforcement.

We recognise that staff are NHS Scotland’s greatest asset. We cannot provide the services that people need and deserve, and put in place improvements in performance without highly qualified, skilled and motivated healthcare staff. This pay offer represents an investment that recognises the value we continue to place on our NHS staff.

The £191 million quoted in the press is the estimated cost to NHS Scotland of the increase in national insurance contributions announced by the UK Government in October 2024. The estimated costs of the two year pay offer the Scottish Government recently made to Agenda for Change staff working in NHS Scotland is a £701 million investment.

It is recognised that workforce and pay costs driven by a period of prolonged high inflation are now contributing to significant budget pressures across health and social care, the wider Scottish Government budget and the whole of the public sector. This Government has been clear that the extent of challenges will not be addressed in a single year and we will continue to make the tough choices necessary to support sustainable public finances, whilst also seeking to minimise the impact on frontline services as far as possible.