Chamber and committees

We welcome the recent Circularity Gap Report which clearly sets out the size of the challenge ahead. The Scottish Government is clear that transitioning to a circular economy is key if we are to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis, and this means reducing our demand for raw material, increasing reuse and repair, and recycling more.

The Scottish Government has not provided any funding support to Red Rock Power in relation to its offshore wind activities in Scotland. Officials last met with Red Rock Power in November 2022 to discuss progress on their development of the Inch Cape Offshore Wind farm off the coast of Angus.

Scottish Ministers are committed to protecting the natural environment which is demonstrated across a wide range of policy areas including biodiversity. A new global biodiversity framework was agreed at the UN CBD COP15 meeting in Montreal, in December 2022, with the aim of protecting and restoring biodiversity across the world. This framework includes a ‘whole of government’ approach – which we were successful in advocating for through the Edinburgh Process for biodiversity - and ‘whole of society’ approach.

We recognise the importance of biodiversity and the urgent need for action at all levels to tackle the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, to ensure a nature-positive world. In Scotland we will continue to work to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and reversing declines by 2045, through our new Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and Delivery Plan.

The groups and sub-groups named in response to question S6W-12170 that have an allocated budget are:

• Scottish Science Advisory Council £32,000
• Youth Work Strategy Review Group - £3,500
• National Bairns’ Hoose Governance Group - £14,400
• Race Equality & Anti-Racism in Education Programme Board - £350,000
• Gender Equality Taskforce in Education & Learning - £50,000

The other groups and sub-groups named in the previous response do not have allocated budgets. Any incidental costs associated with the running of these groups are covered by the relevant departments’ budgets.

The Workforce Development Group is newly established and had its first meeting on 29 November 2022. The group will meet bi-monthly with the next meeting scheduled for 30 January 2023.

No. We have convened a series of roundtables with the culture sector to explore how organisations can best work together to develop shared solutions in light of the cost crisis. The impact of the UK Government’s decision to reduce the theatre and orchestra tax relief was raised by attendees at the roundtable in Glasgow in December 2022. During the roundtable, the Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs & Culture committed to raising this with the DCMS Secretary of State Michelle Donelan, which he did on 13 December. Following this discussion, the Cabinet Secretary then wrote to HMT.

The Scottish Government Trade & Investment (T&I) Envoy programme is voluntary in nature and is not remunerated or pensioned.

Trade & Investment Envoys are entitled to reclaim all reasonable expenses incurred while performing their T&I Envoy duties as requested by the Scottish Government, including the costs of travel, accommodation, meals etc., which are reimbursed at Civil Service rates.

Households of all tenures are eligible to seek assistance from the Fuel Insecurity Fund (FIF) if they are at risk of self-rationing their energy use or self-disconnecting entirely. Our trusted third sector delivery partners, namely Advice Direct Scotland (ADS), the Fuel Bank Foundation and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA), are not required to monitor the housing tenure type of the individuals they support. In the case of the SFHA, though, all of the support they provide, £6.6m this financial year, is directed towards social housing tenants of member RSLs.

We regularly monitor the support provided by our delivery partners; however we seek to avoid excessive demands for data gathering in order to ensure the FIF can be distributed with a level of partner discretion to target direct support to those most in need at the time.

We do not require our Fuel Insecurity Fund delivery partners to collect the requested data from households. Payments are provided on the basis of an holistic assessment of their circumstances, which may include damp and mould issues.

In response to the request for members and leaders of the groups and sub-groups names in the answer to question SW6-12170, this information is available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 63939).

Whilst the Scottish Government continue to reconcile COVID-19 funding allocations in order to ensure transparency in the use of public funds and compliance with the audit framework, the Scottish Government has not recovered and has no plans to recover any COVID-19 related funding from local authorities.