Chamber and committees

The safety of fans attending the fan zone is paramount, that is why we have worked closely with Glasgow City Council and a range of partners to deploy a range of interventions to reduce the risk of transmission at the fan zone.

Whilst we have seen an increase in test positivity of younger males, Public Health Scotland’s analysis of the Test & Protect Case Management System data reveal that between 11 to 28 June 2021, only 55 of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Scotland reported attending the Glasgow Green Fan Zone, This amounts to 2.8% of the overall 1,991 confirmed cases associated with EURO 2020-related events. This low number is testament to the approach and effort of partners to deliver such a large scale event during these challenging times.

This report can be found at: https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/media/8300/21-06-30-covid19-publication_report.pdf .

Since 2013 the Scottish Government has invested over £45 million to develop the ChargePlace Scotland network, which now has 1,845 publicly available chargers. UK Government’s Department for Transport statistics show that, with 43 chargers per 100,000 of population, Scotland has the highest number of chargepoints relative to population outside of London. Most chargers can charge 2 cars simultaneously, however some rapid chargers are only able to charge 1 car at a time. It is not possible to give a total number of electric vehicles that the ChargePlace Scotland can support, but this number is much greater than the number of individual charging connections. This figure would be influenced by a wide range of factors, importantly individual charging sessions will vary in duration from well under an hour to overnight charging and in part will be determined by the state of charge as the vehicle is plugged in. A critical factor will be distances travelled and how vehicles are used over any given period as this will significantly influence their charging requirements.

The Scottish Government only hold data on the ChargePlace Scotland network, and whilst it is the largest public charging network in Scotland other providers do operate in Scotland, so will increase the total number of charging points available to the public. Complementing the public charging network, Scottish Government, through the Energy Saving Trust, have now funded over 10,000 home and business chargepoints which will make a significant contribution to supporting Scotland’s transition to zero emission vehicles.

The Scottish Government continues to support the national development of the ChargePlace Scotland electric vehicle charging network. We have invested over £45 million since 2011 in the ChargePlace Scotland network, which now has over 1800 publicly available chargepoints.

Over £5.5M will be provided to local authorities this year to continue to invest in the growth of the ChargePlace Scotland network. Funds will be administered across a number of schemes including our Local Authority Install Programme, which will focus on improving the capacity and resilience of the network by bolstering electric vehicle charging provision at key sites across Scotland, retrofitting rapid chargers with contactless payment facilities and funding warranty and maintenance packages. Other programmes such as Switched on Towns and Cities and Low Carbon Travel and Transport Fund will continue to deliver additional chargepoints and we are providing additional funding to Scottish local authorities as top-up funding for the UK Government’s on-street charging funding programme.

We continue to support households and business who wish to install chargepoints by providing grant funding to support this. To date almost 10,000 household and workplace charge points have been installed.

We are currently working with Scottish Future Trust to consider new approaches to financing publicly available EV charging infrastructure and will shortly bring forward consultation on installing EV infrastructure in all new build properties and all existing properties undergoing major renovation.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6T-00019 on‎ 26 May 2021. The answer is available on the Parliament's website at: Official Report - Parliamentary Business : Scottish Parliament

Scottish Planning Policy makes clear that local and planning authorities should consider the re-use or re-development of brownfield land before new development takes place on greenfield sites. In November 2020 the Scottish Government issued a Position Statement setting out its current thinking on the issues that will need to be addressed when preparing Scotland's fourth National Planning Framework. The Position Statement includes a commitment to significantly enhance policies on the promotion of a brownfield-first approach to development, including for new homes.

The Affordable Housing Supply Programme provides funding support to both local authorities and registered social landlords to bring forward high quality affordable housing projects across Scotland including support as appropriate for site acquisition, infrastructure and remediation costs for brownfield sites.

This year we opened our new £50m low carbon Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme to applications from all Scottish local authorities and Clyde Gateway Urban Regeneration Company. It will help with unblocking the reuse of persistent vacant and derelict land, especially in disadvantaged areas, and bringing forward opportunities for new green infrastructure and low carbon living as part of place based regeneration.

