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.

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.

At a national level, there are two methods for monitoring of flowering plants: changes in plant distribution and changes in plant abundance.

In relation to the first method, the Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI) periodically publishes a complete Atlas of plant distributions, based on 10km square records gathered by volunteers.

Giant hogweed increased its distribution significantly in Scotland between 1930–69 and 1987–99. The increase was greatest in the eastern arable area and less pronounced in the Highlands and south Scotland. BSBI is due to publish its next Atlas in 2023. This will include changes in the distribution of plants between 1987-99 and 2000–2019.

Between 2010 and 2020, giant hogweed was recorded in thirty 10km squares where it had not been previously recorded. Giant hogweed is being controlled in more than half of these locations; the remainder are in locations where there is currently no coordinated control programme in place, and there is already giant hogweed nearby.

In relation to the second method, giant hogweed is not sufficiently abundant in the countryside to be detected by the National Plant Monitoring Scheme. Information on abundance of invasive plants is collected as part of individual control projects and is not collated centrally.

In 2017, ten Fisheries Trusts supplied information to the Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland (RAFTS) for an evaluation of effectiveness and lessons learned from catchment-scale invasive plant projects. Giant hogweed was the least prevalent and abundant of the invasive plants surveyed. Three Trusts reported it absent and a fourth discovered only one small instance of the plant. In all the other areas infestations averaged greater than 4,000 square metres. In Ayrshire giant hogweed had invaded 188,000 square metres. Giant hogweed is being controlled in all of these river catchments.

Summaries of the first two papers in the Building a New Scotland series have been translated into 17 languages, including British Sign Language, Arabic, Gaelic, Polish and Ukrainian. Audio and Easy Read versions have also been produced to support accessibility. We have no current plans for a full translation of Independence in the Modern World .

At this time the work has been prioritised to support active live investment projects with the remaining work continuing throughout 2022 and into 2023.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-09455 on 27 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 .

The Scottish Government is prioritising those routes associated with live investment projects as set out in the answer to the question S6W-06702 on 8 March 2022, namely Mallaig – Lochboisdale Vessel Replacement Project, Oban – Craignure and Gourock – Dunoon – Kilcreggan. 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 .

Scottish Ministers meet regularly with UK Government Ministers on a range of topics, however there have been no specific requests from Scotland Office Ministers to meet regarding the A75 and A77, therefore no meetings on this specific topic have taken place.

The new powers under section 34 (provision of bus services by local authorities) of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 do not affect the entitlement to free bus travel for people who currently receive it.

The number of passenger complaints received by ScotRail, through their official complaints process, is set out on the table below for the period 1 and 30 June 2022. The complaints may involve incidents that occurred before 1 June 2022.

The average recorded number of complaints per period for previous years is as follows:-

2019-2020 - 1,664 complaints

2018-2019 - 2,064 complaints

The figure for 1 April to 30 April 2022 is 1,144. The figure of 1,493 complaints for June 2022 is higher than April 2022 as during May and June 2022 several services were impacted due to driver shortages and the subsequent temporary timetable that was introduced on 23 May 2022. The temporary timetable that was in place until 20 July 2022 aimed to provide the best possible service to as many passengers as possible with the available resources.

ScotRail do not record staff complaints and therefore the information is not available.