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The Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 places the statutory responsibility for local roads with the local road authorities, including parking on local roads. They also have a duty under the Disabled Persons' Parking Places (Scotland) Act 2009, in particular circumstances, to exercise their power to make it an offence to park in a disabled parking place without displaying a blue badge.

Enforcement of these spaces is therefore the responsibility of traffic wardens, local authority parking attendants, civil enforcement officers and Police officers.

However, as part of the implementation of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 parking provisions, we will be undertaking a publicity campaign to highlight inconsiderate parking including the misuse of disabled parking bays.

Lockerbie railway station is serviced by Avanti West Coast and Transpennine Express, known as cross-border rail operators. These operators are managed by the Department for Transport.

Transport Scotland officials have frequent meetings with all cross-border rail operators to discuss Covid related issues and service delivery. We are aware of the issues that Transpennine Express face in delivering a reliable service at Lockerbie due to Covid and industrial action but continue to press for improvements to performance.

We welcome their intention to increase services in May 2022 and the arrangement reached by Transpennine Express for Avanti West Coast to make special stops, where possible, at Lockerbie in the event that Transpennine Express is unable to call.

The Scottish Government is not aware of reports that Greenbelt is selling off its land. Scottish Ministers have no powers to intervene to stop individuals or companies from selling land in private ownership.

We have put in place a process for individuals who have received their coronavirus vaccinations outwith Scotland which allows them to upload official proof of vaccination from an approved country to their Scottish Vaccination Record through NHS Inform . This will allow those who have been vaccinated within the UK or internationally to receive a combined fully vaccinated status to show for travel and domestic purposes. We are working to increase the number of countries that this applies to.

We have committed to a significant programme of investment an expansion in universal school meal provision, this programme will see universal free school lunches being made available for all children in primary and special schools during school term-time during the course of this parliamentary term.

As a part of this workstream, we have also committed to piloting approaches to the provision of free school meals in secondary schools during the course of this parliamentary term. We will provide updates on the progress of delivery around our work to establish pilots of universal free school meal provision in secondary schools as this progresses.

On 23 December 2021 we published a report on implementation of the actions set out in the Tackling Prejudice and Building Connected Communities Action Plan (2017). The report shows encouraging progress made in a number of key areas including raising awareness of hate crime and encouraging reporting.

Building on this progress we will publish a new hate crime strategy later this year. Development of a strategy of this nature will engender consideration of and engagement on a number of relevant initiatives to tackle hate crime and prejudice – including Islamophobia – in Scotland. It will therefore also naturally allow for further consideration of the need for the Scottish Government to adopt a formal definition of Islamophobia, such as the definition advanced by the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims.

On 23 December 2021 we published a report on implementation of the actions set out in the Tackling Prejudice and Building Connected Communities Action Plan (2017). The report shows encouraging progress has been made towards tackling hate crime in Scotland, with successful delivery of the vast majority of actions in the 2017 Action Plan.

Publication of this report allows the Scottish Government and partners to take stock of and refresh approaches to tackling hate crime. As such, and building on progress in this area, we will work with key delivery partners to develop a new hate crime strategy, for publication later this year. The new strategy will help guide how we tackle hatred and prejudice – including Islamophobia – in Scotland and will also support implementation of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.

We are in the process of convening a strategic partnership group to provide a robust, multi-agency approach to development of the new hate crime strategy. Consideration is also being given to other necessary engagements that will allow for a range of voices to shape the strategy as it develops. We would therefore like to reiterate our previous commitment to working collaboratively on Islamophobia, including on the range of issues highlighted within the report of the public inquiry into Islamophobia in Scotland.

Our records show that 178 properties have been purchased with golden share and 171 properties retain golden share through the Open Market Shared Equity scheme.

Water charges remain linked to the council tax banding of the house occupied. Higher banded houses are usually expected to be occupied by higher income households and so linking water charges to council tax band will frequently reflect ability to pay. But, importantly, the linkage to Council Tax also means that discounts and exemptions which apply to Council Tax are also available for water and sewerage charges. The present range of discounts is worth over £150m per year and helps to reflect an individual’s circumstances and ensure ability to pay.

The following table shows how many devices have been distributed by councils to school aged children using the £25m digital inclusion funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21.

Local authorities across Scotland have a range of approaches to provision of technology in schools, including some councils who have undertaken to provide cohorts of their school population with devices using their own budgets. We do not hold information centrally on those approaches, therefore, the table only shows devices distributed through the funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21.

The Scottish Government are committed to providing a device for every school aged child by the end of this Parliament.