Chamber and committees

Due to their importance in North Sea food webs, sandeel abundance should be maintained high enough to provide food for predators. The initial assessment of Good Environmental Status for seabirds found evidence of the impacts of sandeel fishing in the 1990s when a fishery took place close to the Scottish east coast. It is for that reason that the Scottish Government has supported measures to protect sandeels in areas important to foraging seabirds including the Northeast UK closed area, which was established in 2000 and excludes sandeel fishing out from our east coast to 1°W. This closed area encompasses much of the foraging range of local sandeel reliant seabirds during their breeding season. The Scottish Government also undertakes research into seabird-sandeel interactions in order to better understand how we can help seabird populations reach a favourable condition.

The Scottish Government is committed to protecting and improving water quality across Scotland. We will continue to work with a range of stakeholders to ensure water quality at Ayr Beach achieves the best possible status. This includes Scottish Water, SEPA, Keep Scotland Beautiful, the agricultural sector, South Ayrshire Council and local communities.

Fire safety remains our priority and changes to the requirement for fire and carbon monoxide detectors in all homes mean that everyone will benefit from the same level of protection, whether they own their home or rent. The regulations will come into force on 1 February 2022 as scheduled. We will be undertaking a comprehensive awareness raising campaign which will look to help support people to fit the necessary alarms to the new standard.

The Advisory Sub-group for Education and Children’s issues have carefully considered their advice on nursery graduations this week. They confirmed that groups of parents and carers should not attend end-of-year events in Early Learning settings or schools in this academic year.

The COVID-19 safety guidance seeks to minimise the number of contacts that children and staff have, to keep them safe and to reduce the risk that children and staff need to self-isolate in the event of someone in the setting testing positive.

Our guidance is also in place to keep children in learning, and essential childcare settings open to support families now and over the summer. This has been a difficult decision that carefully weighed up the risks against the benefits.

I understand that families are disappointed that they cannot be present to mark these transitions from ELC to primary school. I am grateful to settings that have found safe ways to allow children to celebrate with their friends and key workers and found creative ways to share this with parents and carers.

Details of defence programme contractual arrangements are reserved and a matter between individual companies and the UK Government.

Information on contracts awarded through the UK Government Ministry of Defence are published and publicly available.

Decisions on the risk rating for individual countries is made on the basis of assessments by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, using a methodology endorsed by the four UK Chief Medical Officers. This takes into account incidence and test positivity, presence of variants of concern, and capability for genomic surveillance in that country, to reach a red, amber or green rating. The travel regulations are devolved public health measures, but we work with the other nations of the UK to come to a consistent view wherever we can.

For example, the recent decision to move Portugal onto the amber list was not one taken lightly. However it was necessary following evidence of rising incidence and higher test positivity than in Scotland. It also showed a strain of the Delta variant with an additional mutation that could mean vaccine resistance. It is therefore vital that we regularly review this data and take the right decisions for Scotland, in order to limit importation of the virus and not reverse progress with the vaccine rollout.

This information is not collected centrally on a national palliative care register, however, under the Primary Medical Services (Directed Enhanced Services) (Scotland) Directions 2018, Health Boards should each have a local Palliative Care Scheme in place to ensure that patients within their areas who reach the last days of their life receive appropriate high quality care. Health Boards are responsible for contracting with GP practices in their areas to assess patients appropriately.

We do not support the UK Government’s refusal to participate in Erasmus+. Although we are working on a new programme, this will not be able to replicate in full the benefits of Erasmus+.

In-line with our manifesto commitments, we remain committed to both Erasmus+ and to international exchange. In the interim to securing our place back in Erasmus+ we have begun to consider options regarding a Scottish mobility programme. We are currently undertaking the necessary analysis that will inform our decisions relating to such a scheme.

Our view is that people across Scotland, in all education pathways, should have access to the benefits that international exchange provides. We will announce further steps in due course.

Data relating to homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation is collected on a local authority basis. Since the South Scotland region does not align with local authority boundaries it is not possible to provide the number of children in temporary accommodation for this region.

The Scottish Government does however routinely publish the number of children in temporary accommodation by local authority. The most recent figures for children in temporary accommodation as at 30 th September were published in the ‘Homelessness In Scotland: update to 30 th September 2020’ publication on 23 rd March 2021. The publication is available here:

Homelessness in Scotland: update to 30 September 2020 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Rent (Scotland) Act 1984 made it an offence to charge or receive any premium or require the making of any loan in addition to rent and a refundable deposit of no more than two months’ rent as a condition of the grant, renewal or continuance of a tenancy. This was further amended in 2011 to place beyond any doubt that such fees were illegal premiums. This position is reiterated in the statutory Letting Agent Code of Practice which came into force on 31 January 2018.

Prospective tenants who think they have been charged an illegal premium can refuse to pay, where tenants think they have paid an illegal premium they can raise an action to recover any fee paid through the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber), there is no charge for this, or report the matter to Police Scotland.

In addition, where the person charging a fee is a letting agent, tenants can make an application to the Tribunal in relation to a breach of the Code of Practice. Where an agent is found to have breached the Code of Practice the Tribunal can issue a Letting Agent Enforcement Order that could include provision for the return of any prohibited fee.

Letting agents are required to be registered and to comply with the Letting Agents Code of Practice, which sets out the standards on how they manage their business and provide their services. This includes complying with relevant legislation and to have in place a complaints procedure. Concerns about a letting agent can be raised with the Letting Agent Registration team at the Scottish Government.