Chamber and committees

Former employees of Circularity Scotland attended a Deposit Return Scheme Four Nations Interoperability Workshop in Edinburgh on 27 June 2023 following the organisation going into administration to provide insight into their experience of DRS in Scotland. Scottish Government officials have continued to work with staff acting for Circularity Scotland, administrators and partners.

The Scottish Government is committed to working with Scotland’s airports, including Glasgow Airport, to help them grow international connectivity, while not returning to previous levels of emissions. Our aim is for Scotland to be as well connected as peer nations and regions, and we have regular engagement with Glasgow Airport to discuss potential opportunities. Our engagement with Scotland’s airports is commercially sensitive and I am unable to share specific details.

Transport Scotland, in partnership with VisitScotland and Scottish Development International, works to help Scotland’s airports secure new routes that are essential for inbound tourism, business connectivity and the economy as a whole. In May, representatives from this cross government partnership attended the route development forum Routes Europe 2023, supporting Glasgow Airport and the other Scottish airports in attendance.

In March this year, the Scottish Government supported VisitScotland in rolling out a demand-building campaign to encourage travellers to seek direct flights to Scotland from across our key markets, with airlines serving Glasgow included in this campaign.

Building safety is a matter for the owner - who in this case would be individual local authorities - acting in accordance with the relevant health and safety legislation. Before any decisions can be taken on funding, it is important to understand the scope and nature of the issue.

Health and Safety legislation is not devolved to the Scottish Government. The Health & Safety Executive is the UK-wide regulator for health and safety and they intend to carry out research into buildings which contain RAAC. The research methodology is in the final stages of development which includes assessment tools to help measure the risks associated with RAAC planks. We will monitor the research when it is commissioned and apply the findings and recommendations appropriately.

The Scottish Government has budgeted £1.1m for the Circular Textiles Fund for 2023-24. The fund is being administered by Zero Waste Scotland on the Scottish Government’s behalf.

Future budget allocations beyond 2023-24 will be confirmed through the annual budget setting process.

The Scottish Government does not produce any statistics on persistently or severely absent pupils. This is because it is the responsibility of local authorities, not Scottish Government, to monitor attendance locally within their own school estate. The Scottish Government routinely gathers data on attendance - National Statistics on attendance and absence rates are collected and published every two years with attendance and absence snapshots to be published approximately once a month throughout the 2023-24 school year.

The Scottish Government has recently published refreshed guidance on community engagement and consultation in relation to forestry plans and proposals. The purpose of the guidance is to provide greater clarity around the existing engagement and consultation processes during the development and approval of woodland creation schemes, including commercial forestry projects. The document outlines why community engagement and consultation is important, the processes involved in the development and approval of forestry plans and proposals, roles and responsibilities, and the opportunities for communities to be involved in the development of those plans.

Furthermore, the UK Forestry Standard sets out the technical requirements that applicants developing woodland creation schemes, funded under the Forestry Grant Scheme, should meet in terms of opportunities for the new woodland to enhance landscape and biodiversity opportunities and how to mitigate impacts. These requirement also include the need for detailed wildlife, habitat and landscape surveys and assessments where appropriate.

Under the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Act 2002 The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman is excluded from considering complaints about the curriculum offering or teaching. They can consider complaints about complaints handling.

While the Curriculum for Excellence provides the overarching framework and sets out the eight curriculum areas, the statutory responsibility for the delivery of education sits with local authorities and schools under the Education (Scotland) Act 1980.

The Scottish Government is committed to the creation of a Scottish Veterinary Service (SVS) to ensure there are highly trained staff to provide Scotland with good animal health and food safety to meet all our needs across the public and private sector for animal health issues. For that purpose, a Programme has been established to manage the work required to create an SVS.

The Extension to the Review of Field Delivery of Animal Health Services in Scotland report, conducted by Professor Charles Milne, followed up on the earlier Field Delivery of Animal Health Services in Scotland, and was based on interviews with individual sand organisations involved in animal health services in Scotland and beyond.

The SVS Programme is assessing which functions the SVS should deliver, including border checks. APHA is only responsibility for border checks on live animals, with Scottish Local Authorities responsible for checks on animal products.

Scottish Government Officials liaise regularly with the Animal and Plant health Agency, as well as Defra, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive officials to ensure that suitable arrangements are in place, in due course, to mitigate against any risks to animal health and welfare as a result of different arrangement for the delivery of veterinary controls in Scotland. It is impossible, however, to make effective plans for the delivery of border checks while the UK Government continues to delay the publication of the awaited UK Target Operating Model for Borders.

I refer the Member to the response to S6W-20057. Additionally, following the UK Government letter on IMA exclusion late on 26 May, I , on 27 May 2023, and the First Minister, on 2 June 2023, wrote to the UK Government outlining the impact of the decision. Officials have also been in regular contact across administrations around the Deposit Return Scheme and the impact of Circularity Scotland going in to administration.

NatureScot are able to license beaver management activities under the Conservation (Natural Habitats, &c.) Regulations 1994. However the legislation requires the same tests to be met for trapping (or taking) as for killing a protected species and does not require the use of trapping to be considered before a licence for lethal control is granted.

However, NatureScot recognise the hierarchy of impacts of control methods on populations and individual animals and as such have been proactively working with licence holders over the last four years to encourage the use of trapping and translocation wherever this is feasible. Trapping is carried out by NatureScot at no cost to the licence-holder. In their Beaver Management Report for 2022 NatureScot reported the proportion of beavers being removed by trapping as opposed to lethal control had increased from 28% in 2021 to 42% in 2022. The Code of Practice that accompanies lethal control licences also asks licence applicants to consider whether trapping would be a feasible means of control.