Chamber and committees

A University of Glasgow study on lifelong health outcomes in former professional footballers, especially in relation to dementia, was published in 2019 containing evidence of possible increased risk of dementia for this group. Further work is underway to establish why footballers may be at greater risk and we will give full consideration to the report published into this subject in August 2021 led by Dr Willie Stewart.

We remain in close contact on these issues with experts at the sportscotland Institute of Sport and the Chief Medical Officer at the Scottish FA and will work with partners, including PFA Scotland, to carefully consider emerging evidence on former footballers developing dementia.

We are funding a new body, Brain Health Scotland, for five years , to embed brain health within clinical services and across public health. As part of this, we are exploring links between pilot brain health clinics from next year and the feasibility of additional national work focussing specifically on brain injury.

The Scottish Government allocated £475,000 of additional funding to Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority over this year and last year to meet the costs associated with additional visitor management pressures in the National Park following the easing of restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic in the National Park. This is in addition to £425 000 which has been allocated to mitigate the wider impact of the pandemic on businesses and local communities.

The additional funding for visitor management has been spent on a range of additional measures by the Park Authority, including increasing its seasonal staff complement (such as rangers, campsite wardens and environment officers) to manage the substantial number of visitors to the national park and the high volume of litter and waste generated; providing and maintaining additional temporary toilet facilities; making adjustments to Park Authority sites to ensure COVID-safe access for the public; and providing additional signage, for example to help manage traffic in congested areas.

In addition, the Scottish Government allocated £70,000 to the Park Authority from the Scottish Government’s COVID Recovery Task Force Funding in 2021 to fund strategic development plans for East and West Loch Lomond to assess how these areas can continue to attract visitors whilst reducing visitor pressures such as traffic and parking capacity issues.

Looking to the future, the Scottish Government’s increase in the Park Authority’s Capital budget by £540,000 for 2021-22 and for each of the next three years will enable the organisation to deliver visitor infrastructure improvements and develop a capital investment plan to better support visitor management in the National Park.

Statistics detailing a range of information on the Scottish Welfare Fund including application numbers and awards are published on the Scottish Government website monthly, quarterly and annually. The annual update for 2020-21 lists application numbers and awards by local authority area for each year since the Fund began in 2013. These statistics can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/collections/sg-social-security-scotland-stats-publications/

The Scottish Government criminal proceedings database does not hold information on the specific type of vessel involved in charges prosecuted under Loch Lomond Byelaws.

The Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service were able to manually search relevant case records and confirmed that 3 people have been prosecuted for offences involving a jet ski under Loch Lomond Byelaws 2013 B3.5(1)&3.17 - Knowingly/recklessly/negligently navigate and behaviour of vessel.

The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) is an autonomous Higher Education Institution (HEI), and as such has responsibility for its own strategic and operational decision making, including those related to the rebuilding of the Mackintosh building. The GSA has made clear its intention to rebuild the Mackintosh as a fully functioning art school, engaging fully with the local community in taking this forward.

All category A listed buildings, including the Mackintosh, are of significant cultural and historic importance to Scotland and are defined in Historic Environment Scotland (HES) guidance as buildings of “outstanding special architectural or historic interest”. HES, as the lead public body for investigating, caring for and promoting Scotland's historic environment, will continue to work with the GSA, Glasgow City Council and other interested parties on the complex issues surrounding the rebuild of the Mackintosh building.

All Scottish HEIs in receipt of public funding must comply with the terms of their Financial Memorandum with the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), and the principles of good governance set out in the Scottish Code of Good HE Governance.

The SFC continues to engage regularly with the GSA at senior management and board level on a range of issues, such as institutional governance, its plans for the delivery of high quality education, and the use of its estates for this purpose. This includes the Mackintosh and the approach the GSA is taking to inform decisions around its rebuilding.

The GSA will shortly publish the first stage of this process, the Strategic Outline Business Case (OBC), which was developed in accordance with UK and Scottish Government guidance and includes input from a range of internal and external stakeholders.

Our National Infrastructure Mission plans for over £33 billion of Scottish Government investment over the course of the current Parliamentary term. This means that annual investment in our hospitals, schools, houses, transport, low carbon technology and digital connections, will be around £1.56 billion higher by 2025-26 than in 2019-20.

All international studies show that boosting infrastructure investment is expected to have a positive impact on Scotland’s long-term economic growth. Scottish Government analysis published in 2018 available at www.gov.scot/Infrastructure investment: evidence summary showed the annual UK government investment was around 2.6% of UK GDP, one percentage point below the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average.

The National Infrastructure Mission represents an increase in annual investment by 1% of 2017 Scottish GDP by the end of this Parliament, raising the level of public investment in infrastructure in Scotland to internationally competitive levels and providing economic stimulus.

Scottish Ministers advised the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee throughout the course of their inquiry leading to publication in Dec 2020 of its report “The Procurement and Construction of Ferry Vessels in Scotland” that, as part of a drive for continuous improvement, a review would be undertaken of the current legal constraints and governance arrangements for the existing tripartite of CMAL, Transport Scotland and David MacBrayne Limited including its subsidiaries. We have already advised this review is underway and provided further details to the committee on 11 March 2021 and the answers to S6W-01516 and S6W-01517 on 6 August 2021

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Electronic Duty of Care (edoc) system has been operational since January 2014.

We are taking forward the commitment to move towards the use of a mandatory system for waste monitoring as part of our work to implement an electronic waste tracking system, set out in our update to the Climate Change Plan.

Of the 32 local authorities across Scotland, 31 have signed up to the voluntary Household Recycling Charter, Edinburgh City Council has not yet signed up. So far, 9 councils have fully aligned their services with the Code of Practice, these are: Dumfries & Galloway, Dundee City, East Ayrshire, Falkirk, Fife, Moray, Shetland Islands, South Ayrshire, and Stirling.

The Scottish Government is currently working with Zero Waste Scotland, COSLA and an Advisory Group, comprising local authority Waste Managers, to review the Code of Practice that accompanies the Household Recycling Charter. One of the aims of the review is to ensure that local authorities will still be able to fulfil the aims of the Charter when Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme is introduced.