Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has worked with stakeholders throughout the pandemic with a view to supporting the conference and events sector, including through the Events Industry Advisory Group, which was created in response to COVID-19. Test events have been part of this approach. Some outdoor sporting test events have been successfully delivered and a modest programme of further test events was being considered. However, the additional measures necessary to protect the population from the spread of COVID-19, announced on 21 September, meant that the programme had to be paused.

We remain supportive of test events, from which we can learn lessons to support the resumption of live events at the appropriate time. Our intention is therefore to work with stakeholders to deliver further test events, subject to virus restrictions and with mitigations in place to prevent virus transmission.

As at 4 November the Scottish Government had received 30 requests from the conference and events sector to host test events. The 30 requests comprise:

• 7 football matches
• 2 rugby matches
• 3 horse racing meets
• 1 golf event
• 1 motor racing event
• 5 business events
• 9 performing arts events/companies
• 1 music gig
• 1 comedy event

Scottish Government has received representations from the Bingo Association, Bingo Halls, Staff, customers, MSP’s and MP’s. We have been in close contact with the Bingo Association and have worked with them to ensure that Bingo halls have been able to open when it has been safe to so with the relevant restrictions in place to help protect its staff and customers alike.

After feedback on the Strategic Framework published on 23 October, which showed bingo halls closed below level 2, the revised Framework issued on 29 October permits bingo halls to be open at level 2 and below. This has been reflected in the regulations which came into force on 2 November. While suppression of the virus is our key objective, decisions on the Framework also reflect supporting broader health and wellbeing, mitigating social harms and supporting the economy.

The Farming and Food Production – Future Policy Group (FFP-FPG) last met on 23 September and agreed that they need to meet further in order to finalise their Report. As an independent Group, it will be for the Group to determine when it is ready to publish its Report, however we do expect that the Report will be published this year.

A Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) will be completed for the short-term lets licensing order and control area regulations. This will be published when the statutory instruments are laid at the Scottish Parliament. The consultation paper Short Term Lets - Consultation on a licensing scheme and planning control areas in Scotland sets out the Scottish Government’s proposals in detail and the stakeholder engagement and consultation responses will help inform the BRIA.

Guidance on organised children’s activities has been updated on 5 October to increase the number of adults allowed to attend parent and baby groups.

When all children in a group are less than 12 months old, and other health and safety criteria are met, groups will now allow up to ten adults to be present at one time. Where children are over 12 months, the maximum number of adults allowed will remain five.

Babies do not count for total numbers or households taking part. Siblings under 5 can also attend, where unavoidable, and do not also count towards household numbers.

Controlling the pandemic has necessitated difficult decisions to save lives, including the single household rule. Our total support package now exceeds £2.3 billion, more than £40.5m of which has gone to tourism and hospitality; and almost £900 million of non-domestic rates relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses. Self-catering businesses have benefitted from targeted funds, including Business Grants, the Tourism Hardship fund and most recently, the Visit Scotland administered £1.5 million Coronavirus Support scheme. We know more support will be needed into the future however the Scottish Government’s resources are limited – we do not have the borrowing powers required to fully support industries affected by the impact of Covid. Along with other Devolved Administrations we have consistently pressed the UK Government for increased powers to enable us to tailor our response and we will continue to make that case.

We will also continue to press the UK Government to continue the Job Retention Scheme which has been a vital means of support so far – removing it now when businesses need it most would be catastrophic, and so far proposed replacements schemes fall short of what is required.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-31918 on 30 September 2020. 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

We will not be piloting these proposals. We want to make progress in this Parliament to address a pressing issue for some of our communities and, to do this, we are aiming to lay secondary legislation in December. However, we will be encouraging and facilitating local authorities to learn from each other’s experiences in establishing control areas and operating a licensing scheme.

We will monitor and evaluate the impact of our proposals to ensure that they are effective and targeted. We are willing to bring a Bill to Parliament in the next session if we continue to see issues, but to do so now would result in unnecessary delay.

The Scottish Government has been working on proposals for the regulation of short-term lets since 2018. We first consulted in summer 2019 for twelve weeks, and published the results of both that consultation exercise and the independent research we commissioned in October 2019. We announced our proposals for a licensing scheme, planning control areas and a review of taxation in January 2020. Unfortunately, work on implementing these proposals had to be suspended from March to July 2020 to deal with the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We had originally planned for a longer period of engagement on our proposals in autumn 2020 but the timetable has had to be compressed in order to ensure that the secondary legislation could still be laid at the Scottish Parliament in this session.

We have set out detailed proposals for secondary legislation in this second consultation paper and, despite the restrictions imposed by COVID-19, officials are managing to hold effective virtual workshops with stakeholders representing all interests. These workshops are flushing out useful points for consideration and we had already received over 500 consultation responses on-line by close Monday 12 October.

We have to balance the need to have as fulsome consideration of the proposals as possible against the need to make progress, all in the context of a pandemic. On balance, we are not convinced that extra time is merited to consider the proposals further. We want to use the powers that we have to make progress in this Parliament to address this issue.