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Since the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on 11 March 2020, the Scottish Government has not provided any grants or loans to Ineos.

We have an ongoing and unwavering commitment to land reform, and aim to bring forward a new Land Reform Bill by the end of 2023.

We will launch a wide-ranging public consultation later this year on proposals for the Bill. We remain committed to working with all stakeholders, including land owning interests and community representatives, to develop policy and legislative solutions to progress our proposals. We will be engaging widely on the proposals for the Bill, including through further public engagement.

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 people and animals.

The policy objective of the licensing system is that those who are permitted to purchase, possess and use fireworks in Scotland know how to do so in a safe, lawful and considerate manner. The licence is therefore held by an individual and while this means that there could be multiple licence holders living at the same address, it is considered that this strikes the balance between introducing proportionate measures without placing overly restrictive barriers on the legitimate use of fireworks by members of the public.

Through the Scottish Land Fund, the Scottish Government provides ongoing support for communities to become more resilient and sustainable through the ownership and management of land and land assets. The Fund offers grants between £5,000 and £1 million to help communities take ownership of land and buildings and provides practical support to develop their aspirations.

In addition, the £50 million low carbon Vacant & Derelict Land Investment Programme (VDLIP) launched in 2021 will support innovative local approaches to tackling persistent vacant and derelict land and delivering new green infrastructure in support of our ambitions for a just transition to net zero.

With 20 successful projects announced from the first and second rounds of the £50 million low carbon VDLIP, applications are now open for the third round of funding.

It is available on a competitive basis to all Scottish local authorities and Clyde Gateway Urban Regeneration Company who are working with communities and other partners to bring forward suitable project proposals. The VDLIP complements the delivery of Place Based Investment Programme, helping to accelerate our ambitions around place, town centre action, 20 minute neighbourhoods, community regeneration, and community wealth building.

The draft National Planning F ramework 4 consultation closed at the end of March and responses are currently being analysed. It will have the status of development plan for planning decisions once adopted. The draft sets out six spatial principles to build a climate-conscious and nature-positive future. One of those principles is ‘compact growth’, this limits urban expansion where brownfield, vacant and derelict land and buildings can be used more efficiently. This prioritises the re-use of vacant and derelict land and redundant buildings. The draft also sets out that development proposals on greenfield sites should not be supported unless the site has been allocated for development or the proposal is explicitly supported by policies in the development plan, and there are no suitable brownfield alternatives.

The Scottish Government recognises the role that re-introductions of native species can play in nature restoration, but has no current plans to reintroduce lynx or any other large carnivore species into Scotland.

We welcome the publication of the ‘Lynx to Scotland’ report and commend it for its careful and balanced assessment of a complex topic. As the report notes, there are major barriers that would need to be satisfactorily addressed before any such reintroduction could be taken forward. The Scottish Government has always been clear that any reintroduction of a species such as lynx could only take place following full consultation that ensured the views of those who are likely to be most affected are properly taken into account.

It is a criminal offence to release a species such as lynx in Scotland unless the release is licensed by NatureScot.

To date, over £20.3 million has been awarded to 13 local authorities to increase the quantity and quality of recycling in Scotland, marking the beginning of one of the biggest investments in recycling in Scotland in a generation.

Of these awards, £5,267,640 million was allocated in the 2021-22 financial year, with the remainder being phased over subsequent years of the fund, based on the local projects’ spend profiles.

This investment is funding a range of improvements, including more frequent recycling collections, the extension of food and garden waste collections, and boosting Scotland’s capacity to recycle problematic materials, such as plastic films.

This initial investment has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 21,400 tonnes each year - the equivalent of taking 11,400 cars off the road. Further updates regarding new awards will be made in due course.

The Scottish Government intends to commission research into the impacts of Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compound emissions from Scotch whisky maturation later in 2022. Updates on progress will be made available as the work is taken forward.

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.

(a) Psychiatry

Table 1 sets out the number of established training places in each of the various psychiatric specialties. This data reflects trainee establishment levels from August 2016 – August 2022.

The Scottish Government is committed to tackling gender inequality and embedding a human rights approach to tackling child poverty.

Our second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’ , is underpinned by extensive impact assessments – informed by consultation with stakeholders and individuals with direct experience of poverty. This includes an Equality Impact Assessment presenting summary consideration across policies and proposals included with the Plan focusing on how policies may impact, either positively or negatively, on different sections of the population in different ways, through the lens of Protected Characteristics, which includes sex. The above along with our Evidence Review on What Works , Cumulative Impact Assessment , Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment , Fairer Scotland Duty Impact Assessment and Islands Impact Assessment , helped inform development of the Plan and will continue to guide its implementation and delivery.

As set out in ‘ Best Start, Bright Futures ’, we are committed to focusing on the impact of all interventions through the lens of our six priority families and will seek to ensure that systems work for these families in particular. This includes a substantive focus on lone parent households, the majority of whom are headed by women, and mothers under the age 25 both of which are at greatest risk of poverty and encapsulate many of the inequalities affecting women more broadly. This includes barriers relating to entering and sustaining employment, childcare, housing and transport.

Through this focused approach, we will be able to drive down levels of child poverty whilst delivering significant progress on our wider equality and human rights ambitions – particularly in relation to advancing equality and human rights for women, disabled people and minority ethnic people.

We are committed to continue to engage with our partners, including gender representative stakeholders and women with experience of poverty, to ensure an intersectional and gendered approach is embedded in the development, implementation and monitoring of the actions set out in the plan. This includes, for example, establishing a Lived Experience Panel in Summer 2022, with members from each of the six priority family groups, including young mothers and lone parents, to help inform our employability policy.