Chamber and committees

The Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill is concerned with the use of dogs to hunt wild mammals and, as such, does not affect shoots where dogs are only being used to beat or retrieve game birds.

As I stated in the Rural Affairs, Islands, and Natural Environment committee evidence session on the 29 June:

“If someone sets out with the purpose of pursuing a combination of game shooting and control of wild mammals, the bill will apply. The two-dog limit will apply and the person will have to comply with the terms of the bill. If they go out only for game shooting—therefore, not in pursuit of a wild mammal and with no intention of pursuing a wild mammal—the bill will not apply. In those circumstances, I expect that, if the dogs that the person was using went after a wild mammal, and that was not the person’s intention, they would not be caught by the bill.”

The Scottish Government undertook two public consultations on the proposals in the Bill as well as carrying out a series of stakeholder engagement meetings.

The Full Business Case Stage 1 Addendum for Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), published on 16 March 2020, models the economic impact of DRS based on a central estimate for the producer fee and concludes that there is a strong economic case for DRS.

The specific level of the producer fee is for Circularity Scotland Ltd (CSL), as a private business independent of Government, to set through a commercial negotiation with the producers which it agrees to represent. The Scottish Government has not made an assessment of CSL’s proposed producer fees.

To inform the setting of sustainable rates for August 2022, COSLA and local authorities commissioned Ipsos Mori to carry out an independent cost collection exercise. This exercise will ensure that all local authorities have access to robust data on the costs of delivering funded ELC in private, third and childminding services.

Local authorities are currently reviewing their outputs from the exercise alongside the updated guidance on setting sustainable rates published on 26 May 2022. The guidance is clear that the findings of the cost collection exercise are only a part of the rate setting process, and local authorities will also consider local ELC market conditions and ongoing consultation with providers.

The COSLA Children and Young People Board has committed to local authorities being as transparent as possible on outputs from the survey, provided the data has the appropriate level of statistical confidence and confidentiality. The Scottish Government will also collect and publish data on rates for 2022-23 in the Autumn.

In early 2020, the Scottish Government asked the Electoral Commission to re-test the referendum question used in 2014. Work on this was paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have announced our intention to hold an independence referendum on 19 October 2023, and the Lord Advocate has made a reference to the Supreme Court.

We will undertake the necessary preparations for a referendum, including on question testing, at the appropriate time.

The workshop exploring the seven principles and deer management welfare was organised by the John Muir Trust and OneKind and attended by Scottish Government officials alongside colleagues from Forestry and Land Scotland and NatureScot.

As the Scottish Government did not organise the workshop, we do not have any minutes to publish. I understand however that OneKind will shortly publish a blog about the workshop on their website.

The following table provides a summary of Scottish Government funding for Invasive Non-Native Species (INNS) control on riverbanks in each of the last 15 years. Invasive species control projects based on river catchments control a number of species including American mink, Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, Himalayan balsam and American skunk cabbage. It is not possible to disaggregate funding for giant hogweed control alone.

For the financial year 2021-22, Scottish Development International (SDI) and its partners recorded 3721 new jobs and 4059 safeguarded jobs. These job numbers only cover the projects or companies that were directly supported or assisted by SDI. While the Scottish Government are not able to collect data on all jobs created in Scotland as a result of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the recently published EY Attractiveness Survey 2022 estimates projected jobs created in Scotland from FDI to be around 10,000 in 2021.

In spite of the challenging economic climate of the past two years, Scotland has continued its strong performance in attracting Foreign Direct Investment. The EY recent results shows Scotland’s FDI projects (in calendar year 2021) outpaced Europe and the rest of the UK – Scottish projects were up by 14% from 2020, compared to 5.4% increase in Europe and 1.8% increase in UK. This resulted in a record number of FDI projects in Scotland, 122 projects in 2021, up from 107 projects in 2020. Scotland maintained its position as the top performing FDI region or nation of the UK, outside of London, for the 7th year running. The benefits of our approach are being felt right across the country with five of Scotland’s cities/towns in the top 20 UK locations for investment, and Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen in the top 10 UK cities.

These are fantastic results for Scotland and shows that our Inward Investment Plan is working. It also demonstrates the importance of FDI in supporting the ambitions set out in our National Strategy for Economic Transformation, by attracting high quality inward investment and technologies required in areas such as Energy Transition, Decarbonisation of Transport and Space.

We met the commitment to begin providing free bikes to schoolchildren within 100 days of the new Government by commencing the ongoing pilot programme. The pilot programme is, by its nature, focused in scope with 9 projects testing a range of delivery models. We aim to roll the programme out more widely in 2023.

The pilot period will conclude at the end of August 2022. The projected spend to the end of the pilot period is £2,601,356.22. This is £870,369.34 resource and £1,730,986.88 capital. The resource element of the budget is not used to procure bikes, but to fund activity such as training sessions and staffing to support the objectives of the pilot programme.

The total number of bikes issued to date is 2067. We expect to have issued 3000 bikes by the end of the pilot period. The bikes include adapted and non-standard bikes to cater for a range of needs.

In addition, fleet bikes delivered by Sustrans Scotland to participating schools, but not given to any individual child, have been used 2927 times.

We do not record data on bike numbers at local authority level. However, considering bikes issued and associated training and promotion sessions, free bikes activities have taken place in 20 of 32 local authority areas. The 9 pilots are running across a range of locations including in urban, rural and island communities.

Abellio ScotRail (at the time), Network Rail and Transport Scotland were all involved in the development work leading to the publication of the Decarbonisation Action Plan ( Rail Services Decarbonisation Action Plan | Transport Scotland ) in July 2020. Battery trains, supported by partial electrification of routes were set out as an option alongside other forms of rail traction.

Transport Scotland and (now) ScotRail Trains Limited are regularly engaged in discussions over planning for the procurement of new zero emission rolling stock.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-09714 on 29 July 2022. 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 .