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 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 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.

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.

Our Public Engagement Strategy for Climate Change (PES) highlights the importance of effective engagement to build support for climate action. The Scottish Government continues to build on outcomes from Scotland’s most recent Climate Assembly, by delivering a programme of participative engagement in support of the just transition planning process. We are exploring options to establish an additional participative process to engage the public in order to build understanding of the transition to a net zero and climate resilient Scotland. This is further to our existing engagement work, including the £5.5m Community Climate Action Hubs, £425k Climate Action Schools programme, and awarding funding of £272k through our Climate Engagement Fund.

I last met with Scottish Power on 29 October 2024 to discuss the Scottish Consenting Consultation.

Information about Ministerial engagements, overseas travel, car journeys, domestic travel and gifts received is also published on the Scottish Governments website: Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Delivering sustainable, resilient, accessible and efficient services for the population, as highlighted by myself during the debate on NHS reform, can only be achieved by a significant change in the way we plan, organise, deliver and fund services. In response, we have begun over the past few months to reset and reform our ways of working to ensure coherence across our various levels, nationally and regionally. As a component of reform, this includes development of a new construct for our clinical networks, aligned to portfolios of care.

Our clinically led national and regional networks are an important vehicle in how we meet the challenges of implementing the National Clinical Framework and the wider reform agenda across NHS Scotland. The aims of the refreshed approach to the National Networks in NSD (and other areas which host networks) is to provide a clear and collaborative mechanism for planning and delivery of our services across Scotland and to ensure this valuable resource is supporting delivery of the National Clinical Framework and our wider programme of reform.

The accreditation scheme is owned and managed by the Living Wage Foundation, with Poverty Alliance responsible for it's delivery in Scotland. Therefore Scottish Government is not the data owner or gatherer, below is the number of accredited employers since the 2015-16 financial year:

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.