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In the last 5 years, from January 2020 – January 2025, 144 jars of honey have been received and sold in the Parliament shop, each weighing 227g. The shop was completely closed from March 2020 – April 2022 and no honey was received or sold in that period. No honey was received in 2023.

The beeswax isn’t harvested by the Parliament, it remains the property of our beekeepers, and therefore, we do not have the cost information.  The beeswax is harvested by the beekeepers who provide the wax for the Great Seal of Scotland under a separate contract.

In line with data protection legislation the personal data processed by the SPCB is minimised to only that which is necessary, and there is no business reason to hold spousal information of those who work for MSPs in an unpaid capacity.  The average annual licencing cost to provide email and productivity applications to Parliament network users is approximately £280 per user.

The general maintenance of hand driers is included within the Building Maintenance Contract and the only spend is on replacement parts or replacement hand driers if they fail. Below is spend for last 3 financial years and note on current year.

·        21/22 – No Spend

·        22/23 – No Spend

·        23/24 – £1560.87 – Spend is on parts & machines only as labour is included within planned maintenance.

·        24/25 – No spend to date.

Developing a National Flood Advisory Service to improve Scotland’s flood resilience and embed best practice on a nationwide scale is one of the actions in Scotland’s first National Flood Resilience Strategy. The Service will provide support and advice on building flood resilience to delivery partners and communities and provide the governance framework for progressing high value flood actions such as flood protection schemes.

The implementation plan for the Strategy will focus on the six priority action areas, starting with the establishment of the Flood Advisory Service. That plan will be developed with partners over the coming months.

In addition to existing Scottish Government funding commitments to support Local Authorities with flood resilience, £15 million has been provided in the draft 2025-2026 Scottish Budget to support the delivery of the Strategy’s actions, wider flooding resilience and coastal adaptation work.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-32614 on 14 January 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

In 2024, the Scottish Government France Office continued to take forward the objectives of the Scottish Government’s International Strategy [Scotland's International Strategy - gov.scot] in bringing benefits to Scotland under our key themes of Economy, Trade and Investment; Climate Change, Biodiversity and Renewable Energy; and Reputation, Influence and Relationships.

Some examples from 2024 include:

To support Economy, Trade and Investment, the Scottish Government and SDI France jointly organised a Saint Andrew’s Day showcase event at the British Embassy and supported a Ministerial-led delegation of Scottish meat producers led by Quality Meat Scotland at the Salon International de l’Agroalimentaire to showcase Scottish products.

To support Climate Change, Biodiversity and Renewable Energy, we continued to engage with French partners to promote green energy including at the Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Conference (FOWT) in Marseille, with a range of potential investors in the offshore wind sector in Paris and with a delegation of Scottish companies at Hyvolution.

To support Reputation, Influence and Relationships, we continued to work with the Brittany Region with our MoU, with UK delegations of multilateral organisations (UNESCO and OECD), and numerous Scottish diaspora organisations (under our Scottish Connections Framework). We also supported a range of cultural events such as the Interceltique Festival in Lorient, and worked with the UK Embassy on remembrance events and ceremonies.

Examples of our international network’s work from last business year can be found here: International network: annual report 2023-2024 - gov.scot

The Rail Cluster Builder is a specific example of Scottish Government supporting manufacturers to develop decarbonisation technologies. Funded by Scottish Enterprise, Transport Scotland and Skills Development Scotland, the Rail Cluster Builder Phase 2 is a three-year project building on the momentum of Phase 1, giving opportunities for Scottish SMEs to bring new ideas, new thinking and learning from other industries across Scotland into the railway sector and helping to create innovative, green solutions that will support our net zero targets.

A key element of Phase 2 is ensuring that businesses have access to support to address the skills related challenges faced by organisations in the rail sector. Skills Development Scotland provide support to companies to identify their skills needs and how to develop their existing workforce in order to build capacity, grasp opportunities and increase competitiveness.

The Scottish Government international network offices complement the work of trade specialists in Scottish Development International (SDI) in supporting Scotland’s export industries, as well as working alongside UK officials in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Business and Trade. This includes supporting introductions to market opportunities through trade missions and exhibitions, advising on and addressing market access barriers including regulatory issues, and undertaking government-to-government and government-to-business engagement to promote Scotland’s interests. This economic diplomacy activity contributes to Scotland’s export performance measured quantitatively in figures produced by SDI. The Scottish Government’s annual report on the international network supplements this with qualitative reporting on the contribution made by these teams to delivering priorities identified in Scotland’s International Strategy.

Our fourth National Planning Framework (NEF) is a long-term plan looking to 2045 that guides spatial development, sets out national planning policies, designates national developments and highlights regional spatial priorities.

Planning authorities are preparing new local development plans, which will be to take forward NPF4 in a way which responds to local challenges and opportunities. NPF4 Policy 22, flood risk and water management, sets out the need to strengthen resilience to flood risk by promoting avoidance as a first principle and reducing the vulnerability of existing and future development to flooding. NPF4 Policy 22 exception iv states that redevelopment of previously used sites in built up areas will only be supported where the LDP has identified a need to bring these into positive use and where proposals demonstrate that long-term safety and resilience can be secured in accordance with relevant SEPA advice.