Chamber and committees

The funding distribution and allocations are provided in the following table:

The co-operation agreement between the Scottish Government and Scottish Green Party seeks to provide effective and responsible leadership in the interests of the people of Scotland.

A number of machinery of government changes are being made to reflect the agreement:

• The membership of the existing Cabinet Sub-Committee on Legislation will contain a minister from the Scottish Green Party.
• A Cabinet Sub-Committee on the Climate Emergency will be established.
• A working group will be established to oversee the development of effective, deliberative engagement on sources of local government funding, culminating in a citizens’ assembly.
• To support growth in Active Travel, a task group will be formed to plan the most effective route for the implementation of the 20 mph speed limit on all appropriate roads by 2025.
• The previous Ministerial Working Group on Food will be reinstated

The Scottish Government has no record of grant funding provided to The Seafarers' Charity in the period since 2007 and we are unaware of any funding provided prior to this period. There are a number of Scottish Government grant schemes that may be available to the Seafarers’ Charity to apply to, should it require grant funding for specific purposes which align with Scottish Government grant making criteria.

The Scottish Government has a range of manifesto commitments for Gaelic. It is essential that we maintain mechanisms, such as the Gaelic Capital Fund, as we maintain the growth and expansion in Gaelic education across Scotland.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of the Doric Board and has provided funding to the organisation since its inception. The following table outlines these allocations;

The Gaelic Capital Fund is an important support mechanism for Gaelic projects across Scotland. The Scottish Government is currently considering a range of bids from across Scotland and a decision will be made on these shortly.

An Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA) was published on 10 December 2020 in our 2020 consultation report on proposals for a licensing scheme and planning control areas for short-term lets in Scotland. The ICIA can be found at: Short-term lets – licensing scheme and planning control areas: consultation analysis - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

When the Gourock to Dunoon passenger service was brought into the Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Services network, the Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands did commit to look at fares on the passenger service and we remain committed to doing this. However, this is not to prejudge what the outcome of any such review would be.

We are considering Gourock – Dunoon fares in the context of ongoing work to seek to establish a compliant method to deliver RET on the Pentland Firth routes, where there is also a mix of commercial and subsidised operators. This is challenging but we are making progress.

We need to continue this work to fully understand the legal constraints and options for reducing fares where there is more than one operator, prior to any further decisions on RET. Scottish Government resources were pivoted to deal with Covid-19, however work on this issue has now resumed.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-01418 on‎ 9 August 2021. 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

ScotMoves+ is a software module added to the current ScotMoves system which has been used by cattle keepers since 2017 to record cattle movements within their business. ScotMoves+ will provide functionality to record calf registrations, deaths at abattoirs and on-farm, and business-to-business moves within the multi-species ScotEID livestock relational database.

The estimated costs for development, release, support and management of the ScotMoves+ system is approximately 12% of total ScotEID operational and support systems costs for 2021-2022, equating to £136k. The development of ScotMoves+ during 2019-2021 is estimated to be an additional 5% of total ScotEID operational and support systems costs for those years, equating to £89k, with a total cost over 3 years of £225k.

There are also costs for producing and distributing paper passports, these are estimated to be £479k annually - equating to £0.83p per cattle passport. These costs will be fully realised as work progresses across GB when England and Wales disaggregate from the Cattle Tracing System (CTS) and they make the transition to their new systems. Passports are currently undertaken by the Rural Payments Agency who operate CTS.