Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government remains committed to being a responsible global citizen. As announced by the First Minister at COP28, the Scottish Government and Kids Operating Room have partnered to establish a reliable, safe and clean power supply to paediatric operating rooms in our partner countries of Malawi, Rwanda, and Zambia. This £324,900 investment will fund solar energy systems for 15 operating rooms across 13 hospitals, helping an estimated 27,000 children receive urgent surgery over the next three years.

Across their work, Kids Operating Room are working to strengthen sustainable surgical capacity and build stronger healthcare systems. To do this in a truly sustainable way the organisation seeks to work closely with partners, putting in place locally driven maintenance programmes. This works to ensure hospitals not only have the tools but also the right skills and knowledge to provide safe and quality care for children.

Each KidsOR Operating Room is equipped with over 3,300 pieces of specialist equipment. Much of this equipment is more complex than those typically found in low-resource settings. When this equipment is installed onsite KidsOR biomedical engineers train the surgical and hospital biomedical teams on how to use specific items of equipment. This user training is vitally important to providing safe, timely surgery.

Kids Operating Room also provide funding to the East and West African College of Surgeon's e-learning hub and provide sponsorship for individual scholarships - all with the aim of enhancing the skills of the workforce.

In parallel to this wider package of support, as part of the specific investment you reference, KidsOR biomedical engineers will visit each partner hospital and provide staff training on how to best utilise these new solar energy systems.

We welcomed the Climate Change Committee’s 2023 progress report to the UK Parliament and agree that much greater urgency and focus on delivery is required from the UK Government if climate goals across the UK are to be met.

Scotland continues to decarbonise faster than the UK average. As this progress report recognised, we are leading the way in key delivery areas such as industry and electricity supply, where – unlike the rest of the UK – emissions have continued to come down. However, Scottish and UK Government targets are inter-dependent and require significant collaboration between our governments in order to maximise impact given the wide range of powers that are reserved.

The Climate Change Committee has been clear that action by the UK Government is important for delivery of climate change targets around the UK, just as action under devolved powers is crucial to UK targets. That is why we continue to call on UKG to act in reserved areas of great importance to Scotland's climate ambitions and why we work through the Net Zero Inter-Ministerial Group and other fora in this regard.

South Lanarkshire Council was last directly contacted on 25 October, in regards to their road assessment for 20 mph speed limits. In addition a representative from South Lanarkshire Council was present at the 20 mph task group meeting, held on 2 November. They were updated by email on 11 December on the most effective route to implement national 20 mph speed limits by 2025.

Scottish Government provided £8m in 2021-22 and £12m in 2022-23 and 2023-24 to local authorities in order to support the policy to remove all charges for instrumental music tuition in schools.

As confirmed in the budget published in December 2023, the Scottish Government and COSLA have agreed funding of £12 million for instrumental music tuition in 2024-25, continuing to remove barriers to participation.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all children across Scotland can access high quality play opportunities in a range of settings to support their growth, development and wellbeing.

We will build on Scotland’s world-leading 2013 Play Strategy, and the 2019 Play Scotland progress report, to develop a vision statement and action plan for play in 2024. We will do this by listening to the views of children and young people and working in collaboration with our stakeholders.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23760 on 9 January 2024. 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 .

Scotland is committed to a just transition to net-zero and decarbonisation of industry is ‘mission critical’. Scottish Government is continuing to deliver the Scottish Industrial Energy Transformation Fund, which leverages private sector investment from energy intensive industries to deliver energy efficiency improvements to decarbonise industrial processes.

Scottish Government is also strengthening engagement with research networks and energy intensive industries to build evidence-based policy to support industrial decarbonisation. Scottish Government continues to liaise with UK Government on the many reserved policy, fiscal or regulatory levers that influence current incentives for industry to invest in decarbonisation.

The Music Education Partnership Group had a joint meeting with myself and the Minister for Culture, Europe And International Development on 29 June 2023.

This was an introductory meeting and covered school and community music in Scotland, the various MEPG initiatives including the “We Make Music” initiatives, recent MEPG engagement with research on music learning and an update on a MEPG paper on the Vision for Scotland’s music industry.

Scottish Government officials liaise with MEPG and a range of music education partners on an ongoing basis.

The We Make Music schools initiative is led by the Music Education Partnership Group, which is an independent charity and network of music-based organisations.

Information on the We Make Music school initiative and progress with the programme is available via the MEPG website at: https://wemakemusicscotland.org/ or by contacting the Music Education Partnership Group at the following email address which is also available via their website: [email protected]

The Scottish Government will draw on a range of experiences in the development of refreshed Guidance on Developing Policies to Promote the Safe and Responsible Use of Mobile Technology in Schools. This will include the experiences of schools like Gordonstoun, and others, who have introduced limitations on the use of mobile phones in schools.

The current guidance which is available from Guidance on Developing Policies to Promote the Safe and Responsible Use of Mobile Technology in Schools (www.gov.scot) remains in place at this time.