Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government currently only allows travellers returning from green and amber list countries to use NHS tests, arranged through the CTM booking portal, as they are the highest quality with established data flows into NHS boards and samples are sequenced to ensure early detection of variants of concern.

Travellers arriving in other parts of the UK can access the NHS tests, however those arriving in England and Northern Ireland are also able to access private test providers who charge a range of prices.

The Scottish Government is exploring ways to allow private testing for travellers coming to Scotland provided we are confident in the flow of data into contact tracing services and that all positive test results are analysed to identify any variants of concern.

The Scottish Government has not carried out specific analysis on this issue.

There are complexities and a variety of international travel possibilities within the global international oil and gas industry. Risk of Covid infection for workers travelling to and from installations on the UK continental shelf (UKCS) cannot be attributed to any single factor, but a comprehensive range of infection control measures has been implemented to reduce this to as low as reasonably practicable.

The regulation of occupational health and safety is reserved to the UK Government. Statutory responsibilities for enforcement in the offshore oil and gas industry lies with the Health and Safety Executive.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 employers have a statutory duty to protect the health and safety of their employees, to undertake appropriate risk assessments and to put in place appropriate mitigations.

The Scottish Government has no statutory involvement in workplace health and safety regulation.

The Housing First Pathfinder programme started in August 2018 across six local authority areas with Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire working in partnership. Up until the 30 June 2021, a total of 531 people have received Housing First support through the pathfinder programme, which has been funded by the Scottish Government, The Merchants House of Glasgow and Social Bite. The following table provides a breakdown of tenancies commenced and the number of tenancies sustained across each local authority area:

The Scottish Household Recycling Charter, agreed in partnership between Scottish Government and COSLA, aims to bring more consistency to recycling services. One of the principles of the charter when designing services is to reduce the capacity provided for waste that cannot be recycled to encourage citizens to recycle, while ensuring all citizens have access to services for recycling and are provided with adequate volumes of containers in line with the Code of Practice.

As part of the Programme for Government 2020-2021, Scottish Government have committed to review the Household Recycling Charter’s Code of Practice, to reflect current best practice and make it easier for households to recycle the right things. The review is a key step in developing a future model of recycling collections, aligning with Scotland’s new deposit return scheme to drive further consistency.

Zero Waste Scotland are leading an advisory group with representatives from Local Authorities and COSLA, to review the Code of Practice. Residual waste capacity is being considered as part of the review.

Keep Scotland Beautiful has delivered a range of initiatives on the Scottish Government's behalf and has been allocated the following funding since 2016 to enable it to do so:

2016-17 £11,147,463

2017-18 £11,152,455

2018-19 £11,131,472

2019-20 £8,642,939

2020-21 £10,054,598

To date £1,555,145 has been awarded to KSB for initiatives to be delivered in this financial year

We have not made an assessment of this kind. However, our work to refresh Scotland’s Energy Strategy, due to begin later this year, will include consideration of such aspects across the energy sector as a whole.

As of 20 July 2021, the First Minister had 3 meetings arranged in the run up to COP26 (31 October 2021), and the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport had 15 meetings planned. It is not currently possible to specify the exact number of meetings all ministers have arranged to take place in the lead up to and during the course of COP26. This is because the number of meetings is continuously rising, as an increasing volume of requests for ministerial involvement are received. Scottish Ministers are committed to maximising the opportunities of COP26, before, during and after the conference.

The Homelessness Statistics team are in the process of collecting, processing and quality assuring data returns from local authorities for the Housing Options (PREVENT1) Statistics in Scotland: 2020-21 publication. As such, we are not yet in a position to confirm a publication date. The statistics will be released as soon as they are considered ready, under the guidance of the Chief Statistician. At this stage we anticipate this will be between October and November.

Once there is more certainty around a publication date this will be pre-announced no later than 4 weeks in advance, in line with the Statistics Code of Practice, on the Scottish Government website: Official statistics: forthcoming publications - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

During the charter of the MV Arrow, Seatruck Ferries Ltd, the owner of the vessel, will be responsible for crew rostering as the crew are employed by them and not CalMac Ferries Ltd.

Net costs, that is costs less revenue receipts, falling due to ScotRail are being met by the Scottish Ministers under the terms of the Emergency Measurements Agreement. We do not hold details of the attribution of costs to individual locations or routes.