Chamber and committees

The rules and regulations that govern the resilience of the GB electricity grid are a matter reserved to the UK Government and the Scottish Government has no responsibility in relation to the operational management of wind farm sites.

At the meeting on 15 February 2023, Scottish Government officials were given reassurances by Scottish Power Renewables that they are taking forward work on alternatives to the use of diesel generators.

Scottish Government officials continue to seek regular updates from Scottish Power Renewables on this work as it progresses.

a) For 2022-23, core funding for university research was increased to £299 million to maintain and strengthen Scotland’s excellent research base, with levels maintained for 2023-24. This funding is used for a range of purposes, including the provision of state of the art research facilities and lab equipment, and development opportunities for student and early career researchers who are the future of Scottish life sciences.

b) To ensure there are facilities available to support university spinouts the Scottish Government has invested in Research Pools, Innovation Centres and in the Alliance for Research Challenges. The aim is to create a critical mass of excellence, pulling together academic and industry expertise in areas of global importance, including Life Sciences.

In addition, investment through the City Region Deals is supporting a number of bespoke life sciences infrastructure projects including £10 million investment towards BioHub, an Aberdeen City Region Deal project. Located at the University of Aberdeen's Foresthill Health Campus, it will provide the support and physical infrastructure to help attract and retain life sciences spin outs in Scotland. As part of the Tay Cities Region Deal, Scottish Government agreed to provide £25 million towards facilities at the University, including £20.2 million towards an Innovation Hub to host and support spin-out and developing companies, including laboratory infrastructure.

As well as expert advice and help from our enterprise agencies to support business growth, through the Tech Scaler initiative we will provide intensive, structured commercial education to ‘start-up’ businesses in Scotland, to support them in growing and scaling-up to the full extent of their ambitions.

Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs) are being developed by the Scottish Government in line with the Fisheries Act 2020, and will be published by the end of 2024, as set out in the Joint Fisheries Statement. The 21 Scottish-led FMPs will reflect the urgency of climate mitigation by outlining the policies the Scottish Government is developing to ensure sustainable fisheries. These policies include measures to reduce bycatch and entanglement, such as the Future Catching Policy.

FMPs will also be an important tool for climate adaptation, because FMPs will state the maximum sustainable yield for a stock, where this is available, and include an overview of the health and location of a stock over time. FMPs will be revisited at least every six years, which will support management of our fish stocks as the marine environment changes.

The development of the FMPs will include discussions with our core stakeholder Fisheries Management and Conservation (FMAC) Group. We will also be addressing climate change from a fisheries perspective through the FMAC Climate Change Subgroup and we aim to develop a work programme in partnership with concrete actions for the industry, the Scottish Government, academia and others to take in order to mitigate the impacts fishing has on climate change .

The Future Catching Policy (FCP) is being developed to deliver increased selectivity and sustainability across Scotland’s diverse and varied fishing fleet. Once implemented, the FCP will support increased confidence in, and an increased accountability of, Scotland’s fishing fleets. The consultation on the FCP closed last year and analysis of responses is now complete with a full report, and government response, to be published this year.

The Scottish Government regularly engages with UK Government counterparts at ministerial and official level on many matters concerning the space sector, including the subject of regulation. Most recently I wrote to the UK Space Agency and my counterpart at the former BEIS in February, following a meeting with them in January.

On 16 March 2023, I wrote to the Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority to ask what immediate actions are being taken to reassure government, industry and their customers and investors, that the UK regulator will not inhibit either our global competitiveness as a spacefaring nation nor our spaceports or satellite manufacturers commercial prospects.

Information regarding employment in the creative industries is publicly available on the Scottish Government’s website and can be found at Growth Sector Statistics Database . The relevant data is included in Table 2.5.

The employment data in the Growth Sector Statistics Database does not provide coverage of businesses and self-employed workers operating under the VAT threshold, which are of particular significance to creative and cultural employment, given that many work freelance or in small businesses. As part of ongoing work to develop our approach to measuring the size and performance of the sector within the National Performance Framework, we are currently undertaking work to improve our estimates of employment in the sector to include additional cultural, heritage and creative activities and to allow for better coverage of freelancers.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on future employment growth in this area.

The Scottish Government remains engaged with the review process, however, the responsibility for the implementation of the recommendations falls to NHS Highland, working closely with the local community, NHS 24, the Scottish Ambulance Service and other agencies as recommended in Professor Ritchie’s original review.

Preparation for outbreaks of infectious disease is an ongoing part of health protection. That work is led by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care but the breadth of response required to respond to pandemic events is laid out in the 2022 Strategic Framework Update for COVID-19 and the four-harms approach to decision-making used by the Scottish Government for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Scottish Government regularly engages with the UK Government and the other Devolved Administrations on a range of risks including pandemic preparedness. The Scottish Government works closely with the cross-government Pandemic Disease Capabilities Board to keep Scotland’s readiness up to date.

Statistics relating to the waits patients experience for a new outpatient attendance and inpatient or day case appointment at NHS Board and specialty level are published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) up to 31 st December 2022 and can be found using the following links:

New Outpatients - https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/18024/newop_feb23.xlsx

Inpatients/Daycases - https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/17838/ipdc_feb23.xlsx

The statistics published in the tables above include the median and 90th percentile waits in days for:

• New outpatients waiting (‘1.1 Table’)
• New outpatients seen (‘1.2 Table’)
• Inpatients/day cases waiting (‘2.2 Table’)
• Inpatients/day cases seen (‘2.1 Table’)

We continue to work intensively to clear long waits, which have been exacerbated by the impact of the global pandemic and are determined to provide NHS Boards with support necessary to drive improvements. This includes targets announced in July 2022 to address the backlog of planned care, maximising theatre productivity, optimising Golden Jubilee National Hospital capacity, and the delivery of the £1 billion NHS Recovery Plan to support sustainable improvements and new models of care, such as the National Treatment Centre Programme.

We are also working with the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CFSD) and boards to embed regional and national working to ensure that long waiting patients can access treatment more quickly.

The Scottish Government is aware that, following the publication of the independent external review, 4 of the recommendations have been delivered in full. These include resolving local provision of urgent care in Glenelg & Arnisdale and Raasay, in-patient hospital provision, workforce capacity and capability for the Scottish Ambulance Service and a Centre of Excellence for learning, education and training has been established.