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The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022 came into force on 1 March 2022. Licensing authorities have until 1 October to open schemes in their areas to receive applications from new and existing hosts. We published updated guidance for licensing authorities on 18 March, and we will continue to work closely with them in the run up to schemes opening.

Licensing authorities must determine their own fees and fee structures to recover establishment and running costs specific to their area. Licensing authorities must review their fees from time to time to ensure that revenue from fees remains in line with the running costs of the licensing scheme.

All farmed fish, including cleaner fish, are protected by the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006, which places a duty on fish farms to ensure their needs are met. Fish farms must keep mortality and veterinary records by law and these are inspected by the Scottish Government’s Fish Health Inspectorate. Significant cases of poor welfare observed during inspection are reported to the Animal and Plant Health Agency.

The Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC), receives public funding and supports research on the health and welfare of cleaner fish, and how their natural environment and behaviours can be encouraged on fish farms.

The Farmed Fish Health Framework Steering Group, which includes fish vets, regulators, the sector, and Scottish Government and which is chaired by the Scottish Government Chief Veterinary Officer, provides the appropriate forum within which future policy relating to the health and welfare of farmed fish will be developed.

Licensing authorities will recover the costs of establishing and running the licensing scheme in their area through licence fees.

In September 2021 Defra announced plans to facilitate gene editing (GE) in plants for research trials, and after that to review the regulatory definitions in England of a genetically modified organism (GMO) to exclude organisms produced by gene editing and other genetic technologies if they could have been developed by traditional breeding. This was despite the majority of respondents to a public consultation on genetic technologies in England rejecting this proposal. In March 2022, the Statutory Instrument to facilitate gene editing for research trials passed and Defra is now preparing primary powers to change the GMO definition.

While we are keeping abreast of both scientific and judicial reasoning on the decoupling of products of novel genomic techniques, such as gene editing, from GMOs, the definition of a GMO has not changed in Scotland. Gene edited organisms are legally considered GMOs.

Should the EU move to change its regulatory framework, as in other matters, we will consider the implications for Scotland as details become available. The Scottish Government is committed to maintaining alignment with EU laws and standards, supported in part by powers in the Continuity Act that ensure Scottish Ministers can make secondary legislation to achieve this. This means that we will continue to align with the EU where appropriate and in Scotland’s interest, including the protection and advancement of the high environmental standards that both Scotland and the EU enjoy.

Scotland’s climate targets are, rightly, highly ambitious and agriculture has a key role to play in meeting Scotland’s net-zero target for carbon emissions by 2045. The Climate Change Plan Update (CCPu) sets out a detailed, clear and credible pathway to meeting emissions targets over the period to 2032.

SEPA conducts assessments of Invasive Non Native Species (INNS) that affect the aquatic environment through River Basin Management Planning (RBMP) status assessments and routine impact monitoring, carried out as a subset of the wider condition assessment. The location of INNS (riparian plants) is mapped during morphology surveys and data is also collated from verified external datasets such as the National Biodiversity Network (including records submitted via Scotland’s Environment Website).

As directed by the Scottish Government, SEPA’s INNS assessments are currently of those species on the UK Technical Advisory Group (UKTAG) high impact list. At Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) and other designated sites NatureScot undertakes INNS assessments (including non-aquatic species) through their routine condition assessments.

The Scottish Government has embraced the Community Wealth Building (CWB) approach to economic development as it is geared to helping local businesses and communities own a greater stake in how their local economy functions. The CWB model involves local authorities and their community planning partners ensuring that collective investment decisions focus on how local economies can be helped to grow and flourish. Practical benefits can include more local, good quality jobs; improved access to public contracts for local businesses; more land being placed in community ownership or developed for the benefit of the community; and support being offered to new businesses exploring employee ownership or other innovative models.

We are working with local authorities to help them frame strategic CWB action plans and have committed to introducing CWB legislation during this session of the Scottish Parliament. Our objective is to embed the CWB approach as a strategic economic development policy. Many actions taken across the policy spectrum will contribute to CWB and creation of a national economy striving for prosperity and societal wellbeing in equal measure. Community access to allotments can play a part in this collective effort.

Allotments and their provision are the responsibility of local authorities. That is set out in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. However, since 2012, the Scottish Government has allocated more than £1.4 million to directly support and increase the land that is available for community growing.

We are aware of the EU’s policy initiative to propose a new legal framework for plants obtained by targeted mutagenesis and cisgenesis and for their food and feed products.

Should the EU move to change its regulatory framework, we will consider the implications for Scotland as details become available.

There is no single definition of a GMO for the agricultural context. Different definitions for GMOs exist in different regulatory regimes, including:

• in relation to deliberate release: section 106 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990,
• in relation to contained use: regulation 2 of the Genetically Modified Organisms (Contained Use) Regulations 2014,
• in relation to food and feed: article 2 of the retained EU Regulation (EC) 1829/2003.

While there is no legal definition of gene editing in Scotland, we recognise that gene editing is typically used to refer to a precise and targeted form of genetic modification. Gene edited organisms are legally considered GMOs.

We announced the new capital budget of £11.7 million for coastal change adaptation in the 2020 Programme for Government. Scottish Ministers and COSLA agreed a methodology to distribute the new budget to coastal local authorities based on evidence from Dynamic Coast which identifies assets most at risk from erosion ( https://www.dynamiccoast.com/ ). The budget covers the four-year period from 2022-23 until 2025-26, split as follows:

2022-23 - £1.6 million

2023-24 - £2.6 million

2024-25 - £2.7 million

2025-26 - £5.0 million

Total - £11.7 million

The distribution for 2022-23 and intended distribution for 2023-24 are as follows: