Chamber and committees

Any guidance produced in relation to regional land use partnerships will take into account all relevant policy.

Ash lagoons on industrial sites such as Longannet are authorised through the Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations 2012. The license for Longannet set conditions requiring the operator to minimise the emission of dust to the atmosphere and to provide dust suppression water spraying equipment. The site specific measures for doing so are detailed in their management plan. This plan has been updated since the dust events of April/May 2017.

General guidance on Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations 2012 and landfill regulation are available on SEPA’s website. https://www.sepa.org.uk/regulations/waste/landfill/#two

Transport Scotland continues to work with Scottish transport operators and other public bodies to deliver the Scottish Government’s vision that all journeys on Scotland’s bus, rail, ferry, subway and tram networks can be made using one type of smart ticket or payment. The ScotRail network is now fully smart enabled, with an array of ticket types on offer, including Anytime, Season and, most recently, flexi pass tickets. It is now possible to use the same smartcards on both ScotRail and the Glasgow Subway and the procurement process for a national e-Purse is underway, with the aim to launch a smartcard 'pay-as-you-go' option across all transport modes in 2018.

In the UK, outside of London, bus services are deregulated therefore government cannot simply instruct bus operators or indeed certain ferry operators to adopt or participate in smart ticketing.

The murders of Liam Fee, Madison Horn and Mikaeel Kular were especially shocking given the individuals who were guilty were the very people who should have loved and protected these children.

When a child has died or suffered harm through abuse or neglect, all agencies must consider what might have been done differently to prevent that harm and minimise the risk of further deaths. That is why we expect child protection committees to undertake significant case reviews and share them with the Care Inspectorate, so that it can analyse reviews and report nationally on key areas of learning. I wrote to all child protection committees in June to make clear my expectation that they share all case review findings with the Care Inspectorate.

The Scottish Government remains in on-going contact with Fife to assure itself that progress continues to be made with the implementation of the recommendations from each of the Significant Case Reviews into the deaths of these children. We are also progressing implementation of the national recommendations in those reviews.

As the member will be aware, I made a statement to Parliament in March 2017, setting out the Scottish Government’s response to the independent Child Protection Systems Review which we commissioned and which was chaired by Catherine Dyer. I accepted all recommendations made by the review, including a number of recommendations to improve learning from Significant Case Reviews, such as developing a set of National Standards for those carrying out Significant Case Reviews, exploring a new tiered approach to Significant Case Reviews and making the Care Inspectorate the central repository for all Initial and Significant Case Reviews.

On-going learning and improvement will be supported by other elements of the Child Protection Improvement Programme including a revised framework of inspections that focusses on the experiences and outcomes of the most vulnerable children.

The Scottish Government has had no discussions with NHS Tayside regarding the temporary closure of the Minor Injury and Illness Unit at Crieff Community Hospital. This was an operational decision due to unforeseen staffing issues. The unit re-opened on 17 July.

Air quality sensors were first made available to schools in September 2015 as part of a project to raise awareness of air quality issues. They are not part of the statutory air quality monitoring network. All 10 kits have been loaned continuously during term time. The Scottish Government is in discussion with SEPA, the service operator, about possible funding to expand the number of sensors available.

There are currently 586 registered users for the Know & Respond air pollution alert service (via the Scottish air quality website) and a further 947 through the Know & Respond app. However, the number of individuals making use of the service is likely to be significantly higher than this, as a number of registered users are known to be GP practice and specialist nurses who forward the alerts to their patients.

The number of people using the Scottish air quality website on an annual basis since the website was established in 2007 is shown in the following table.

Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), the Climate Challenge Fund (CCF) administrator, has well-established processes in place to promote the fund and support applications from a range of communities across Scotland.

This year KSB is running surgeries and events across Scotland to inform and support communities wishing to apply to the CCF. These events are aimed at hard to reach communities and areas identified by the SIMD .

I also refer the member to previous questions for further information on CCF grant awards by SIMD: S5W-09208, S5W-09210, S5W-09211 on 23 May 2017.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The Scottish Government is not aware of any evidence of culling of beavers in 2017.