Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government maintains up to date COVID-19 safety guidance for Early Learning and Childcare settings. This guidance is developed in consultation with public health experts on both the Advisory Sub-Group on Education and Children’s Issues, and in Public Health Scotland.

The Advisory Sub-Group for Education and Children’s Issues has now provided further advice, specifically on whether groups of parents should be permitted to attend ELC settings for outdoor events such as nursery graduations. Their advice is that groups of parents and carers should not attend end-of-year events in Early Learning and Childcare settings in this academic year, whether indoors or outdoors.

The guidance seeks to minimise the number of contacts that children and staff have, to keep them safe and to reduce the risk that children and staff need to self-isolate in the event of someone in the setting testing positive.

Our guidance is also in place to keep children in learning, and essential childcare settings open to support families now and over the summer. This has been a difficult decision that carefully weighed up the risks against the benefits.

I am grateful to settings that have found safe ways to allow children to celebrate with their friends and key workers and found creative ways to share this with parents and carers. I encourage other settings to find ways to ensure that parents can share in their child’s experience with, for example, videos and photos.

Our Statement of Intent on Biodiversity was published in December 2020 and highlights the need to create new locally driven projects to improve ecological connectivity across Scotland. We have made an ambitious, voluntary commitment to protect 30% of Scotland’s land for nature by 2030, in advance of the new Global Biodiversity Framework. We are commissioning advice from NatureScot on how best to achieve this - and whether we can go even further, given that we have already achieved 37% protection of Scotland’s marine environment - including through identification of Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures. The 30x30 project will advance ecological restoration across the whole of Scotland, on a scale much greater than the existing National Park area in Scotland.

The Cairngorms National Park has a significant part of its area under ecological restoration (sometimes called rewilding). This includes the area of Cairngorms Connect, NTS Mar Lodge, and a number of other private estates. The area of the Cairngorms National Park which is currently under ecological restoration measures is approximately 20%, or around 100,000 hectares.

Within Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, 8.6% of land is a designated Site of Specific Scientific Interest. This figure does not include Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) or Special Protected Areas (SPAs), which would bring the total area of land under ecological restoration, and covered by a statutory designation, to around 12%. Including National Nature Reserves (NNRs) would increase this figure to around 21%.

The current Cairngorms National Park Partnership Plan and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Partnership Plan sets out the policy frameworks within the National Parks, which support and underpin the ecological restoration being undertaken.

Early medical abortion at home, and the changes adopted in March 2020, has been an important measure to ensure abortion services have continued to be delivered throughout the pandemic, without delays. 

The Scottish Government launched a public consultation on the future arrangements for early medical abortion at home on 30 September 2020, which closed on 5 January 2021. An independent analysis of the consultation responses has been published today and can be found at https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781800048560.

The report shows very differing views among respondents, particularly in relation to whether the current approach is sufficiently safe. In order to ensure robust evidence is available, the Scottish Government is taking steps to commission an independent evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the current approach, including in relation to safety. Scottish Ministers will consider future arrangements once this evaluation has been completed.

The current March 2020 approval will remain in place while this evaluation is undertaken. This will continue to allow patients to take both mifepristone and misoprostol at home (following a telephone or video consultation) while coronavirus continues to pose a serious and imminent threat to public health in Scotland and a doctor, or a nurse under the direction of a doctor, considers that it is not advisable or possible for the person to attend a clinic. In line with the Scottish Abortion Care Providers guidelines, both drugs should only be taken at home where it is considered clinically appropriate for the patient, and where the patient wishes to do so.

The Scottish Government is committed to action to protect wildlife and to the effective monitoring of progress towards this goal. The Scottish Government has recently added a new single high level indicator to the National Performance Framework which measures trends in marine and terrestrial biodiversity in Scotland.

We have committed to introducing an ambitious new Biodiversity Strategy for Scotland within a year of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties (CoP15) and the publication of a new global biodiversity framework. Policies to take forward our commitment to tackle the nature crisis and methods to measure progress in this regard will be considered as part of the development of this Strategy and its supporting delivery plan.

Work on a planned public energy company was halted during the pandemic. As set out in the SNP manifesto, Ministers will now focus government efforts on a new dedicated national public energy agency. This will coordinate and accelerate delivery of heat and energy efficiency work, inform and educate the public on the changes required, provide expert advice to national and local government, and work with public, private and third sector partners to deliver this transformative national project. Further details will be set out to Parliament in due course.

The Kinlochleven hydro-electric power station was built specifically to power the Kinlochleven Aluminium Smelter. Since the smelter closed in 2000 all the electrical power produced at Kinlochleven has been exported to the national grid and no power is dispatched to the Fort William smelter directly. The Kinlochleven power station has no connection to the Scottish Government’s Lochaber guarantee and the Kinlochleven power generation assets are not included within the Government’s Lochaber security package.

We welcome the WWF’s Feeling the Heat report and the focus it brings to the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. We are already taking world-leading action at home and abroad, with action on these issues central to our green recovery from COVID-19.

In 2019 we scaled up the ambition of our climate targets; to reducing emissions by 75% by 2030 and to reaching net-zero by 2045. Our Climate Change Plan update, published in December, strengthens Scotland’s pathway to meeting these world-leading targets over the next decade, with nearly 150 policies driving delivery. This includes investments of more than £250 million over 10 years for peatland restoration and an additional £150 million over five years in forestry.

Protection of Scotland’s biodiversity is a key priority and we are committed to doing more to safeguard our species and habitats. Our high level Statement of Intent on biodiversity, published in December 2020, signalled our ambitions for biodiversity in Scotland, our international action and the development of a new post-2020 biodiversity strategy. We have committed £7 million to date to the Biodiversity Challenge Fund, and our latest budget included a further £10 million for a new Nature Restoration Fund in 2021-22.

Furthermore, in response to independent scientific advice on the main climate risks facing Scotland, including to our biodiversity, we are implementing Scotland’s second statutory Climate Change Adaptation Programme, setting out over 170 policies and proposals across Scotland, within an outcomes-based framework aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

These global challenges require a global response, and as European co-chair of the Under2 Coalition, we are committed to working in partnership with governments around the world to support efforts to reach net zero in a way that is fair and just. Since 2012, our world-first Climate Justice Fund has delivered over £21 million to support our key partner nations of Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda, supporting communities to build resilience against the worst effects of climate change. We are also looking forward to the opportunity presented by COP26 to demonstrate our collective ambitions to address both climate action and biodiversity.

I have recently written to Ms Vicky Ford MP, Parliamentary Under- Secretary of State for Children and Families, to request a meeting to discuss this issue.

The Scottish Government has provided exceptional additional funding in excess of £35 million to maintain full employment on full pay for Caledonian Sleeper Staff, throughout the pandemic period, despite the significant reduction in passenger numbers. In total, the Scottish Government has spent around £1bn thus far to maintain essential services and full railway staff employment since the start of Covid lockdown.

Given this exceptional financial support, there is no additional funding available to support an increase in costs. However, Serco Caledonian Sleepers Limited is authorised to increase pay where this can be fully funded by agreed efficiencies negotiated though the established collective bargaining process with staff representatives.

I understand that discussions on possible efficiencies have been offered and I encourage staff representatives to negotiate to secure a reasonable agreement that will avoid their proposed disruption to passengers and significant and unnecessary loss of pay for railway staff.

The Scottish Government offers a range of initiatives delivered through the Energy Savings Trust (EST) to support low income households in Scotland, this will ensure all households are able to enjoy the benefits that come with making the switch to electric vehicles. More detail on these initiatives is as follows:

Plugged-in Communities (PiC)

This grant programme is aimed at housing associations, housing cooperatives and not-for-profit organisations, it aims to provide access to Electric Vehicles (EV’s) and the associated infrastructure to low-income communities across Scotland in the form of shared-use EV car clubs. To date these vehicles have covered over 100,000 pure EV miles.

Low Carbon Transport Loan (LCTL)

In September 2020, the loan was extended to offer interest free funding to individuals looking to purchase used EV’s, this removed some of the barriers attributed to the high up front cost of EV ownership, so far we have supported more than 96 individuals purchase used EV’s to a value of over £1.2m

Low Emission Zone (LEZ) support fund

For 2021-2022, £3.7m has been allocated to the LEZ support fund, this offers an incentive for low-income households within a 20km radius of a LEZ to take older, more polluting vehicles off the road, applicants can receive a cash grant of £2000 plus up to £1000 ‘travel better’ credits per household to support the uptake of sustainable travel options.

Chargeplace Scotland (CPS) network

To date we have invested over £45m in developing the CPS network for EV charging, we now have over 1700 charge points across Scotland which offers significant cost saving benefits to its users. This also ensures that households and communities across Scotland are able to enjoy a high quality charging network to support their switch to electric vehicles.

Public Transport

Bus is already one of the most climate-friendly transport choices people can make. Transitioning buses to be zero-emission increases the benefits of bus as a transport choice.

Over 2020-2021 we awarded £50.7m, and unlocked over £71m of private investment, to support 272 new battery-battery buses and associated charging infrastructure, we have also committed a further £120m to build on this progress over the coming 5 years.

Significant grant funding of over £12m has been awarded to the bus industry to help with the costs of retrofitting over 700 buses to LEZ entry standards. This will help support the affordability and accessibility of public transport for many lower income households by safeguarding bus service provision in LEZ cities.