Chamber and committees

Transport Scotland’s joint report with Scottish Futures Trust published in July 2021 highlighted the opportunities to leverage the investment, skills and resources of the private sector to grow Scotland’s public electric vehicle charging network at the scale and pace required. This report also recognised the opportunities for partnership working between Scotland’s local authorities and private charge point operators, as well as the potential for existing ChargePlace Scotland assets to form part of future partnering arrangements.

Through the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund, Transport Scotland is supporting local authorities to develop public electric vehicle charge point strategies and infrastructure expansion plans, to identify and take forward the opportunities to work with the private sector to grow Scotland’s public charging network.

There is an established and growing number of well-capitalised private charge point operators across the UK. Transport Scotland’s joint report published with Scottish Futures Trust in July 2021 indicated that investment costs in growing Scotland’s public charging network could reach £100 million per annum by 2030. It is encouraging, therefore, to hear the recent pledge from industry body Charge UK that its members will invest £6 billion in public charging infrastructure across the UK by 2030. Our focus is on encouraging that investment to spread across all of Scotland. That’s why our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund aims to draw in £60 million of public and private investment to double the size of the public charging network to 6,000 charge points by 2026, including areas of the network where private investment is less viable.

The Scottish Government does not prescribe approaches to items of practice on matters such as providing homework to children and young people.

In April 2023, Education Scotland published an update on ‘Engaging Parents and Families: A toolkit for practitioners’, which is available on the National Improvement Hub along with case study examples of learning at home. This resource, which includes a short review of the evidence surrounding homework, also provides schools and practitioners with good practice examples of effective approaches to learning at home.

Accordingly, decisions on providing homework are a matter of broader policy and approach that schools and headteachers are empowered to make decisions on. This is in line with other such decisions that headteachers make at a local level on learning and teaching practice, including the curriculum design, the vision, aims and rationale of the school or setting.

The Scottish Government has an ambition of at least 5GW of hydrogen production capacity by 2030 and 25GW by 2025. The Hydrogen Policy Statement (2020) and the Hydrogen Action Plan (2022) set out how we will work collaboratively with the energy sector to drive progress over the course of this Parliament.

The Hydrogen Action Plan is supported by a programme of capital funding, designed to accelerate and maximise the production of renewable hydrogen in Scotland.

Funding to date includes:

• over £7m in grants offered via the Hydrogen Innovation Scheme to 32 projects that will drive innovation in renewable hydrogen production, storage, and distribution;
• over £6m awarded via the Just Transition Fund to HydroGlen, a green hydrogen farming pilot;
• and £15m awarded via the Energy Transition Fund to accelerate Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub.

The next tranche of the hydrogen investment programme, the Green Hydrogen Fund, will launch later this year. This fund will focus on supporting renewable hydrogen production from Scotland’s abundant renewable energy resources, seeking to give Scotland first-mover advantage.

The Scottish Government has undertaken an Island Communities Impact Assessment for the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill. The findings from our assessment are published in the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill: island communities impact assessment on 25 May 2023.

There have been no charges for using hospital car parks in Scotland since the start of the pandemic and the Scottish Government has no plans to reintroduce them.

During the Cannich incident, SFRS liaised with Forestry and Land Scotland, RSPB and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, who provided personnel and specialist equipment throughout the incident. The involvement of gamekeepers, farmers and other partners at wildfire incidents is always welcomed by SFRS and provides a great deal of capacity and knowledge for Incident Commanders. SFRS is utilising this valuable resource at incidents and recognising the skills, experience and equipment that partners bring to this incident type.

At recent significant wildfires the involvement of partners has been instrumental in successfully managing the incidents, and SFRS will seek to learn lessons from this to identify what worked well, as well as where improvements can be made to ensure it continuously improves. SFRS has contributed to the North of Scotland Regional Resilience Partnership’s recent seminar on response to severe weather events (heat in particular) and is in the planning stage of providing the same to the East of Scotland Regional Resilience Partnership.

The Scottish Wildfire Forum (SWF), chaired by SFRS, has Civil Contingency Advisors from Local Authorities, Regional Resilience Partnerships and other Agencies as members. The SWF created the Wildfire Risk that is now contained in the Scottish National Risk Assessment. This now requires the Regional and Local Resilience Partnerships (which includes all Local Authorities) as part of the Risk Preparedness Assessment Process to consider the risk, score it for their region/area and consider what mitigation actions can be taken to reduce the risk as well as how the wider consequences of the risk will be managed.

The Scottish Capital Investment Manual is not being replaced and will continue to be utilised.

As set out in the answer to S6W-18198, at the point of the Scottish Budget 2023-24 being published we had confirmed a contribution of £50 million to the teachers’ pay deal agreed in March 2023. This was included in the local government finance settlement for 2023-24. The remaining costs for the 2023-24 financial year will be met from the Education and Skills Portfolio budget.

ChargePlace Scotland’s charging assets are owned by over 400 separate organisations across the public, private and third sectors and therefore are not all in public ownership. These organisations are responsible for procurement, maintenance and commercial decisions relating to their own charge point assets.

ChargePlace Scotland is a charge point management service paid for by the Scottish Government under a Framework Agreement to provide back-office, frontline call-handling and fault management functions on behalf of the charge point owners. The current contract to operate the back-office service runs until at least 2025.

On 20 June 2023 the Scottish Government’s vision for the future of Scotland’s electric vehicle charging network was published. This new vision places people and businesses first and outlines the accessible, affordable and reliable public network required for the future.

Our vision emphasises the need to attract greater private investment to deliver infrastructure at scale and pace across the whole of Scotland, as the public sector cannot deliver this alone. That’s why our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund aims to draw in £60 million of public and private investment to double the size of the public charging network to 6,000 charge points by 2026, including areas of the network where private investment may be less viable, such as in our rural and island areas.

Through our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund we are supporting Local Authorities to develop public electric vehicle charging strategies and expansion plans, encompassing their urban, rural and island areas.

The food and drink industry has been through significant turmoil in recent years, and Scottish Government support has been vital in ensuring the industry has been as resilient as possible during these times. As a key member of the Scotland Food & Drink Partnership, the Scottish Government has been integral in the collective decision making and financial support for the previous Industry Strategy (Ambition 2030) and the subsequent Recovery Plan in place during Covid.

Today, we are delighted to announce year 1 funding of £5m, supplemented by £1m from Industry themselves, towards the new Food and Drink Industry led strategy – Sustaining Scotland, Supplying the World – which sets out short-, medium- and long-term goals developed in collaboration with food and drink producers with a focus on stability amidst turbulence from global events including the war in Ukraine.