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Until the Land Management Planning process and associated consultation has been completed there is no certainty over the level or nature of new planting at Glenprosen and therefore any costings would be speculative.

Decisions on how the £5 million of loss and damage funding will be allocated are yet to be taken. Decisions will be made on the recommendation of needs assessments and undertaken in consultation with stakeholders and communities. These funds are in addition to the £2 million we announced last year, of which £1.7 million is already on the ground. Funds to date have been allocated through participatory mechanisms with those communities most impacted as well as to funding research on needs assessments and case studies.

In advance of the emergency legislation we set up a working group with social landlords to help assess the options for rents beyond 31 March and to understand and gather evidence on the impact of the rent cap measures for tenants and the implications for landlord service delivery, business and investment plans. That work is continuing and will inform the first review of the legislation, due to be completed by 14 January 2023. During the passage of the Bill we further committed to giving clarity and certainty to social landlords on rent-setting no later than by the 14 January review point, and to considering all options to keep rents affordable for tenants.

Social landlords have already made substantial investment in energy efficiency to remove poor energy efficiency as a driver for fuel poverty and contribute to achieving the Scottish Government’s ambitious climate change emissions reductions targets. The independent Scottish Housing Regulator reports that 88% of social homes already meet the first milestone of the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH). We are working with landlords to review future EESSH milestones to ensure that they are aligned with climate change targets.

The Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund, which launched in August 2020, has been designed to accelerate the delivery of energy efficiency measures and zero emissions heating systems in social housing across Scotland. It will make at least £200 million available to registered social landlords until 2026.

Acknowledging that the public sector alone cannot bear the long-term cost of converting homes, the Green Heat Finance Taskforce has been established to assess and recommend ways the public sector, communities and private finance can collaborate to scale up investment. A dedicated sub-group has been established to consider the best routes to financing and funding the retrofit of the existing social housing stock.

It is not the case that the Government plans to remove the need to install solar PV systems on new properties since no such requirement exists. The focus of the New Build Heat Standard is on heating systems which produce direct greenhouse gas emissions at the point of use.

The Scottish Government’s recent consultation set out our intention to prohibit direct emissions heating systems in new buildings from April 2024.

It is our intention for the NBHS to remain technology neutral. Those technologies which do not emit greenhouse gases and can be used as part of a heating system will continue to be permitted. This includes, for example, heat pumps as well as energy generation such as solar PV.

The Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport met with Solar Energy Scotland (SES) in February, with the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth meeting with them in May and myself in September. In addition to ministerial meetings, officials in energy and planning meet with SES and other industry participants regularly. During these ministerial and official meetings a number of points relating to solar have been discussed, including permitted development rights.

The Iterative Plan Review Process (IPR) is ongoing and officials have completed an initial review of the assessments conducted for the Sectoral Marine Plan for Offshore Wind Energy (SMP-OWE) adopted in 2020. This initial review identified which aspects of the assessments are likely to be affected by the ScotWind and clearing process results. The full review is estimated to take around 12 months and a final programme for the review process will be fixed in the coming weeks, taking into account the findings of the initial review. Officials at Marine Scotland Directorate will hold a series of stakeholder engagement events and statutory consultation as part of the re-assessment process.

Marine litter is a global problem, and we know that more needs to be done. The Scottish Government thanks the Marine Conservation Society and their volunteers for their considerable efforts in gathering this data and also removing beach litter during the Great British Beach Clean in September. Their citizen science is vital in helping us prioritise future policy and legislation development.

We published our refreshed Marine Litter Strategy in September which contains an action plan to reduce the most common forms of litter and support the removal of debris that is already there. The Strategy covers a wide range of litter sources from large items such as fishing gear, to microplastics in the form of nurdles.

Our new actions build on multiple measures introduced to reduce plastic waste and pollution, such as: our bans on single-use plastic products including cotton buds, straws, cutlery, plates, drinks stirrers, balloon sticks, and food and drink containers made of expanded polystyrene; and on planned work such as a deposit return scheme for drinks containers, to be introduced next year.

The information asked for is not fully available at this time. The Scottish Government intends to issue a proactive release on its attendance and expenses incurred.

The Scottish Government remains committed to the north and north east of Scotland. This includes taking forward an enhancements programme on the A96 corridor that improves connectivity between surrounding towns, tackles congestion and addresses safety and environmental issues.

The current plan is to fully dual the A96 route between Inverness and Aberdeen; however, we are conducting a transparent, evidence-based review of the programme which is well underway. The recent public consultation received an unprecedented level of engagement with nearly 4,600 responses, generating more than 11,000 suggestions and potential opportunities for the route. Rightly, it has taken more time than originally anticipated to consider and to appraise all of those options, however, the report on the Public Consultation and the Initial Appraisal: The Case for Change will be published by the end of the year. This is a sensible good governance for major investment of this kind.

As with all devolved matters, the Scottish Ministers make the final decision on investment in the transport network.