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The Scottish Government is supporting organisations across Scotland to tackle the climate emergency. This includes, a further £1 million this year for the continued rollout of Green Growth Accelerators to support local authorities to develop low carbon projects and deliver £100 million over the next five years to help businesses via the Green Jobs Fund. Bespoke advice and support for businesses is also available through the enterprise agencies, Zero Waste Scotland, Business Gateway and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. We are also supporting workers to engage in a just transition through the £100,000 we have provided for union capacity building. Our framework of regional climate action hubs and climate action towns is also enabling communities to engage in collective climate action.

The Women’s Health Plan is a three year strategy, published in August 2021, which underpins actions to improve women’s health inequalities. The Plan includes the long term ambition to adopt a life course approach across all services to improve women’s health holistically.

Through the Respiratory Care Action Plan for Scotland we aim to improve outcomes for people living with respiratory conditions in Scotland. The Plan sets out our priorities and commitments for driving improvement in the prevention, diagnosis, care, treatment and support of people living with respiratory conditions including asthma.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that everyone living with respiratory conditions, including asthma, receives the best possible care and treatment to enable them to live longer, healthier, and independent lives.

In March last year we published the first Respiratory Care Action Plan for Scotland, that sets out our priorities and commitments for driving improvement in prevention, diagnosis, care, treatment and support for people living with respiratory conditions such as asthma. One of the priorities for year one of the Plan is improving access to meaningful respiratory data. This will enable us to understand where people’s needs are not being met and inform service improvements, allowing us to better explore any areas of concern.

Asthma + Lung UK were involved in the development of the Plan and are members of our national advisory committee, the Scottish Respiratory Advisory Committee, that has been established to oversee the Plan implementation. We are working closely with them and other key stakeholders, including clinicians and our newly formed Lived Experience Network, to develop an implementation programme.

Women’s health is a key priority for this government. Our Women’s Health Plan, published in August 2021, underpins actions to address health inequalities by raising awareness around women’s health, to improve access to health care for women across their life course and to reduce inequalities in health outcomes for girls and women.

Statistics on uncollected council tax are published in the annual "Council Tax Collection" National Statistics publication. The most recent edition is available at Local government finance statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) with the next update scheduled to be published on 21 June 2022.

The Council Tax Reduction Scheme means that nobody in Scotland has to meet a Council Tax Bill they cannot be expected to afford.

Council Tax is a local tax with responsibility for all elements of administration and collection resting with individual local authorities.

I have been actively engaged and have established constructive relations with our Rail Trade Unions, including ASLEF and note that the formal pay negotiations currently underway are following the agreed industry process between ScotRail Trains Ltd and ASLEF. It is vital that all parties continue to have meaningful discussions that avoid any dispute escalation.

The Bill includes a provision proposing to restrict the permitted days of supply of fireworks to the general public, as well as restrictions the permitted days the general public can use fireworks, to broadly align with what are already considered traditional firework periods when fireworks are used to celebrate certain religious festivals or cultural events. A strong message to come from both the 2019 and 2021 public consultations was that the unpredictable and sporadic use of fireworks was increasingly seen as problematic and disruptive to many people and animals.

The Bill proposes that permitted days of supply to the general public over the bonfire period is restricted from 27 October to 10 November. The proposed period is already a significant reduction from the current selling period at this time of year, which is from 15 October to 10 November. Following careful consideration and taking into account the feedback received on Bill proposals through the 2021 public consultation and engagement with stakeholders, the Scottish Government believes that the proposed period of supply is a proportionate balance between enabling the use of fireworks over traditional firework periods while allowing those impacted by fireworks to be aware of when they are likely to be used and put appropriate safeguards in place to minimise that impact.

While there are no current plans to reduce the days of supply further the effectiveness of the measures introduced will be monitored following implementation, and the Bill includes a regulation making power that can be utilised to amend the permitted days should evidence show that this is required.

Concerns about the impact of fireworks on animals has been a strong theme to emerge from both the 2019 and 2021 public consultations on fireworks, and I am grateful to the Dogs Trust, and other animal charities, for their continued engagement throughout our journey with fireworks.

All of the measures within the Bill, including the licensing system, have been developed following a significant programme of consultation, engagement and evidence gathering. This includes the work of the independent advisory Firework Review Group, who considered all of the evidence available and took an options appraisal approach to make a series of recommendations for change to the Scottish Government. The licensing system implements the Group’s recommendation that mandatory conditions should be introduced at the point of sale of fireworks to ensure that the purchase and use of fireworks is a well thought out and planned transaction.

The licensing system has been carefully developed to ensure that robust checks and balances are in place before a member of the public can purchase and use fireworks. This includes a mandatory requirement to successfully complete a training course, which will inform applicants of how to use fireworks in a safe and lawful manner, as well as understanding the impact that fireworks can have on others, including animals.

It is considered that the licensing system strikes the balance between introducing proportionate measures without placing overly restrictive barriers on the legitimate use of fireworks by members of the public, and there are no current plans to require licence holders to record on the relevant local authority website any display that they intend to hold.

Fireworks can currently be used by the general public on any day of the year, subject to existing rules about the time of day that they can be used. The Bill includes a provision proposing to restrict the permitted days of use of fireworks by the general public, as well as restrictions on the permitted days of supply to the general public, to broadly align with what are already considered traditional firework periods, when fireworks are used to celebrate certain religious festivals or cultural events. A strong message to come from both the 2019 and 2021 public consultations was that the unpredictable and sporadic use of fireworks was increasingly seen as problematic and disruptive to many people and animals.

The Bill proposes that the permitted days of use of fireworks by the general public over the bonfire period is restricted from 27 October to 12 November. This broadly aligns with the proposed permitted days of supply of fireworks to the general public, however it is considered appropriate to include an extra two days where fireworks can be used to mitigate for circumstances such as poor weather conditions. Following careful consideration and taking into account the feedback received on Bill proposals through the 2021 public consultation and engagement with stakeholders, the Scottish Government believes that the proposed period of use is a proportionate balance between enabling the use of fireworks over traditional firework periods while allowing those impacted by fireworks to be aware of when they are likely to be used and put appropriate safeguards in place to minimise that impact.

While there are no current plans to reduce the days of use further the effectiveness of the measures introduced will be monitored following implementation, and the Bill includes a regulation making power that can be utilised to amend the permitted days should evidence show that this is required.

SEPA has an extensive network of rainfall monitoring gauges across the country and the data collected are available at SEPA’s Rainfall data for Scotland website.

Scotland’s National Water Scarcity Plan is available on the SEPA website. This sets out how water resources will be managed prior to, and during, periods of prolonged dry weather.

SEPA has started publishing a weekly Water Scarcity Report for this year as some parts of the country are already experiencing drier than average conditions. The current report can be found on SEPA’s water scarcity page.

The report uses a range of hydrological and meteorological data to set water scarcity levels across the country. The National Water Scarcity Management Plan explains what the different levels mean in terms of communication with licence holders and further regulatory action.

Scottish Water routinely monitors water levels at abstraction points and will contact public to advise them to use less water where there is a risk of a water shortage. Local Authorities are contacting owners and users of Private Water Supplies to remind them to check on their water supplies to ensure that they are resilient to the impacts of a dry summer.