Chamber and committees

A reduction in the Trunk Road and Motorway Routine and Winter Maintenance budget would have resulted in the level of funding made available to the Trunk Road Operating Companies being below that required to meet their commitments for winter maintenance and repairing defects and hazards.

As members know, I personally am sympathetic to a move to a system of opting out, as I''d prefer to call it.

We debated this issue on 18 December last year. The motion agreed by the Parliament was that we accept the UK Organ Donation Taskforce recommendation that the time wasn''t right to make such a change. The motion says we''ll look at this again in five years, but I made clear in the debate that we could re-visit the issue sooner if we felt there wasn''t enough progress.

There are signs that we''re starting to cover what I''ve called the hard miles towards making organ donation usual in NHSScotland. I announced last month that the donor figures for 2008-09 were the highest for 10 years. So I''m prepared to give it a bit longer before we decide whether to re-open this issue.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) and clean coal technologies have the potential to transform the way we generate power and make an important contribution to Scotland''s low carbon future. Scotland is well placed to take a leading role in the development and commercialisation of carbon capture and storage technology.

The Scottish Government has consulted on its draft thermal guidance, including aspects of CCS. The Department of Energy and Climate Change consultation on the proposed clean coal framework closed yesterday. We will now await the completion of that consultation process before finalising our own guidance to ensure that as far as possible a broadly consistent approach is taken across the UK.

CCS has the potential for a whole new industry to emerge in Scotland with considerable economic opportunity. We have the knowledge and expertise in our universities and industry, the infrastructure in the North Sea, and the consistant leadership in government necessary to make this happen and achieve our ambition of a low carbon energy economy.

We want to promote a viable and dynamic agricultural tenancy sector. I therefore welcome the work of the Tenant Farming Forum on these issues and hope that the forum will be able to reach a consensus on the way forward. I have made clear that the government is prepared to look at bringing forward legislation if and when such a consensus is reached.

Figures for the total funding distributed under the Rural Priorities scheme of the Scotland Rural Development Programme (SRDP) are published on the Rural Priorities website at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Rural/SRDP/RuralPriorities/RuralPrioritiesStats.

This includes a breakdown of the funding awarded under each of the regional priorities. The statistics will be updated in the near future to take account of the funding approved at the February Rural Priorities assessment round. The results of the February round will be announced shortly.

With regard to funding approved for chalet and holiday home developments, the figure for the first three assessment rounds in 2008 is £2.8 million.

This question was answered in the Chamber. The answer can be viewed in the Official Report using the following link:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialReports/meetingsParliament/or-09/sor0226-01.htm

The Scottish Planning Policy for the Historic Environment and the Scottish Historic Environment Policy (SHEP) were both published in revised form, after public consultation, on 28 October 2008; the SHEP included revised ministerial policy on listed building consent. Neither document makes specific mention of the issue of glazing options as this is an operational matter; however, the SHEP sets out the general approach and principles. Historic Scotland is undertaking research on the energy performance of older buildings, and this will inform revised guidance on windows for applicants and local authorities, to be published in spring 2009, to replace the guidance in the Memorandum of Guidance on Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas. Applications relating to windows are dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing announced to the Parliament on 19 November 2008 that the Scottish Government intend to replace the Warm Deal and Central Heating Programmes with an integrated energy assistance package from April 2009, as recommended by the Fuel Poverty Forum. Stage 4 of the package, for those on low incomes who live in homes with very poor energy efficiency, will offer insulation measures for hard to treat homes, beyond those currently included in Warm Deal. The technical specification of the individual measures to be included will be established with input from expert stakeholders. This will include consideration of the options for non-standard roof insulation.

Ministers and officials have discussed the Gould Report with our UK counterparts on a number of occasions. The Parliament welcomed Ron Gould''s report, including the recommendation calling for the further devolution of executive and legislative powers to the Scottish Government and the Parliament for the administration of its own elections and the decoupling of future elections to the Parliament and Scotland''s councils. We are very disappointed that the UK Government has not accepted this. We will continue to press them to change their position and allow the Parliament to take responsibility for its own elections.

The Lifelong Learning Directorate of the Scottish Government commissioned the BRITE Initiative to carry out a survey of Provision in Scotland’s Colleges for Learners with Profound and Complex Needs in January 2008.

The survey is now complete and the report has just been submitted to the Scottish Government within the last few days. I will now consider the results of the report together with my officials and their colleagues in the Scottish Funding Council and I expect to publish the report shortly.