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The working group does not, in general, create new material separate from that created to organise the meetings such as agendas and meeting notes, which are now subject to publication. The Chair will take a view on proactive publication of any new material in line with FOI principles and the need to respect the confidentiality of blocks engaged in the Pilot.

We have received eight pre-final reports.

As all the Railcards listed are GB wide national rail products and not ScotRail products, neither the Scottish Government or ScotRail holds information on how many people make use of the cards listed.

The member may wish to contact the Rail Delivery Group for information on the number of cardholders.

Whilst the Scottish Government funds the delivery of homes in rural areas to support local authorities’ Local Housing Strategies , rural investment has only been reported on since 2015-16. Data has therefore been provided for housing investment in rural areas from that year onwards in the following table. Individual project spend can be spread over a number of years and we do not collate information by year to show the size of project that spend is associated with. The average size of rural housing development approved across Scotland during this period was 15 homes.

The Single Building Assessment takes a holistic approach of assessing buildings. Following professional advice from fire engineers, splitting the process would not fulfil the critical life safety requirements of the Single Building Assessment.

Consideration for temporary releases will be undertaken by a multi-disciplinary Risk Management Team consisting of appropriate officials from SPS, Justice Social Work and key stakeholders. Temporary release and home leave form part of a phased reintegration programme which provides an opportunity to work towards safe re-integration, using a robustly risk assessed process, involving multiple key stakeholders.

Decisions as to whether or not to recommend a life sentenced prisoner for temporary release are informed by a range of assessments, including risk of serious harm assessments, where required. The risk of serious harm assessment examines the risk of serious harm that the individual would present in the community. It does not, in itself, recommend whether they should be released.

Decisions as to whether to release a life sentenced prisoner on parole are a matter for the independent Parole Board for Scotland. The Parole Board may take into account any matter which it considers to be relevant in their decision making process.

Table 1 shows the number of patients under the age of 16 with a recorded diagnosis of tooth decay who were admitted to hospital for a tooth extraction in (a) 2012 (b) 2016 and (c) 2021, in NHS (i) Ayrshire and Arran, and (ii) Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Table 1:

  Source: SMR01, Public Health Scotland, extract: November 2022.

My condolences go to any families who have lost loved ones through drink-driving. The Scottish Government takes this issue very seriously and any road death, no matter what the cause, is tragic.

The Scottish Government is committed to achieving safer road travel in Scotland. Scotland’s Road Safety Framework to 2030, launched in February 2021, sets out a compelling long-term vision for road safety, Vision Zero, where there are zero fatalities and injuries on Scotland’s roads by 2050. The journey to achieving this vision also includes ambitious interim targets where the number of people killed or seriously injured on our roads will be halved by 2030.

On drink driving, through Road Safety Scotland, we have campaigned on this issue for many years. These campaigns have been developed and delivered with our partners in Police Scotland to ensure that our innovative media campaigns align with Police targeted enforcement campaigns.

In 2014, this Government introduced the lowest drink-drive limit in the UK. Working closely with Police Scotland and Transport Scotland, we will continue to support the use of police enforcement initiatives and awareness-raising campaigns to help eradicate drink-driving in Scotland.

The Residential Property Developer Tax is a tax on corporate profits levied on certain companies operating across the UK primarily in the domestic construction sector. This is a reserved tax and Scottish Government has no power to introduce the same.

The Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill is concerned with the use of dogs to hunt wild mammals. The Bill does not differentiate between breeds of dogs. Field trials which only involve the hunting of birds are not covered by the provisions of this Bill.

For field trials that involve the use of dogs to hunt wild mammals the participants will have to abide by the provisions of the Bill.

These provisions set out that any person who uses a dog to, for example, search for and flush a wild rabbit from cover, may continue to do so provided that the conditions set out in section 6(2) of the Bill are met, including:

• The activity does not involve the use of more than two dogs
• Any dog used in the activity is under control
• Reasonable steps are taken to ensure that any dog used in the activity does not join with others to form a pack of more than two dogs