Seòmar agus comataidhean

There is no licensing scheme regulating the shooting of woodcock in Scotland. Resident and migratory woodcock can only be shot during the open season, which is between 1 September and 31 January, as set out in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Outwith these dates, woodcock cannot be taken or killed.

The Learning Estate Investment Programme’s (LEIP) outcomes Governance Board, which is co-chaired by Scottish Government and COSLA, scrutinises all aspects of the LEIP on an ongoing basis.

The LEIP has undergone a Gateway Review Strategic Assessment, the recommendations of which have been implemented across the LEIP. A further Gateway Review will commence this month.

Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) provides expertise, for example, in programme and data management, schools design, as well as commercial and financial modelling, and the Scottish Government engages regularly with SFT on ongoing management of the LEIP. SFT also managed the previous Scotland’s Schools for the Future Programme which saw the construction of 117 new or refurbished schools and benefited over 60,000 pupils across the country.

The Scottish Government understands concerns over the decline of European woodcock populations. At present, all woodcock in Scotland are classed as a quarry species and as such are listed on Schedule 2 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which determines the species that can be killed or taken.

As set out in my response to PQ S6W-14320, NatureScot are currently carrying out a review of Schedule 2 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Once the review has been completed, they will provide a report to the Scottish Government for Ministers to consider whether any changes to the Schedule are required.

Today the Career Review Programme Board, chaired by Grahame Smith, have published the Career Review: Final Report, titled 'Skills and experiences to grow and succeed in a rapidly changing world' . This report concludes a comprehensive review of Scotland's career services and provides detail on how the ten recommendations that the Scottish Government accepted in February 2022 will be taken forward.

The report is available at www.careerreview.scot

The independent review of the role of incineration in the waste hierarchy recommended that in view of the upcoming ban on landfilling biodegradable municipal waste, Scottish Government should work with local authorities to ensure they have a solution to manage their residual waste in 2025. The ban is in line with Committee on Climate Change recommendations and will come into force on 31 December 2025.

Through work overseen by a dedicated Programme Board (which includes representation from Cosla, SOLACE, SEPA and Zero Waste Scotland), we are continuing to support local authorities to collaboratively secure landfill ban compliant residual waste treatment options. We are doing this by facilitating collaborative procurement and funding provision of additional technical, procurement and legal support.

We will continue to work closely with local authorities and commercial operators to support those that do not currently have solutions to treat their residual waste ahead of the forthcoming ban.

I appreciate the disappointment the Glasgow City Region will be experiencing following the UK Government’s decision not to support their bids for Levelling Up funding.

Any borrowing by local authorities, whether it’s through the public works loans board or through the issuance of bonds, is for local authorities to determine affordability themselves, subject to the conditions of their prudential borrowing regime.

However, any decisions to permit local authorities to issue bonds would require Ministerial consent. Ambitious investment strategies have led to financial insolvency in certain English local authorities and therefore this would require very careful consideration. My officials would be happy to discuss proposals with Glasgow City Council.

We do not have plans to introduce legislation to establish an Older People’s Commissioner. There are existing commissions that protect the rights of older people. The Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) and the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) already play a role in relation to the rights of older people in respect of age as a protected equality characteristic. In addition, we continue to work closely with the Older People’s Strategic Action Forum on a range of priorities for advancing age equality.

We are committed to promoting the rights of older people and ensuring that they benefit from all that we are doing to improve people’s lives. That is why we provide over £2.2million to support older people's organisations to tackle inequality and discrimination and support our aim to promote the rights of older people.

The Scottish Government does not collect data on local authority expenditure for the provision of emergency accommodation to households experiencing homelessness. This information would need to be requested from each local authority directly.

The majority of homelessness funding since 1999 has been provided to local authorities through the annual local government finance settlement, which is £13.2 billion in 2023-24. Each local authority is responsible for managing and administering their own budget on the basis of local needs and priorities, and have discretion as to how they use this resource to prevent and respond to homelessness, including providing emergency accommodation. This has been supplemented in recent years by £5.5 million from the Scottish Government’s health and housing budgets for the Housing First pathfinder and identifiable resource as follows:

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. Licensing schemes are administered by licensing authorities. The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022 came into force on 1 March 2022, and required licensing authorities to establish schemes in their areas by 1 October 2022.

The Scottish Government welcomed Audit Scotland’s report, which provided useful lessons which we are already implementing through successor schemes to the NPD and hub models which the report considered. These schemes allowed us to deliver much needed new schools, new NHS facilities, new colleges and other key infrastructure that would otherwise not have been possible. They also provided a significant boost to the Scottish economy at a time of constrained private sector investment.

The eleven main recommendations in the Audit Scotland report are in included within the following tables along with accompanying Scottish Government comments.

The Scottish Government should: