Chamber and committees

The budget allocated to the Energy Investment Fund in 2021-22 was up to £13 million, no budget has been allocated for any future financial years. There are new investment mechanisms in place through the Scottish National Investment Bank which supports the Scottish Government's strategic priorities to achieving our net zero ambitions.

The Scottish Government has received £14.564 billion in Covid-19 related funding from the UK Government. Amounts received for 2020-21 were £9.752 billion and for 2021-22 are £4.812 billion. Details of the timing and split of funding received are included in the following table:

In response to the question regarding the locations of recruitment campaigns for Social Security Scotland at advertisement and interview stage as of 18 February 2022, please find below a breakdown of current campaigns and roles by location. For the purposes of this response, we have interpreted the term roles to mean the number of full time equivalent posts we intend to fill through recruitment.

The purpose of the Bus Decarbonisation Taskforce is to bring together leaders from those sectors which most urgently need to work together on the challenges inherent in decarbonisation of the bus sector. These were identified as the bus operating, bus manufacturing, energy, finance and Government sectors, all of whom need to act in a co-ordinated way to remove greenhouse gas emissions from Scotland’s buses, and support a strong and diverse domestic manufacturing sector and supply-chain comprised of high quality green jobs; a key element of the Taskforce’s Guiding Vision. All meeting papers and minutes of the Taskforce are published on the CPT Scotland website. Scottish Ministers are committed to partnership working with the STUC and engage actively with the transport unions on issues of strategic importance.

At the most recent meeting of the Bus Decarbonisation Taskforce, senior representatives from the manufacturing and supply chain sector confirmed that supply of zero-emission buses in the coming months and years would not be a constraining factor and confirmed an enthusiasm to rise to the challenge of decarbonisation. The Scottish Government is keen to ensure that opportunities for green skills and jobs from this work are realised to their fullest extent. The full minutes of the Taskforce meeting have been published on the CPT website.

https://www.cpt-uk.org/news/bus-decarbonisation-taskforce/ .

Any new benefit intended to top-up reserved benefits would have to be developed with research and testing among potential users, and close collaboration with DWP and other stakeholders. For delivery of new benefits, we need to develop and test all application and case management systems to ensure households are able to apply, in addition to obtaining data from DWP and HMRC in order to process and administer the benefit. Any work of such nature is extremely complex and takes a considerable period of time to develop, build and deliver. It would require other priorities to be set aside.

New benefits also require legislation to be made by the Scottish Parliament. The procedures for scrutinising proposed legislation are set out in the Standing Orders of the Parliament. There may also be a requirement for amending regulations to be laid by the UK Government, to ensure that any new income provided by the top-up of reserved benefits does not affect entitlement to other reserved benefits.

Collective bargaining agreements are not considered as part of that assessment.

We currently have no plans to collect information on how many applicants for Young Carer Grant have No Recourse to Public Funds.

Vehicle safety standards, such as Direct Vision Standard to improve the sighting of vulnerable road users in the HGV and bus driving positions, is reserved to the UK Government.

In the Scottish Government’s formal response dated November 2021 to the UK Government consultation on its future of transport regulatory review, we called on the UK Government to adopt the measures outlined in the EU General Road Safety Regulation, including Direct Vision, to ensure that the UK remains a leader in vehicle safety.

Yes, we will continue to encourage rail operators in their use of new media tools to improve levels of customer service. Since ScotRail launched their Whatsapp facility in September 2019, they have received approximately 45,000 messages via WhatsApp.

ScotRail advise that messages concerning ticket buying accounted for around 20 per cent of all messages. 134 messages in total related to accessibility. WhatsApp remains the least used of ScotRail’s three main channels, with incoming messages on Twitter for the same period at around 438,000, and Facebook at 80,000.

Caledonian Sleeper is introducing a Live Chat facility. While being rolled out on a ‘soft launch’ basis it is already receiving 50+ messages a day, and it is planned that this will be adopted on a formal basis in the coming months.

Caledonian Sleeper has the facility to text all of its guests and also regularly messages them on social media as requested.