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I am aware of reports about a bus operator deploying drivers to the Commonwealth Games, and my officials have raised this directly with the relevant operator, reminding them of the expectations in our Network Support Grant Plus funding about the service levels they will provide. The operator confirmed that a small number of drivers from Scotland were involved in delivering the services needed for the Commonwealth Games, and mitigations were put in place to ensure the impact on local services was minimised. I can confirm that no buses funded through the Scottish Ultra Low Emission Bus grant were deployed to support the Commonwealth Games. In addition Network Support Grant Plus funding is only provided for services actually run, and payment recovery will take place when the scheme ends for any service kilometres that did not operate.

It is not possible to provide this information due to the complexity of monitoring the number of individual incidents of people accessing drug and alcohol services and relevant spend per individual, across the time period requested.

Data on numbers accessing drug treatment are published in the Scottish Drugs Misuse Database (SDMD) and dates back to 2006-07.

In April 2021 a new Drug and Alcohol Information System (DAISy) went live. This database will provide more detailed information on the numbers accessing treatment. The first report from DAISy will be published in January 2023. This will provide latest data on numbers receiving treatment through drug and alcohol services.

Details on specific funding on treatment is also not available at the national level. Funding provided for Alcohol and Drug Partnerships supports a wide range of activity alongside treatment services including prevention, outreach and harm reduction services. We intend to provide detail of the funding provided to ADPs in the first National Mission annual report which is due later this year.

The full information requested is not held centrally.

However, some information is available at a Scotland level from published results from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS), which includes information on the proportions of time households have been on a housing list, by length of time category, including a split by current housing tenure of the household where sample sizes allow. This will include housing association lists as well as council lists, and include households who are already living in the social rented sector who are looking to transfer to another social rented home, as well as households looking to move into social rented properties from other housing tenures.

The 2020 household survey results are here (Tab 1_66 for length of time on a housing list), with results for earlier years 2016 to 2019 available on the Scottish Household Survey Data Explorer (Table 3.16d). The results on the proportions of time are based on households who have reported being on a housing list (which will include housing association lists as well as council lists), and exclude any households who have reported using choice based lettings where not already on a housing list.

The published Scottish Household Survey results also include information for each year on the total number and percentage of households and adults in Scotland who have reported to be on a housing list. Available figures on the estimated absolute number of households and adults are available for the years 2013 to 2019 on the Annual Report 2019 Excel tables (Tab: Chapter 3 – Housing, tables 3.17 and 3.18), and estimated absolute number of households only for the year 2020 on the Scottish Household Survey 2020 Results Housing Tables (Tab 1.60).

It should be noted that results of the SHS 2020 telephone survey are not directly comparable to SHS results for previous years as COVID restrictions prevented face-to-face interviews, which previous surveys used, and the change of mode could have affected the answers given. More information on this, and other methodological guidance, is available here . In addition, the figures for 2020 as well as earlier years will be subject to survey sampling variation.

Under current constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom immigration, including the Afghan resettlement schemes, is fully reserved to the UK Government and is dealt with by the Home Office.

Funding to local authorities to help them support Afghan refugees is provided by the UK Government, and instructions for this funding are published online: Afghan relocation and assistance: funding instruction - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Housing to 2040 is Scotland’s long-term strategy for housing and is designed to be agile and adaptable to 2040. A governance process has been established to support sector-wide delivery of the strategy, recognising the crucial roles of stakeholders across the housing system and beyond to delivering the Housing to 2040 vision. A Strategic Board will give strategic oversight, provide accountability on progress and support the government as we develop an appropriate monitoring framework for the strategy.

The Scottish Government has invested over £50m in developing the ChargePlace Scotland Network. We are now working with the private sector to invest a further £60m in coming years. Through our investments, electric vehicle owners in the South of Scotland have access to 590 public charge points, and this number is set to grow significantly through a combination of public and private investment. In the year ahead, the Scottish Government is directly supporting the installation of a further 73 charge points, as set out in the following table.

The Galloway Fisheries Trust, along with other fishery and river trusts, fishery boards and angling associations, play an important role in helping Scotland meet its nature recovery ambitions. The Trust was successful in securing £100,000 through the Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) this year, to undertake a project on invasive species control and knowledge across nine river catchments in the Solway. This work builds on their previous NRF projects, which improved the climate resilience of local water courses and contributed to peatland restoration.

Through NRF funding, we continue to support fishery management organisations across Scotland in undertaking a range of projects that aim to address biodiversity loss.

The Scottish Government is committed to continue working closely with local authorities in tackling the global climate emergency. Local authorities are independent corporate bodies with their own powers and responsibilities and are entirely separate from the Scottish Government. As long as they act lawfully, it is up to each local authority how it manages its day-to-day business and decision making processes. This includes decision making around which carbon accounting tools to use.

The award of public contracts is regulated by law. Any future awarding of Scottish Government contracts for carbon accounting tools would be subject to open and genuine competition, including adequate publication of the contract opportunity, in line with the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015.

The decision to bring ScotRail under public control avoided the need to run an expensive and inappropriate rail franchising competition. Though widely acknowledged as a failed model, franchise competitions remain the preferred approach in current UK Legislation. Such exercises typically cost in excess of £10m for franchising authorities, as well as the similarly significant costs of each bidder.

As confirmed during my Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee appearance on 15 March 2022, prior to that date, since the decision to proceed with the “Operator of Last Resort” (OLR) option was taken in March 2021, £3.6 million had been spent on the OLR activity.

Final reconciliation figures confirm that £5.5 million has been spent in total on OLR activity, and ScotRail Trains Ltd. was mobilised successfully on 1 April. I am confident you will notice the saving this achieved when compared with a franchising competition.