Chamber and committees

Medical packaging, such as blister packaging, is not easily recycled due to strict regulatory requirements for pharmaceutical packaging set by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. However, the Scottish Government is taking steps to encourage businesses to reduce the amount of packaging waste and to improve recycling through implementation of extended producer responsibility for packaging from 2025. This includes obligations for producers of pharmaceutical packaging.

The Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 requires that Scottish Ministers publish a circular economy strategy, which will be developed over the next two years. In advance of that, we will shortly be publishing a final version of our circular economy and waste route map, which will set out actions to deliver sustainable use of our resources and progress a circular economy to 2030. As part of these we will continue to consider medical packaging items.

The Scottish Government is committed to reducing high deer numbers in order to help us to achieve our biodiversity and carbon objectives. In addition to the Cairngorms National Park Authority deer management incentives pilot, NatureScot launched two pilot schemes led by this autumn to incentivise deer managers to increase deer culls in specific parts of Scotland.

These pilot schemes have been implemented this year in different parts of Scotland to test different approaches to incentives and to better understand the barriers to deer management.

While these pilots do not constitute a single national scheme, we will use the findings from them to inform decisions on future incentive schemes.

Protecting the planet is a clear government priority which is why we must ensure that resourcing matches the scale of work required to deliver a net zero Scotland by 2045, balancing that with a need to ensure efficiencies in our public services.

We continually review staffing and resourcing, to support our commitments and ensure that the government’s ambition for tackling climate change is delivered as part of our regular assurance processes.

In addition, there is oversight of resourcing of climate change activity through the Global Climate Emergency Programme Board.

Social Security Scotland and Scottish Government work together closely to monitor the impact of the devolved benefits.

The impact of Best Start Foods is measured in three ways: the Social Security Scotland Client Survey; the Social Security Scotland Client Panels Survey; and Scottish Government policy evaluation.

The most recent Client Survey findings are published online at https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/reporting/publications/client-survey-2023-2024 and https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/reporting/publications/client-survey-five-family-payments-december-march-2024.

The most recent Client Panels Survey findings are published online at https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/reporting/publications/annual-client-panels-survey-2023.

In 2022 the initial evaluation of Best Start Foods was published online at https://www.gov.scot/publications/evaluation-best-start-foods/.

A further evaluation of the Five Family Payments is currently underway, which will provide quantitative evidence from a large scale survey of recipients on the impact of receiving Best Start Foods. The evaluation is expected to be published in Summer 2025.

The Scottish Government has now met its target of 6,000 public EV charge points two years early.

Since 2011 the Scottish Government has invested over £65 million in public EV charging. As a result of this early investment, and rapidly increasing private sector investment, today Scotland has one of the most comprehensive public charging networks in the UK, and the latest official UK Department for Transport statistics show that Scotland has the highest number of public chargers per head of population of any part of the UK, except London, and the most rapid charge points of any part of the UK.

In partnership with our stakeholders, we have been developing the Draft Vision Implementation Plan and route map for the delivery of approximately 24,000 additional public charge points by 2030. I thank stakeholders for their continuing engagement to support delivering our Vision for world-class, people focused public EV charging network.

As previously indicated, we will publish the draft Implementation Plan for consultation on its proposed actions by the end of the year and we envisage that the final Implementation Plan and route map will be published in 2025.

Development of climate policy continues on an ongoing basis ahead of the publication of the draft climate change plan. Where any additional policy requires an expedited legislative vehicle, we will actively explore opportunities to do so, whilst ensuring that all measures are subject to appropriate level of Parliamentary scrutiny.

Meanwhile, the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2024 requires us to set carbon budgets levels via secondary legislation, once we have received advice from the Climate Change Committee. We have written to the Committee to request this advice, and will bring forward regulations to set carbon budgets once it has been received.

The Scottish Government remains commitment to securing a long term, sustainable future for the Grangemouth industrial cluster, and highly skilled workforce located there. This is outlined in our draft Grangemouth Industrial Just Transition Plan which was published for consultation on 7 November.

This document is designed to set the strategic direction for Grangemouth’s transition to net zero, including a co-designed vision for the future of the cluster and a series of proposed actions to support this. The final plan will take cognisance of the outputs of Project Willow which is due to report in early 2025.

The Scottish Government has no plans to introduce temporary additional capacity on the west coast ferry network in light of the decommissioning of the MV Hebridean Isles. The planned removal of the vessel from service was factored in to the winter deployment plans.

The Scottish Government is committed to considering options for a carbon land tax, to further incentivise peatland restoration and afforestation.

Any potential new measures must be rigorously assessed and based on strong evidence to ensure they serve their objective and avoid unintended consequences.

Internal policy discussions involving a range of departments and Scottish Government Agencies are ongoing to identify potential options for a carbon land tax.

We will soon begin work to consult with a range of stakeholders, including landowners, to explore all available options and to understand their potential impacts.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of working closely and collaboratively with the UK Government and other devolved administrations to deliver our net zero targets in a way that is mutually beneficial in economic, environmental and social terms.

The engagement that we have had thus far with the new UK Government administration has been encouraging, and we continue to consider the value of a standalone climate response group in the context of this renewed relationship. We will continue to engage directly with them and other devolved nations to understand the best ways of working, ensuring constructive collaboration and information sharing, including the roles of inter-ministerial groups across the four nations and a programme of areas for priority cooperation is under development.