Chamber and committees

The Scottish Bracken Working Group (BWG) last met on the 19 of January, and I plan to write to the Rural Affairs and Islands committee with an update on both the bracken mapping work and other outputs of the BWG and its member organisations during February 2026.

It is anticipated that the Sea Eagle Management Scheme will receive a similar budget allocation in 2026 that was awarded in 2025. The budget for the Sea Eagle Management Scheme in 2025 was £970,000.

NatureScot will begin work on offering management agreements as soon as approval of the budget has been received. The scheme covers the calendar year period January to December and payments to farmers and crofters who sign up to the scheme are made in December.

As I set out during portfolio questions on 21 January 2026, in the answer to S6O-05392, the Scottish Government understands that there may be concerns in light of recent public engagement and media attention about proposals to reintroduce lynx into Scotland.

Any proposed reintroduction would require a significant amount of consultation and evidence to assess the risks and benefits associated before a licence would be considered.

For clarity our position remains the same, we have no plans to reintroduce lynx into Scotland.

The Scottish Government has provided funding for the creation of a Scottish mapping layer, this work went out to tender in 2025. Creation and validation of a map, with a spatial resolution of 10m, is currently underway with a scheduled finalisation date of end May 2026. This mapping layer will allow current Scottish bracken extent to be assessed, and the code and methodology will be transferred to Scottish Government geo-spatial analysts to allow future remapping of changes to bracken area. The Scottish LiDAR programme may also inform future iterations of the map. The intention is that the mapping layer will be available for general use and dissemination to stakeholders by summer 2026.

The Scottish Government has published details of the publication costs for all the independence papers published during this parliamentary term, and they can be found at:

Building a New Scotland papers: costs - gov.scot

S6W-42127 on 25 November 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

A Fresh Start with Independence: publication costs - gov.scot

Scotland House London is a unique collaboration between the Scottish Government, Scottish Development International, VisitScotland and Scotland Food & Drink, and provides a platform to showcase Scotland’s unique offer to key domestic and international audiences. The facility also provides a home in London for a range of Scottish businesses and organisations seeking to develop relationships, engage new markets and explore opportunities to succeed and grow.

Whilst the overall budget for SHL increases from £2.095m in 2025-26 to £4.111m in 2026-27 (a 96.2% rise), this increase is almost entirely due to a one-off capital charge of £2.019m required to extend the SHL office lease to November 2029. Importantly, the annual resource costs have not increased and remain at £1.660m. This is an accounting requirement. The cash lease payments will continue to be made over the 3 year period of the lease in the normal way.

Under International Financial Reporting Standard(IFRS) 16, long-term leases must be recognised as assets on the Scottish Government’s balance sheet. The total lease payments for the full three-year extension period amount to £2.019m. In accordance with IFRS 16, this full value must be recognised upfront as a right-of-use asset and corresponding lease liability in the Scottish Government’s Consolidated Accounts.

As required by HM Treasury rules, this results in £2.019m of capital budget cover being needed only in the year the lease is extended (2026-27). This is a single-year requirement only, covering the entire period to 2029, and therefore will not recur in future years’ budgets. This short-term extension to the current lease arrangements for SHL has been made to allow Ministers of the incoming administration, following the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, to take decisions on the Scottish Government's presence in London in the longer term.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-43104 on 26 January 2026. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The reported landslide on the A815 did not impact on the operation of the A83 Rest and Be Thankful. The current operational management and decision-making for the A83 at the Rest and Be Thankful requires daily analysis of the information being acquired from the hillside including the outputs from remote monitoring, general on-site observations, hillside inspections and associated measurements. This information in conjunction with daily monitoring of the six-day weather forecast, and associated hillside saturation estimates, is used to inform the traffic management arrangements required for a safe road operation.

The “other arts and activity” budget line in the 2026-2027 draft budget is now confirmed as £16.044m. The Museums Future Programme, Non National Libraries and the Royal and Ceremonial lines have been moved to their own Level 4s. The "other arts and activity" funding will support a range of projects, with around £10 million going to Creative Scotland to support our world class festivals through the Expo Festivals Fund and our Culture Collective. Other funding has been indicatively allocated to a range of priorities including creative communities and our national collection bodies.

While we expect ScotRail to provide an environment which allows for a comfortable journey, this is a matter for ScotRail. ScotRail continues to consider solutions, which can be applied to improve the situation. ScotRail advises that due to its investment so far, the heating system improvements allowed ScotRail to achieve an ambient temperature on board of 156 class trains in half the time, as compared to Winter 2024-25.

In the longer term, the Scottish Government’s investment in its rolling stock replacement programme will bring more modern trains onto the network, which will benefit passengers travelling on West Highland Line.