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Scottish Government officials have periodically met with heating oil distribution companies to discuss winter fuel resilience issues and ministers have been informed of the planned arrangements.

The Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism is scheduled to meet three oil distribution companies on 9 December 2011.

The Scottish Government has gone beyond the minimum requirements of the Energy Performance of Buildings (Scotland) Regulations 2008 and has produced Energy Performance Certificates for 18 of the larger buildings on its core estate. These 18 buildings represent 71% of the total floor space occupied by the Scottish Government. The ratings generated are:

Panels for solar water heating are currently installed at three buildings where the Scottish Government is the sole or major occupier. These buildings are:

the Ellis Building, Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen;

Saughton House, Broomhouse Drive, Edinburgh, and

Tweedbank, Cotgreen Road, Galashiels.

There are 66 buildings where the Scottish Government is the sole or major occupier of which these three buildings represent 4.5%.

We will continue to keep under review opportunities for further use of micro generation technologies where environmental and cost benefits would result.

Information relating to micro generation technologies installed at buildings occupied by agencies is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information so we requested it from Energy Saving Trust, the Package Administrator. From their management information up to end of March 2011, the following households received advice: (a) 2,922 households with LPG heating systems and (b) 19,644 households with oil heating systems.

The Scottish Government does not have any direct partnerships with individual universities outside of the UK for the provision of foreign language assistants. The British Council, under long standing agreements between the UK and other countries, runs the foreign language assistant programmes covering 15 countries. The council works with all of Scotland’s universities and with partner agencies overseas which provide the link to universities in each country.

This is a matter for local authorities, who are responsible for the design and delivery of Universal Home Insulation Scheme programmes. The information requested is not held centrally.

The Energy Assistance Package (EAP) is the Scottish Government’s main vehicle to provide support for people in energy inefficient and hard to heat homes. In particular EAP Stage 4 offers innovative technologies such as air source heat pumps as well as traditional heating and insulation measures to help fuel poor households in off gas grid areas. A maximum grant limit of £6,500 has been introduced for individual installations where the lower grant cap of £4,000 cannot raise the Standard Assessment Procedure rating sufficiently.

Scottish Government funds British Council Scotland (BCS) to run the English Language Assistants programme under which nearly 400 Scottish students are placed in 15 countries around the world. BCS works with all of Scotland’s universities and provides on-going support to students before, during and after their time abroad. Full information on the languages assistants programmes can be found at:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/languageassistants.htm.

Scottish Ministers welcome the contribution that foreign language assistants (FLAs) make to language learning and teaching in Scottish schools. Scottish Government funds British Council Scotland to run the FLA programme in Scotland and we are working closely with the council to highlight to local authorities the added value that FLAs offer to language provision in schools.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-04113 on 30 November 2011. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.