Chamber and committees

The response to the mass stranding event of 54 pilot whales at Tolsta, Isle of Lewis last month was led by the Scottish Government-funded Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS) at the University of Glasgow. Examinations and samples were undertaken on all stranded animals, and full post-mortem examinations were completed on a subset of animals.

Investigations are ongoing, with the aim of understanding potential factors that could have contributed to the animals’ death. The results will be published in due course.

The Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme (SMASS) at the University of Glasgow, is funded by the Scottish Government to provide a coordinated approach to the surveillance of marine species (e.g. cetaceans, seal and basking sharks) strandings around the Scottish coast with the aim of investigating major causes of death.

A mass stranding event is described as incidents involving two or more cetaceans (porpoise, dolphins and whales). Since 1 January 2021, the SMASS programme have reported 14 mass stranding incidents, where cause of death has been attributed to live stranding. This includes the recent stranding of 54 long-finned pilot whales on the Isle of Lewis. In all cases, a selection of the animals underwent post mortem examination to assist the investigation into potential factors surrounding the cause of death.

All annual reports are published at https://strandings.org/publications .

Scottish Government fund the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS) which already undertakes investigations into the cause of death of marine animals (e.g. dolphins, whales, porpoises, seals, turtles and basking sharks) stranded around the Scottish coastline. Samples and data are collected at the strandings location and carcases are collected for further investigation via necropsy following a risk-based approach.

The Scottish Government have not undertaken work to ascertain how many tour operators have removed guaranteed departure products as a result of disruption to CalMac operated ferry services.

The Scottish Government is committed to keeping The Promise, which sets out that young people with care experience must have access to independent advocacy and legal representation. The Promise recognises that advocacy requires different approaches and offerings that may be independent of each other. To this end, The Promise Scotland, supported by Scottish Government, are undertaking work to scope a national lifelong advocacy service for care experienced people and advocacy for families coming into contact with the care system. This work is due to report to Ministers by the end of 2023

At present, in Scotland, children and young people with care experience, as with all children and young people, can access publicly funded legal assistance on the broad range of issues adults can. Subject to having legal capacity and satisfying the statutory tests, children and young people can obtain advice from a solicitor about legal problems relating to the application of Scots law covered under the Advice and Assistance Scheme Matters covered by civil advice and assistance - Scottish Legal Aid Board (slab.org.uk) ]. This includes legal aid for children’s hearings, criminal proceedings, or to resolve civil disputes.

Furthermore, through the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention & Adult Learning & Empowering Communities Third Sector Fund, the Scottish Government provide over £1.4M annually in core funding to 10 organisations that offer support on legal rights and access to independent legal representation for care experienced young people.

In addition to obtaining legal representation, all children and young people can access independent child advocacy services to support them in and around their Children’s Hearings. Whilst children’s advocacy workers are not legal representatives, part of their role is to help children understand and realise their rights. The Scottish Government provides funding to Clan Childlaw to operate a Legal Support Service for independent children’s advocacy workers in the children’s hearing system. The funding also supports training advocacy workers to increase their knowledge of how to use children’s rights to advocate for and support children and young people at children’s hearings. Where a rights breach is identified through the Legal Support Service, the advocacy worker is able to discuss the availability of legal advice and assistance for the child to help them access a solicitor.

Children’s rights realisation requires raising awareness with children as rights holders and what this means in practice, but also requires training and capacity building for those who are implementing decisions. The Scottish Government’s aim is to ensure duty bearers and public authorities achieve a knowledge and understanding of children’s rights and to enable children and their representatives to act upon them. This is central to the implementation of the UNCRC and to embed children’s human rights into the fabric of Scottish society.

Significant public consultation and stakeholder engagement was undertaken as part of the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2), published in December 2022. STPR2 will inform the Scottish Government’s transport investment programme in Scotland over the next 20 years (2022-2042) and will help to deliver the vision, priorities and outcomes for transport set out in the National Transport Strategy (NTS2). Within this there is a recommendation for a review of the upgrade or relocation of Stranraer rail station to be undertaken. Stakeholder engagement and public consultation were key elements of this review, including a three-month public consultation on the draft recommendations between January and April 2022. A summary report detailing the outcomes of this exercise was produced alongside an analysis report setting out how responses were used to inform the appraisal process. STPR2 Recommendation 40 includes measures to improve access to Stranraer and ports at Cairnryan; to encourage greater use of public transport and support wider town regeneration proposals, this recommendation also includes a review of the upgrade or relocation of Stranraer rail station.

Transport Scotland is considering future ferry fares policy as part of the Islands Connectivity Plan alongside our wider Fair Fares Review, which will report by the end of 2023 and recommend a package of measures which can be considered for implementation from 2024-25 and onwards to address the wider issues of cost and availability across all modes of public transport.

Meantime, we are continuing to take action on ferry fares with fares on the Northern Isles and Clyde & Hebrides ferry networks to remain frozen until the end of March 2024.

Any introduction of new RET measures on lifeline ferry services in Scotland would now need to comply with the requirements of the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and there have been extensive discussions on the Subsidy Control Act 2022 but no separate specific discussions on RET with the UK Government.

Transport Scotland has conducted extensive analysis of the carbon benefits of transport modal shift in Scotland. However, there has been no flow-specific analysis on the Edinburgh/Glasgow to Belfast corridor.

Since the STEM bursary scheme (now known as the Teaching Bursary Scheme) was introduced in 2018, the number of bursaries awarded in each year is as follows: