Chamber and committees

As I have set out in my statement to Parliament in April, we intend to introduce a Heat in Buildings Bill in Year 5 of this Parliamentary Session. The final decision on the provisions of the Bill, to be introduced later this year, will be made collectively by Cabinet ahead of its introduction.

The Scottish Government does not operate a compensation scheme for those affected by wildfires. Standard UK home insurance policies generally cover fire damage to both the building and its contents. Coverage can include structural repairs, personal belongings, damage caused by emergency services, and temporary accommodation if required.

During a large multi agency incident a local Emergency Liaison, Local or Regional Resilience Partnership (RRP) may be stood up by any agency. These are established by multi-agency partnerships comprising representatives from local public services, including emergency services, local authorities, the NHS, and others. These partners, known as Category 1 Responders, are mandated by the Civil Contingencies Act. RRPs also collaborate with Category 2 responders, such as utility companies and the Highways Agency, to ensure comprehensive preparedness, response and recovery to emergencies.

With regard to farmed fish escapes, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37451 on 16 May 2025 regarding escapes. 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.

Regarding mortality, in correspondence dated 13 March 2025 to the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee (RAIC), I committed to analysing data to understand how sites with persistent high mortality manifest, if mortality incidents are related and are indicative of insufficient mitigating action by the producer. I will provide an update on this to the RAIC later this year.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37570 on 16 May 2025. 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.

Paternity leave is a matter for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) and is negotiated through the National Joint Council for firefighters or through Staff representative bodies for non-uniformed staff. There are a number of policies available for employees including parental leave and shared parental leave, designed to provide support to employees.

Scottish Government have had no recent discussions with the British Medical Association (BMA) regarding clinical risks associated with NHS 24 services.

The Scottish Government endeavours to provide information in response to requests wherever possible. The provisions of section 29(1)(a) (formulation or development of government policy) or other exemptions under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) should only be applied in order to withhold information where necessary, in the public interest.

Anyone who has made a request for information has the right to ask the Scottish Government to carry out a review if they have concerns about the handling of their request. The Scottish Government has a statutory obligation to carry out such a review and provide a further response to the requester within 20 working days. The review will be carried out by a Scottish Government official who was not involved in the decision-making process for the original request, and who can therefore consider afresh any matters of concern raised by the requester - including whether exemptions from disclosure have been appropriately applied. Following the review, the requester has the right to apply to the Scottish Information Commissioner for a decision on their request, if they remain dissatisfied.

Outside of the statutory process for individual reviews described above, there is no requirement for the Scottish Government to proactively revisit FOI responses previously issued to see if the sensitivity of information has changed over time in a way which would mean exemptions no longer apply. As the Scottish Government responds to over 5,000 requests per year, it would be impractical to do so.

However, the Scottish Government is also committed to making information about all areas of its work proactively available, for example through its frequent planned publications on the Scottish Government website.

The purpose of the meeting on 26 February 2025 was to update myself and the Minister for Climate Action on the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements, the reform options being considered by UK Government, and the potential impact of those options for Scotland.

The briefing paper for this meeting, and list of attendees, including ministers, have already been released under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA). It is standard procedure for names of officials to be redacted in all FOIs under Section 38(1)(b), due to protections around the sharing of Third Party Data, whereby personal data is exempt from disclosure if disclosure would contravene any of the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the UK GDPR and in section 34(1) of the DPA 2018.

Upon review of the FOI, section 29(1)(a) was not cited as a redaction used. Information has been redacted under 30(b)(i), however, was redacted due to it relating to the free and frank provision of advice. This exemption recognises the need for Ministers to have space within which to seek advice and views from officials before reaching a settled public position.

In line with usual practice, details of individual tasks carried out by civil servants, including the number of hours spent on them, are not routinely recorded.

While the term National Challenge Competition is very broad, there are a range of policy initiatives which publicly seek new ideas and/or issue funding on a competitive basis. Funds and initiatives of this kind exist across the Scottish Government and it is therefore difficult to provide a comprehensive list without further clarification. However, examples of such initiatives include:

• The work of the Chief Scientist for Health, whose office periodically launches open innovation calls focussed on health challenges facing the Scottish population. Examples of such challenges include drugs deaths and mental health.
• The Civtech programme, which, on an ongoing basis, supports new, small and medium size companies to win public sector contracts by solving key innovation challenges.
• Other forms of pre-commercial procurement in which public bodies contract for services to develop new and innovative solutions.
• Entrepreneurship policy, where funding is regularly issued on a competitive basis. Examples include the recently launched Ecosystem Fund, focussed on backing organisations who support and mentor start-up founders and the Entrepreneurial Education Fund, which invests in projects focussed on embedding entrepreneurial thinking across the Scottish education system.

The Scottish Government has committed through its 2024 Programme for Government to review the way the culture sector is supported. This ongoing culture sector support programme will, amongst other things, explore alternative and additional funding mechanisms to grow the overall funding pot for culture in Scotland. A Percentage for the Arts scheme is one of the mechanisms that will be considered as part of this programme.