Chamber and committees

The information requested is not held by Scottish Government

In Great Britain, you are legally required to register your birds if you keep 50 or more poultry. Keepers with less than 50 birds are strongly encouraged to register voluntarily. It is also a legal requirement to notify APHA (Animal and Plant Health Agency) of any significant changes in the average number of birds kept.

There will be no Scottish House Condition Survey 2020 annual report. Following the suspension of face-to-face interviewing in March 2020, due to COVID-19, there was no further Scottish House Condition Survey data collection in 2020. The 2021 results will be published in May 2023, and the 2022 results in early 2024.

The Scottish Household Survey results for 2021 will be published in April 2023, and the 2022 results will be published in late 2023 / early 2024.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) does not have a wildfire investigation capability as it is an extremely rare discipline in UK Fire and Rescue Services. As such, no official investigations were carried out into the large fires in Flow Country or Ballindalloch in 2019.

As the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) does not have a wildfire investigation capability it has not officially investigated any wildfires in the last 5 years beyond the information gathered by its Incident Recording System.

No. Creative Scotland’s board announced on 19 December 2022 its decision to maintain funding for the Regularly Funded Organisations at current levels for the 2023-24 financial year, using its accumulated reserves from National Lottery funding.

The Scottish Government’s announced on 21 February an uplift of £6.6 million in grant in aid for Creative Scotland so that Creative Scotland can use its lottery reserves for additional support for the sector.

The Scottish Government has been following the agreed process for excluding the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) regulations from the Internal Market Act and it has been the subject of discussion with UK Government for many months.

Our original proposal back in 2021 was for an exclusion for both single use plastics and DRS to avoid duplication of effort. This was rejected by UK ministers, resulting in a narrow exclusion for single-use plastics only, and the ongoing process since October 2022 to secure a specific DRS exclusion.

On 28 February 2022 we published correspondence between the Scottish Government and UK Government on this and the First Minister wrote to the Prime Minister to seek the UK Government’s continuing constructive support in finalising the terms of an exclusion where it was needed. You can access the correspondence here: Internal Market Act: correspondence - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The Initial Plan Framework for Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas decarbonisation (INTOG) was published on 22 February 2022 and set the parameters used by Crown Estate Scotland to shape their leasing process.

Following the closure of the INTOG lease application window on 18 November 2022, the Marine Scotland Directorate is undertaking assessments to understand the potential impact from proposed INTOG projects on the marine environment and other marine sectors which will inform the development the draft Sectoral Marine Plan for INTOG. Public consultation on the draft plan is targeted for later in 2023.

The Scottish Government’s financial commitments to create green jobs include funding support provided through our Green Jobs Fund and the Just Transition Fund.

The Green Jobs Fund is a five-year, capital fund of up to £100m over 5 years which will support businesses and their supply chains to help them better transition to a low carbon economy and create new green jobs. In year one of the Green Jobs Fund, between the Enterprise Agencies and Scottish Ministers, 57 projects have been supported with grant funding of £16.8m. Figures provided by the recipients of these awards estimated this fund will support up to 3,886 jobs over the life of the individual projects. Figures for year 2 of the fund are not due to be published until Q2 2023 as contractual negotiations are continuing to be finalised.

The fund consists of £50 million provided by our Enterprise Agencies for businesses which provide sustainable or low carbon products and services to help them develop, grow and create jobs and up to a further £50 million to help ensure that businesses and supply chains across Scotland can capitalise on our investment in five priority sectors: energy transition; transport; manufacturing; construction; agriculture and land use. The Green Jobs Fund will make focused investments in, for example, machinery and equipment and research and development to ensure businesses are well placed to win public and private contracts.

Our Just Transition Fund is a ten year, £500m investment to support a fair transition to net zero and to diversify the regional economy, with the first £50m committed this year. Examples of the projects supported in the first year of the fund include a digital offshore energy skills passport which empowers offshore workers to utilise their existing certification; and an advanced manufacturing skills hub.

The Scottish Government also ring-fenced £1m of the Just Transition Fund this year for participatory budgeting, whereby local communities are able to influence and have a direct say on how money is spent in their local areas.

The Scottish Government is determined to maximise the economic opportunity for the Scottish supply chain from our offshore wind potential. That is why we asked Crown Estate Scotland to introduce the Supply Chain Development Statement as part of the ScotWind leasing round to demonstrate how serious the Scottish Government is about holding developers to account if they do not honour their supply chain commitments and create green jobs.

ScotWind developers have committed to invest an average of £1.4 billion per project, equating to more than £28 billion of potential investment in Scotland's supply chain. Government and its agencies continue to work closely with developers and those at the top of the supply chain to ensure that local suppliers in Scotland have a realistic opportunity to compete for key manufacturing contracts.

We are already seeing the employment benefits from the development of Scotland’s offshore wind sector. Scotland is the best performing UK region in the Green Jobs Barometer, a tool to track job creation, wider employment benefits, job loss, carbon intensity of employment, and worker perceptions with relevance to the green transition.

Any business with questions or concerns about registration should contact Circularity Scotland (CSL) for advice and guidance. They can do this via their website or their dedicated helpline.

CSL has ongoing communications with businesses to raise awareness and help them understand their obligations as part of the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) and what they need to do to comply. This includes a recent series of information workshops across the country for businesses affected by DRS.

I also meet regularly with industry stakeholders to discuss their concerns and to help them prepare for the scheme’s launch in August.

We have significantly increased access to digital mental health treatments, products and services since the first cCBT treatment was rolled out in 2017. We now have 27 different computerised cognitive behavioural therapy (cCBT) treatments available across all NHS Boards. This includes the tool ‘Space in Coronary Heart Disease’.

Through delivery of the Heart Disease Action Plan, we have worked with five health boards to encourage their utilisation of this tool within cardiac rehab services. We are in the process of evaluating this to support further adoption within cardiac services.