Chamber and committees

As the First Minister advised Parliament on 26 May, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Green Party have committed to exploring opportunities for cooperation and joint working for the common good and to change the dynamic of our politics for the better in line with the founding principles of our Parliament.

Since the First Minister’s announcement last month, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Greens have been engaging in positive discussions about a potential co-operation agreement, and have identified the subjects to be explored as part of this.

Talks are covering the major challenges of this Parliament. This includes Scotland’s recovery from Covid, our response to the Climate Emergency, the constitution, public services, infrastructure, and building a fairer and more equal Scotland.

Talks will continue over the summer and a further report will be provided to Parliament after the recess.

On 25 March 2021 the UK Government committed to ruling out COVID-19 appeals on non-domestic properties in England. It concurrently announced a new Business Rates relief fund of £1.5 billion for businesses affected by COVID-19 outside the retail, hospitality, and leisure sectors.

We anticipate that this will result in consequential funding for the Scottish Government, but at this point we are still waiting for confirmation of when this will be received. Once that confirmation is provided, we remain committed to passing on all business support consequentials through a tailored package of measures for Scottish business during the recovery period.

In the interim, we agree in principle with the UK Government that market-wide economic changes to rateable values, such as from COVID-19, should be only considered at revaluation to ensure fairness to all ratepayers; and that it is not appropriate to use the material change of circumstances provisions in the non-domestic rates legislation in relation to COVID-19, or COVID-19 restrictions.

The Scottish Government can therefore confirm its intention to also take measures to rule out COVID-19 appeals, whilst continuing to ensure that we best support the most affected businesses and sectors in the recovery period. We will set out our legislative plans after the summer.

The Scottish Government maintains up to date COVID-19 safety guidance for Early Learning and Childcare settings. This guidance is developed in consultation with public health experts on both the Advisory Sub-Group on Education and Children’s Issues, and in Public Health Scotland.

The Advisory Sub-Group for Education and Children’s Issues has now provided further advice, specifically on whether groups of parents should be permitted to attend ELC settings for outdoor events such as nursery graduations. Their advice is that groups of parents and carers should not attend end-of-year events in Early Learning and Childcare settings in this academic year, whether indoors or outdoors.

The guidance seeks to minimise the number of contacts that children and staff have, to keep them safe and to reduce the risk that children and staff need to self-isolate in the event of someone in the setting testing positive.

Our guidance is also in place to keep children in learning, and essential childcare settings open to support families now and over the summer. This has been a difficult decision that carefully weighed up the risks against the benefits.

I am grateful to settings that have found safe ways to allow children to celebrate with their friends and key workers and found creative ways to share this with parents and carers. I encourage other settings to find ways to ensure that parents can share in their child’s experience with, for example, videos and photos.

The guidance is up to date which specifies the seating arrangements at weddings in levels 1 and 0.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted globally, including on our international development partner countries, and our programmes based there.

This necessitated a re-fresh of the Scottish Government's approach to International Development, to ensure that we focus our work on areas where we can make the biggest contribution and difference in our partner countries against the backdrop of the new reality of COVID-19. To that end the Scottish Government Programme for Government announced on 01 September 2020 our intention to review our approach to International Development. I announced the results of this Review to the Scottish Parliament via S5W-35666 on 3 March 2021. Through that review I met with representatives of our partner country Governments, and civil society, to discuss their priorities for building back fairer and stronger from COVID-19. Further information on the Review can be found here: ( International development: Coronavirus (COVID-19): review of international development programme - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ).

Separately, in December 2020 the Scottish Government provided £2 million of funding to UNICEF for their response to the Pandemic in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia, which included funding to help prepare the health systems in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda for the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine ( Aid for COVID-19 response in Africa - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ).

We have also tried to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on our project partners by pivoting funds to make available total funding of £991,594 from the International Development Fund and Humanitarian Emergency Fund where we were able to do so. The Humanitarian Emergency Fund in particular provided a total of £240,000 to the: Disasters Emergency Committee; Mission Aviation Fellowship; Mercy Corps and SCIAF towards their COVID-19 response efforts for vulnerable communities. Further information on this pivoted spend can be found here . Scotland has also sent life-saving oxygen and ventilation equipment to India ( 100 oxygen concentrators and 40 continuous positive airway pressure ((CPAP) ventilators ) as part of a UK-wide effort to support them in the fight against COVID-19.

