Chamber and committees

We are following developments at the site closely and this has included contact with HSE at official level on a number of occasions to understand the actions they are taking at the plant.

The Health and Safety Executive is an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body of the UK Department for Work and Pensions. It operates with staff based across the UK who liaise with the Scottish Government as and when appropriate on devolved matters.

The principle of ‘one substance, one registration’ is a core principle underpinning EU REACH. In preparation for EU exit, we have agreed to UK wide legislation which ensures that this principle and therefore the capacity for submission of joint registrations will be retained in the UK REACH regime and will help reduce the amount of testing required to demonstrate safe use and management of a given chemical.

The Scottish Government cannot influence the terms under which data currently used for the purposes of EU REACH registrations can be accessed by UK companies in order to support their registrations under UK REACH. This is a matter for commercial negotiations. We would encourage industry to share data as much as practically possible to increase transparency and awareness of the benefits and risks of the substances in their products.

We understand Defra is currently working with key trade associations to develop data sharing guidance which will be used to develop future data sharing arrangements.

Stakeholder engagement has already taken place across parts of Scotland to inform the Second Strategic Transport Projects Review. Advance work on the review, over the last two years, in the Scottish Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and in the North East has resulted in over 8000 public and stakeholder responses to three separate and focused on-line surveys.

A wider national on-line public survey is due to be conducted this autumn, with this survey being informed by the outputs from 530 stakeholders who have taken part in 30 stakeholder workshops across the whole of Scotland. The results of this survey and those of stakeholders will assist in the validation of extensive data analysis being undertaken by consultants into the transport network problems and opportunities.

In addition, eleven Regional Transport Working Groups have been established across the country to assist is taking forward the review. These groups include representation from a range of local authority officers, including transportation, planning and economic development departments, together with Regional Transport Partnerships covered by the region.

The Scottish Government’s Third Report on Proposals and Policies 2018-2032 (the ‘Climate Change Plan’) will be updated within 6 months of the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Bill receiving Royal Assent.

The update will set out the pathway to the emissions reduction target for 2032 of 78% reduction from baseline levels, as agreed by the Parliament at Stage 3 of the Bill on 25 September 2019.

Information on the megatonnes savings will be set out in the updated Plan itself. The precise figure for this will reflect the percentage reduction target (as above) and also, as set out in the answer to question S5W-25443 on 24 September 2019; i) the excess emissions from the missed annual target for 2017, and ii) the best available evidence on future technical changes to the greenhouse gas inventory, in areas such as peatlands, where the UK Government has committed to implementing updated international guidelines.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Table 1 provides an indication of the volume, in million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, of emissions associated with the percentage reduction targets in the Climate Change Scotland Bill. The estimates in this table have been calculated solely on the basis of the 2017 greenhouse gas inventory for Scotland. As a result, these do not include the anticipated effect of forthcoming revisions to the inventory, or the additional effort that will be required to compensate for the missed target, which will both increase the effort required.

Table 1: Indicative volumes of emissions associated with the Climate Change Bill targets; based on 2017 greenhouse gas inventory.

On 26 June we launched The Big Climate Conversation which aims to engage all communities, the public and private sectors, in a dialogue about how Scotland should respond to the global climate emergency. The outputs from the Big Climate Conversation will feed into the update to the Climate Change Plan.

The Government has committed to updating the Climate Change Plan within 6 months of the Climate Change Bill receiving Royal Assent, a fraction of the time it would take to produce a new Plan, in recognition that there is Global Climate Emergency and there should be no delay in stepping up action to respond to it. The Government has recommended that the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee take a similar approach and respond to the draft Plan within 30 days. However, it is ultimately for that Committee to determine how long a period of scrutiny it deems appropriate.

The organisation and management of schools in Scotland is a matter for individual local authorities who have the statutory duty for delivering education. The deployment of staff in schools is a matter for local authorities.

We highly value the contribution that music tutors make. Music education is of enormous benefit to young people and we are committed to continuing to working collaboratively to find solutions to help ensure instrumental music remains accessible to all.

The Windsock closure was in ICES Area 6a (West of Scotland). While there are strong links between the cod in the northern part of area 6a and those in the northern North Sea, they are still assessed and managed separately.

The West Shetland Shelf MPA is designated for the protection of offshore subtidal sands and gravels. Although it covers a significant part of the previous Windsock closure, its purpose is not for the protection of cod. As yet unpublished survey-based analyses on the efficacy of the Windsock closure by Marine Scotland Science was inconclusive, and the ICES stock assessment for cod in ICES area 6a (where the Windsock closure was located) indicates the spawning stock biomass – the total weight of fish in the stock that are old enough to reproduce – has remained very low since the early 2000s. There is therefore no firm evidence that the Windsock closure has made a significant contribution to cod abundance across ICES area 6a.