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On 18 March 2020, the Scottish Government announced that because of the Covid-19 crisis, the Scottish Government had paused work on preparing for an independence referendum this year.

However, the member will be interested to know that previous modelling by the Scottish Government, The Treasury, the OECD and other organisations all show substantial productivity losses from reduced foreign direct investment expected because of Brexit.

In addition the Scottish Government publication, Scotland’s Place in Europe: People, Jobs and Investment, noted that “There is strong evidence that EU membership has been associated with increased flows of FDI.”

This makes it all the more reckless that in the middle of a pandemic and economic recession the UK Government has refused to extend the Brexit transition period.

The Scottish National Investment Bank will operate commercially and seek a commercial return on its investments. How that is determined will vary depending on the circumstances of the investment the Bank is considering. The Bank will now be growing its investment portfolio and the Scottish Government will set a target rate of return once the Bank has a sufficient investment portfolio against which to measure its performance in this way.

As the UK’s first mission oriented Bank the Scottish Government expects to see the Bank deliver social, economic and environmental returns as well as financial returns in the investments that it makes.

A coalition of major drinks producers and trade bodies has confirmed to us its intention to apply for approval as a scheme administrator. Under the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020, Scottish Ministers have 28 days from receipt of an application to grant or refuse it. No application has been received at this point.

Behaviour change science is a very dynamic area of research and we are adopting a flexible, dynamic and collaborative approach as knowledge and insight develops. There has been increasing evidence within peer reviewed literature that more structured implementation of behaviour change science, beyond communication alone, is necessary to drive food waste prevention across the supply chain, and particularly with regards to consumers and citizens. In response to this, Zero Waste Scotland is regularly reviewing the latest literature, developing further in-house behavioural change strategy and expertise, conducting small scale pilots of behaviour change techniques, partnering in academic collaborations, and active knowledge exchange with Waste and Resources Action Plan (WRAP) and international colleagues on the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste .

As part of the EU Platform Zero Waste Scotland were part of the rapporteur team that developed Recommendations for Action in Food Waste Prevention , which highlights the behavioural change challenges and suggested action to address these. Further, specific behaviour change focused business support will be launched in late 2020 through the Food Waste Reduction Business Support Service.

Dates the Scottish Government has met representatives of the aviation industry are included in the following table.

The R&D budget was set at the Scottish Enterprise Board meeting held on 28 February 2020.

As I stated in my answer to S5W-32552 the Scottish Government are in regular contact with the footballing authorities to discuss a range of issue.

In light of the publication of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Scotland's Strategic Framework on 23 October 2020, the Coronavirus (COVID-19): organised activities for children guidance for organised activities and services for children, including babies and toddlers, was updated on 12 November 2020. The guidance is not an instruction for all services and activities to open up at this time, since this will be based on the requirements that need to be met, relevant to each individual delivery setting. Private providers should read this guidance in conjunction with guidance for small businesses: Coronavirus (COVID-19): small and micro businesses guidance .

While our capacity to measure and monitor on a granular and sector specific level develops, we have identified some alternative interim measurement methodologies. For household data, we have utilised waste compositional data from 5 local authorities in Scotland from a wider UK waste compositional study conducted by WRAP. This has been analysed alongside information from Waste Data Flow, the national database that holds data on waste collected by local authorities.

For specific sectors, we have scaled to geographical areas based on economic and demographic metrics from UK level data. For example, we were able, due to the high level of participation in the Courtauld commitment, to calculate the ratio of local units in Scotland to the total local units in the UK in 2018 and this was applied to the total UK retail and wholesale food waste from 2018 to derive the Scottish component.

Energy from waste facilities (EfW) are already required to report energy generation to SEPA on an annual basis. Permits issued by SEPA to EfW plants require each facility to produce a Heat and Power Plan and report annual progress to SEPA each year. This report includes information on energy generation in the previous year and progress towards meeting heat use targets.