Finally, we have also committed to not only maintain, but in fact increasing our International Development budget by 50%, to £15 million, which is intended to assist with COVID-19 preparedness in our partner countries. This is in contrast to the UK Government's ODA funding being cut from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5% of GNI which will have such disastrous effects on the world's most marginalised and vulnerable communities at a time of great need.

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

Gambling has the potential to negatively affect physical, psychological health, and the social functioning of the people who gamble and others around them.

We will continue to consider evidence on what works best to address the issue of gambling harms in Scotland. We are working closely with Public Health Scotland, the third sector and those with lived experience to develop a person-centred approach to treatment for problem gambling and the reduction of gambling related harms. We are collaborating with many organisations across the country to help inform a Scotland focussed gambling strategy to reduce the harmful impacts of problem gambling in our communities.

Anyone with concerns about problem gambling can find advice on NHS Inform or can consult their GP. Out of hours, advice and support can be obtained from NHS24 on 111 or from Breathing Space on 0800 83 85 87.

Marine Scotland currently monitors marine plastic pollution in three programmes which have been used to establish baselines for seabed litter, floating microplastics and beach litter. These were published in Scotland’s Marine Assessment 2020 and can be found at https://marine.gov.scot/sma/assessment-theme/marine-litter .

Dancing is not permitted at weddings in level 0 of the levels framework.

When we move beyond level 0, and out of the levels framework, almost all COVID restrictions will be removed for businesses and individuals. This will mean that dancing and singing at weddings will be able to resume at this time. In addition, businesses can reopen and can operate without restrictions on physical distancing or caps.

Some baseline measures will remain, including good hand hygiene and surface cleaning and continued compliance with Test and Protect. More guidance on these baseline measure will be provided prior to moving beyond level 0.

Our Statement of Intent on Biodiversity was published in December 2020 and highlights the need to create new locally driven projects to improve ecological connectivity across Scotland. We have made an ambitious, voluntary commitment to protect 30% of Scotland’s land for nature by 2030, in advance of the new Global Biodiversity Framework. We are commissioning advice from NatureScot on how best to achieve this - and whether we can go even further, given that we have already achieved 37% protection of Scotland’s marine environment - including through identification of Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures. The 30x30 project will advance ecological restoration across the whole of Scotland, on a scale much greater than the existing National Park area in Scotland.

The Cairngorms National Park has a significant part of its area under ecological restoration (sometimes called rewilding). This includes the area of Cairngorms Connect, NTS Mar Lodge, and a number of other private estates. The area of the Cairngorms National Park which is currently under ecological restoration measures is approximately 20%, or around 100,000 hectares.

Within Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, 8.6% of land is a designated Site of Specific Scientific Interest. This figure does not include Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) or Special Protected Areas (SPAs), which would bring the total area of land under ecological restoration, and covered by a statutory designation, to around 12%. Including National Nature Reserves (NNRs) would increase this figure to around 21%.

The current Cairngorms National Park Partnership Plan and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Partnership Plan sets out the policy frameworks within the National Parks, which support and underpin the ecological restoration being undertaken.

Amending Regulations were made to the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 today.

These Regulations amend the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Regulations 2020.

The regulations adjust the physical distancing requirements at funerals so that family members may be involved in funerals by carrying the coffin or assisting to lower the coffin into a lair. The regulations also amend the physical distancing rules for the purpose of the 1888 Cup rugby event at Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh on 26 June 2021. The physical distancing requirements are reduced to 1.15 metres within Murrayfield Stadium for the purposes of that event.

The Regulations provide for extended opening hours for hospitality in the event that a match during the knockout stages of the UEFA EURO 2020 Championship which is being shown in hospitality premises runs over the currently permitted opening hours. This amendment was also set out in S6W-00988 on 23 June 2021. In the event of extended play, and limited only to match days and the games where this occurs, closing time for hospitality premises showing the game is extended up to 23:30 where a venue is showing a match live which runs over the current opening hours. This is not a blanket relaxation of the rules but a specific and pragmatic approach to facilitate safe viewing of full Euros matches.

The regulations also adjust the rules on face coverings at weddings and civil partnerships to remove the requirement for persons accompanying a party to be married or entering into a civil partnership to wear a face covering.

The Regulations have been published at The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No. 29) Regulations 2021 (legislation.gov.uk)

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