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Food waste recycling in rural areas has a number of roles to play and can bring significant benefits.

Local community composting groups for example can bring a number of benefits including much needed employment opportunities and enhanced community cohesion. Community composting also ensures that there are local outlets for compostable wastes with the end products also used locally in gardens, parks and small scale agricultural type holdings.

Food waste recycling in rural areas may provide business opportunities for private sector service providers looking to offer a collection service to rural businesses with the material collected being processed in either local anaerobic digestion (AD) or composting facilities. Where food waste is processed in AD facilities there will be scope to produce energy that can be utilised locally to the benefit of the community.

Local solutions for food waste also have the potential to reduce costs as it removes the need to transport food waste, as part of the mixed waste stream, over long distances for processing elsewhere.

Under the Food Waste Support Programme, delivered by Zero Waste Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government, we have allocated £5 million for the 2013-14 financial year. A further £5 million has been allocated for 2014-15 for food waste recycling initiatives.

Early next year we will run a national campaign to promote household food waste collections and encourage uptake of this new service. This campaign is expected to cost around £0.6 million.

The Scottish Government has a target to recycle at least 70% of Scotland’s waste by 2025. No specific target for food waste has been set, but the capture and recycling of food waste is recognised as being key to the achievement of our 70% target.

The measures included in the Waste Regulations, approved by Parliament last year, will ensure that the majority of food waste produced by businesses and households in Scotland is captured for recycling.

The Scottish Government has carefully considered this research. Although the research found some adverse effects in some dogs studied, as previously indicated in the answer to question S4W-11777 on 18 December 2012, it did not provide adequate evidence of long-term or significant damage to the welfare of dogs that would justify a ban on these training aids.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that e-collars are used responsibly, so will co-operate with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to draw up guidance regarding how e-collars should be used.

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/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The Scottish Government takes a national approach to tackling child poverty, with action at a local level being the responsibility of the local authority. It is therefore not possible to provide figures at that level. In terms of overall government spending, I would refer the member to the following link for further information:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/17534.aspx.

In the spring we will publish a revised child poverty strategy, building on our commitment to do all we can to maximise household incomes and improve children’s wellbeing and life chances. We will work with the Ministerial Advisory Group on Child Poverty and other interested parties to ensure that the strategy describes an approach through which we can work together to tackle child poverty in Scotland. Only with access to our own resources and the ability to join up policy across devolved and reserved areas, can we make the substantial difference we need to and tackle child poverty for good.

A copy of a table showing how much money has been spent on the maintenance and upgrade of trunk roads in each complete financial year since 2007, listed by road, has been placed on SPICE, BIB number 55187.

This issue remains under consideration and the final position will be confirmed in due course.

In 2012, the median gross weekly earnings for full time employees living in Fife was £499.30, compared with £498.30 for Scotland. Median gross weekly earnings (before deductions for Tax & National Insurance) of full-time employees on adult rates, is obtained from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE). This is an Office of National Statistics (ONS) publication which replaces the New Earnings Survey (NES). It includes full time employed adults from whose pay for the survey period was not affected by absence. The self-employed are excluded from this study.

Data is not available at parliamentary constituency level.

Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees (residence based):

The Scottish Government works closely with local authorities, Transport Scotland, SEPA and other partners to ensure that the air quality objectives are achieved. The planning system has a key role to play in this process.

The third National Planning Framework Main Issues Report was published for consultation from 30 April to 23 July 2013. Its spatial strategy emphasises the importance of reducing emissions from the energy and transport sectors, and notes the continuing role of planning in providing environmental protection. NPF3 will be finalised by June 2014.

The national poverty figures from the households below average Income datasets cannot be broken down to local authority level in Scotland, meaning poverty figures for local authorities are not available.

Tax credit and benefit claimant data from HM Revenue and Customs can be used as proxy data for child poverty at a local authority level. This is defined as the "percentage of children in each local authority that live in families in receipt of out of work benefits or tax credits where their reported income is less than 60% of median income".

In 2009, 19.9% of children in Fife were classified as in poverty (compared with 19.0% for Scotland). In 2010, 19.4% of children were classified as living in poverty (compared with 18.6% for Scotland). Breakdowns into parliamentary constituency are not available. Data for earlier years is not available for Scotland.