Chamber and committees

As the Minister for Environment and Land Reform, I am responsible for environmental and climate justice.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-02513 on 21 September 2021. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council meet regularly to discuss a range of matters, including equalities issues.

Universities, as autonomous institutions, are aware of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Many are actively and presently consulting within their diverse communities and stakeholder interests on the definition, with three (University of Glasgow, University of Edinburgh and Abertay University) having adopted it to date. Universities UK is working with the Union of Jewish Students to raise awareness and understanding of antisemitism and to share best practice in tackling and eliminating it.

The Scottish Government continues to work with universities and the Scottish Funding Council to tackle racism and antisemitism.

Scotland is the second country in the world, after New Zealand, with 100 per cent Fracture Liaison Service provision across all 14 Health Boards.

Our NHS Recovery Plan, published on 25 August, outlines that the Centre for Sustainable Delivery will work collaboratively with Health Boards, health and social care partners, third sector, academia and industry to identify and implement improvements to care pathways across Scotland. This will include extending new approaches to delivering care that minimise the requirement for patients to travel, and provide services more efficiently – for example virtual appointments and virtual fracture clinics.

We believe that Naloxone should be available to anyone who might witness an overdose. Our overall aim is to widen the access to it as much as possible.

Since the inception of the NNP the Scottish Government has commissioned Public Health Scotland (PHS) to report on take-home naloxone (THN) kit distribution using monitoring data supplied by NHS Boards, this report is produced quarterly. The last report (covering 1 January to 31 March 2021) stated that coverage was now estimated to be 57.47% (an increase of around 1.5% compared to the previous quarter – 56.04%).

International evidence suggests that focus should not only be on the distribution but also on encouraging carriage and accessibility of Naloxone.

To improve awareness of naloxone, and to ensure people would recognise the signs of a drug overdose, we launched a nationwide marketing campaign on International Overdose Awareness Day (31 August), in partnership with Scottish Drugs Forum.

Modernisation and investment in Air Traffic Control is essential if we are to ensure safe, reliable and sustainable air services for the future in the Highlands and Islands. Ongoing implementation of the Air Traffic Management 2030 Strategy, including potential mitigation measures arising from consideration of the Islands Communities Impact Assessment, remains an operational matter for Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd.

The National Partnership for Culture established a Measuring Change Group in August 2020. The Group has met on several occasions since then, most recently in August 2021.

CPS has transitioned to a new charge point network operator (CPNO), with all charge points and members being migrated from BP Pulse to SWARCO on the 27 th July. This was the outcome of a rigorous tender exercise to find a new operator to manage CPS on behalf of the Scottish Government.

Migrating over 2000 charge points and 32,000 driver accounts is a significant undertaking which required months of planning and preparation by a range of technical and operational specialists.

The process of bringing the entire ChargePlace Scotland estate online for the first time under one operator has been a huge undertaking. And while some interruptions had been expected, the level of disruption many drivers have faced was regrettably on a scale we did not foresee. Transport Scotland officials understand how critical it is for EV drivers to have access to a comprehensive and reliable network and we fully appreciate the service levels members expect from CPS.

I am pleased to update you that the network has now been stabilised and significant progress has been made in resolving some of the key issues which initially affected drivers, including RFID card access, customer account set-up and, above all, charge point availability. The network now has over 1800 publically available charge points connected and in working order. We are now in a second phase of the CPS migration programme, with the team endeavouring to resolve outstanding charge point repairs as a matter of urgency.

The North Berwick to Edinburgh rail route is electrified, and therefore is already providing zero emission transport. The services have been upgraded by making use of this government’s significant investment in the new, green electric Class 385 trains for Scotland.

The consultation on the draft National Falls and Fractures Strategy closed on 30 September 2019. Analysis of the responses highlighted a disparate range of views, expectations and desired outcomes from a strategy including feedback that a separate strategy may not be the best mechanism to achieve improvement in this area.

The review of the strategy was subsequently delayed due to the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic. Taking into account the changed landscape, officials are currently considering the comments received, including how and where they align with the shared ambitions for our new health and social care strategy for older people.