Chamber and committees

Procurement Scotland, part of the Scottish Government''s Procurement Directorate, has in place a national agreement for paper accessible by all public sector bodies. Since the agreement commenced on 1 September 2008 some 8 million reams of paper have been purchased by 172 public bodies and 721 charities, housing associations and registered social landlords: 640,000 reams in 2008, 3.9 million reams in 2009 and 3.3 million reams to date in 2010. Prior to the introduction of the national contract this information was not collected centrally: equivalent data for 2007 is not therefore readily available.

The Scottish Government has no plans to change the role of the Scottish Forestry Commissioners.

The Forestry Commission is a cross-border GB body that develops and delivers forestry policy on behalf of the Scottish, English and Welsh administrations. The statutory powers and duties of the commission are vested in the Forestry Commissioners. The future of the Forestry Commissioners will be a matter for discussion between Scottish, English and Welsh ministers.

The Scottish Government may, by virtue of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act, seek, by order, to amend, transfer or delegate the functions of the Forestry Commissioners as they relate to Scotland. A proposal to abolish the Forestry Commissioners would require legislation at Westminster, and a Legislative Consent Motion, and we would expect such a proposal to be discussed and agreed by Scottish, English and Welsh ministers.

Our woodland creation targets are mainly achieved through grant support under the Scotland Rural Development Programme and some direct planting undertaken by Forestry Commission Scotland. The 2011-12 Draft Budget provides sufficient funding to meet our targets and we have actually increased grants available for forestry by £8.9 million to £36 million.

We are only part way through the first year of the Scottish Government pledge to plant 100 million trees by 2015 and we have already approved plans for over 25 million trees.

Our woodland creation targets are mainly achieved through grant support under the Scotland Rural Development Programme and some direct planting undertaken by Forestry Commission Scotland. The 2011-12 Draft Budget provides sufficient funding to meet our targets and we have actually increased grants available for forestry by £8.9 million to £36 million.

We are only part way through the first year of the Scottish Government pledge to plant 100 million trees by 2015 and we have already approved plans for 10,800 hectares of planting by the private sector which, when added to Forestry Commission Scotland''s plans, amount to over 25 million trees.

Our woodland creation targets are mainly achieved through grant support under the Scotland Rural Development Programme and some direct planting undertaken by Forestry Commission Scotland. The 2011-12 Draft Budget provides sufficient funding to meet our targets and we have actually increased grants available for forestry by £8.9 million to £36 million.

The responses to the Conserve and Save consultation identified that a consumption based target was preferred to a target based upon both energy efficiency and consumption combined or a target based upon energy efficiency savings in isolation.

The challenging 12% target level is based upon our estimates of the impact of our comprehensive package of policies and proposals between now and 2020. The Report on Policies and Proposals, which was published on 17 November 2010, sets out those actions in fuller detail.

The number of successful and unsuccessful applications, and boilers installed, to the private sector landlords boiler scrappage scheme will be recorded and broken down by local authority.