Chamber and committees

The 10 pledges for a Greener Deal for Scotland, announced on 2 February, make reference to the employment potential for greener jobs within the following sectors: renewable energy, clean fossil fuel technologies, energy efficiency, low carbon transport and renewable heat.

Our Renewable Energy Action Plan, to be published in the summer, will include an analysis of economic development opportunities and future potential for growth across the renewable energy sector.

Estimates set out in the UK Renewable Energy Strategy consultation suggest the potential for 160,000 renewable energy related jobs UK wide over the next decade. The Scottish Government believes that Scotland has the potential to create at least 16,000 such jobs.

It is difficult to provide exact figures on the numbers employed in these sectors over the last five years, particularly as the Office for National Statistics counts those employed in waste management as including those working in sewage and sanitation.

However, the figures sourced from the Office for National Statistics under the Annual Business Inquiry are as follows (rounded to nearest hundred):

	Recycling	Sewage, Refuse Disposal and Sanitation
2003	1,000	13,300
2004	1,100	12,300
2005	1,400	13,100
2006	1,600	14,100
2007	1,300	13,700

 

It is difficult to predict what the growth in employment will be in the waste management and recycling sectors over the next five years, particularly given the current economic climate.

However, the on-going review of the National Waste Plan will attempt to address this by identifying where employment opportunities could arise. Consultation on a draft of the National Waste Plan will begin around June 2009.

Provided the EC''s legislative pre-payment conditions are met, and audit requirements observed, there is no need to discuss with the EC what is essentially an operational issue.

As the member is aware, I recently wrote to him and explained that my officials are already looking carefully at what is possible in terms of improving the position on the issue of payments - including the feasibility of combining, or paying in parallel, the SFPS and LFASS payments. This would need to be done in a way that avoids compromising key payment and delivery targets, and without delaying payments to individual farmers under either scheme.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-19776 on 28 January 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

Payments of LFASS 2008 were made into bank accounts from 16 January, some three weeks earlier than last year. Over 11,000 payments worth £52 million, or 85% of the budget, had been made by 26 January.

Steps taken to achieve the issue of these payments included:

Prioritisation of inspection field work and redeployment of resource as appropriate, to ensure that the EC legislative requirement to complete the inspection process before starting LFASS payments, was met as quickly as possible.

Liaison with SFPS (Single Farm Payment Scheme) colleagues to ensure that LFASS development work did not adversely impact on the release of SFPS aid.

Detailed testing of the complex IT systems that underpin LFASS payments, by the dedicated LFASS teams and others.

Continual monitoring of essential changes to the IT processes to ensure that decisions were made and resources allocated appropriately.

In addition, I took a keen personal interest in the issue of the LFASS payments and received regular reports on their progress.

I will be making an announcement about our strategy for LFASS and SFPS (Single Farm Payment Scheme) payments and aim to do so in due course.

Officials are looking at the feasibility of making LFASS and SFPS (Single Farm Payment Scheme) payments at the same time. This is an operational issue, although there is a need to ensure that the different legislative requirements are met. We will seek the advice of key stakeholders once we have identified the risks and benefits of such an approach.