The Scottish Government follows the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) Guidance in the planning of vaccine delivery. This evidence-based guidance advises that the single greatest risk of mortality from COVID-19 is increasing age and that COVID-19 risk increases exponentially with age.

JCVI priority group 4 of the vaccines programme incorporates those considered Clinically Extremely Vulnerable (CEV) on the GP system and therefore at higher risk of severe illness with COVID-19.

First doses and second doses of vaccine are offered in accordance with the same clinical prioritisation guidelines outlined under the JCVI priority groups.

Throughout the pandemic, the Scottish Government has maintained close contact with Scottish Water and the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS) around charging policy and was supportive of the WICS action introduce a package worth £60 million to provide additional liquidity to licensed providers, allowing them to assist customers through deferred payment terms. On 14 May 2020, WICS announced a further water charges relief scheme building on the initial intervention to provide at least another £50 million of liquidity to allow a further deferral of charges for businesses that had been impacted by Covid-19.

In Scotland, all non-domestic properties remain liable to be charged if they have access to services. Scottish Water is still required to provide services to properties, even if they are temporarily closed, and there are costs associated with this, in particular ensuring property drainage and ensuring water and wastewater services are available whenever a business might be able to re-open. If follows therefore that businesses are still required to pay their Licensed Provider for services but the liquidity support means this can be over an extended time period and Licensed Providers will continue to pay Scottish Water for wholesale costs.

Government budgets achieve multiple overlapping objectives and so it is not possible to distinguish environmental spending that does and does not alleviate climate change. A wide range of Scottish Government budgets directly address environmental problems. In 2021-22 spending on Environmental Services is £196 million. A number of other budget lines also have a direct impact on environmental outcomes including, but not limited to, Rural Economy Agri Environment Measures (£34.2 million) and Green Schemes (£142 million), Forestry (£70.6 million), and Active Travel (£115 million) in 2021-22.

Taking a more expansive view of spending on environmental measures. The Scottish Government publication Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland provides estimates of overall spending by the Scottish Government, Local Authorities and Public Corporations on different categories of spend. It reports that these bodies spent £1,078 million on ‘environmental protection’ in 2019-20.

Due to the presence of new and emerging COVID-19 variants of concern, vaccine efficacy is continuously monitored and assessed. Public Health England (PHE) monitors the efficacy of COVID 19 vaccinations currently approved for use in the UK.

On 14 June PHE published its most recent analysis on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against hospital admission with the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant, first identified in India. The analysis suggests the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96% effective against hospitalisation after 2 doses and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 92% effective against hospitalisation after 2 doses.
‎ Note: These data remain subject to peer review.

Table 1: Estimated vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation

It is clearly disappointing that the annual emissions target for 2019 has not been met, however the statistics in the report published by the UK Government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy date back to 2019, and do not reflect the recent step change in Scottish Government action.

In 2019 we increased the ambition of our targets- to reducing emissions by 75% by 2030, and to reaching net-zero in 2045, and our Climate Change Plan was updated in accordance with these targets in December. The updated plan includes over 100 new policies and provides a clear and credible pathway to meeting our emissions reductions targets over the period to 2032. It is also supported by a record £1.9 billion of capital funding in 2021/22 to tackle climate change, and create good, green jobs. Our attention is now firmly focused on the delivery and implementation of the ambitious plan.

We are also working to ensure that we achieve even deeper future reductions in order to meet the catch up requirement for the extra 2.7 megatonnes of emissions from the missed 2019 target. This will require additional policies, and we will publish a catch-up report within six months of the 2019 statistics being published at the very latest.

During the recent debate on the Climate Emergency [9 June], we supported the principle of the next full Climate Change Plan being brought forward as soon as possible during this Parliamentary session. This reflects our commitment to ever increasing action in response to the climate emergency.

Finally, the recent statistics do show some good progress. Scotland’s emissions are down by 51.5% since the 1990 baseline, which is over half way to net zero. Furthermore, emissions have fallen year by year, down 2.3% from 2018 to 2019.