Chamber and committees

Transport Scotland continues to work with Scottish transport operators and other public bodies to deliver the Scottish Government’s vision that all journeys on Scotland’s bus, rail, ferry, subway and tram networks can be made using one type of smart ticket or payment. The ScotRail network is now fully smart enabled, with an array of ticket types on offer, including Anytime, Season and, most recently, flexi pass tickets. It is now possible to use the same smartcards on both ScotRail and the Glasgow Subway and the procurement process for a national e-Purse is underway, with the aim to launch a smartcard 'pay-as-you-go' option across all transport modes in 2018.

In the UK, outside of London, bus services are deregulated therefore government cannot simply instruct bus operators or indeed certain ferry operators to adopt or participate in smart ticketing.

The murders of Liam Fee, Madison Horn and Mikaeel Kular were especially shocking given the individuals who were guilty were the very people who should have loved and protected these children.

When a child has died or suffered harm through abuse or neglect, all agencies must consider what might have been done differently to prevent that harm and minimise the risk of further deaths. That is why we expect child protection committees to undertake significant case reviews and share them with the Care Inspectorate, so that it can analyse reviews and report nationally on key areas of learning. I wrote to all child protection committees in June to make clear my expectation that they share all case review findings with the Care Inspectorate.

The Scottish Government remains in on-going contact with Fife to assure itself that progress continues to be made with the implementation of the recommendations from each of the Significant Case Reviews into the deaths of these children. We are also progressing implementation of the national recommendations in those reviews.

As the member will be aware, I made a statement to Parliament in March 2017, setting out the Scottish Government’s response to the independent Child Protection Systems Review which we commissioned and which was chaired by Catherine Dyer. I accepted all recommendations made by the review, including a number of recommendations to improve learning from Significant Case Reviews, such as developing a set of National Standards for those carrying out Significant Case Reviews, exploring a new tiered approach to Significant Case Reviews and making the Care Inspectorate the central repository for all Initial and Significant Case Reviews.

On-going learning and improvement will be supported by other elements of the Child Protection Improvement Programme including a revised framework of inspections that focusses on the experiences and outcomes of the most vulnerable children.

The Scottish Government has had no discussions with NHS Tayside regarding the temporary closure of the Minor Injury and Illness Unit at Crieff Community Hospital. This was an operational decision due to unforeseen staffing issues. The unit re-opened on 17 July.

There are currently 586 registered users for the Know & Respond air pollution alert service (via the Scottish air quality website) and a further 947 through the Know & Respond app. However, the number of individuals making use of the service is likely to be significantly higher than this, as a number of registered users are known to be GP practice and specialist nurses who forward the alerts to their patients.

Air quality sensors were first made available to schools in September 2015 as part of a project to raise awareness of air quality issues. They are not part of the statutory air quality monitoring network. All 10 kits have been loaned continuously during term time. The Scottish Government is in discussion with SEPA, the service operator, about possible funding to expand the number of sensors available.

The number of people using the Scottish air quality website on an annual basis since the website was established in 2007 is shown in the following table.

Scottish Natural Heritage is leading the development of a suite of Ecosystem Health Indicators to assess the state of ecosystem health across Scotland. In 2014, the then Minister for the Environment agreed the suite of data sets to be used and the work has been taken forward by a working group comprising a number of experts and supported by the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy’s Science Support Group.

The Ecosystem Health Indicators will complement the existing suite of biodiversity indicators and will be made available through Scotland’s Environment Web (SE Web). This will allow several of the Indicators to be fully searchable, for example by allowing users to interrogate the data to view individual features on sites protected for nature and to view information at a landscape scale defined by a number of river sub-basin management areas. Testing of Ecosystem Health Indicators on SE Web will be undertaken during the summer with a view to their inclusion in September 2017.

The Scottish Government is not aware of any evidence of culling of beavers in 2017.

Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) is currently preparing a paper on a national ecological network for Scotland in the context of the commitment in the 2020 Challenge for Scotland’s Biodiversity to complete the suite of protected areas and improve their connectivity through a national ecological network centred on those sites.

The SNH work is being informed by A Roadmap for Adopting a National Ecological Network for Scotland published by Scottish Environment LINK in May and by recent discussion with Scottish Environment LINK, Scottish Government officials and others. Further engagement with stakeholders on this is planned for the autumn.

Work is continuing on a number of the projects in Scotland’s Biodiversity - A Route Map to 2020 which contribute to ecological connectivity, including: a £2.3 million EcoCo LIFE project for habitat restoration and creation to improve ecological coherence within the Central Scotland Green Network; habitat restoration and species management; conservation management of protected sites; and improvements to green infrastructure. In September, a new indicator on ecological connectivity will be published as part of the new suite of Ecosystem Health Indicators.

The Scottish Government is not considering any further reintroductions of beavers beyond the populations currently at Knapdale and on Tayside.