Chamber and committees

It is anticipated that all applicants to the £2 million Local Rail Development Fund will receive a decision on their funding request in early August.

The marine pollution issues caused by plastic microfibres are not yet clear. It is evident that plastic microfibres can be found throughout the marine ecosystem, however their long-term effects are not yet known. At this time, the Scottish Government's focus is to reduce the amount of plastic entering our waters, and to better understand how this can be achieved in the case of microfibres which may have many sources.

The Scottish Government welcomes the devolution of the powers to issue and manage onshore oil and gas licences to Scotland from
9 February 2018.

While Energy Policy remains a reserved matter under the Scotland Act 1998, the licence powers transferred to Scotland through sections 47 to 49 of the Scotland Act 2016, and related subordinate legislation, devolve to Scottish Ministers a range of powers over the administration of onshore oil and gas licences.

I can confirm the Scottish Government received a request for an extension to PEDL 162 from licence-holders INEOS Upstream Ltd. and Reach Coal Seam Gas Ltd. in late April 2018. As a competent licensing authority, it would be a dereliction of our responsibility not to consider this request, taking into account all the relevant factors and to assess the application under the legislation that is currently in force.

Having done so, an extension for a period of 12 months from 1 July 2018 has been agreed. The extension of the licence maintains the current position whilst the statutory Strategic Environmental Assessment and the Business Regulatory Impact Assessment on our preferred policy of not supporting unconventional oil and gas development are undertaken. I anticipate that these are likely to be concluded by the end of the current calendar year.

In the meantime, a moratorium on UOG planning consents is in place which means no local authority can grant planning permission and Ministers would defer any decision on any planning application that did come forward until the policymaking process is completed. The practical effect of the current moratorium and the policymaking process, which I announced last October and which is now well underway, to finalise our position is that no fracking or other UOG activity can take place in Scotland while the Scottish Government’s preferred policy position is subject to the aforementioned statutory procedures. To be clear, I anticipate that the statutory assessments should be concluded within the timescale described above, enabling a finalised policy position to be reached. In the event that the SEA and BRIA are supportive of the Government’s preferred position, then our finalised policy will be to not support UOG in Scotland.

Along with Zero Waste Scotland and SEPA, we are closely monitoring the impacts of the development of new incineration capacity on Scotland's recycling targets.

Regulations are in place to ensure that separately collected recyclable material cannot be incinerated.

The randomised draw system that is used to allocate General and Portfolio questions is working as expected and in accordance with the Parliament's requirements.  The Chamber Desk routinely monitors each draw to ensure that there are no discrepancies or unusual patterns arising that would suggest any problems, and has not identified any issues in this regard. A verification of the system was also undertaken in January 2018 by BIT, which found that the randomized functionality works as expected.  As a matter of good practice, the Presiding Officer has asked for a full statistical analysis of draw results to be undertaken in the summer recess by SPICe.

Prior to approving the de-declaration of a National Nature Reserve (NNR) following a recommendation by Scotland’s NNR Partnership and the approval of the Board of Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), SNH requires the assurance of the relevant Director (and ultimately, SNH’s Chief Executive) that any necessary conservation measures are in place, or will replace those provided by NNR-related arrangements. In some cases, where an SNH NNR has been on land leased from another public body, that body assumes management responsibility under the requirements of the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004.

Details of the National Nature Reserves owned by Scottish Natural Heritage and their area, with information on management responsibility and tenure, are provided in the following table.

For each of its National Nature Reserves, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) has a management plan that describes the site and its interests, the prevailing pressures including any Invasive Non-Native Species (INNS), and outlines SNH’s planned actions for a period of 10 years. SNH generally does not produce specific INNS plans though it may do so for specific projects. Resourcing of reserve management identified in these plans is subject to the setting of annual priorities in line with its Corporate Plan and business plans.