Seòmar agus comataidhean

I reaffirm the answer to S6W-06416 on 25 February 2022, and in my letter of 6 May to you as convener of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport committee about the National Public Energy Agency. Specifically, that we will work to have a virtual Agency established this year, which will be in place throughout the transition period until a standalone Agency is in place. I indicated that an independent Strategic Board will be established to work in partnership with the Scottish Government to help us with this work.

I will announce details of the board members shortly, along with an update on the virtual Agency.

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

‘Care co-ordinator’ is a recognised term used in NHS England for staff who coordinate care in Primary Care Networks. These networks bring together GP practices to mutually employ staff. They do not exist in Scotland where GP practices are organised into clusters for peer support and health boards directly employ the wider multidisciplinary team. While the term ‘care coordinator’ is sometimes used in Scotland, it is used generically to describe staff co-ordinating care across more than just primary care settings.

As such, the Scottish Government does not hold information centrally on the numbers of full-time equivalents related to this broad range of posts in each territorial NHS Board area.

I understand that the UK Government’s e-scooter trials, which commenced in July 2020, are still ongoing in England. The first phase of analysis of the trials is now complete, and I understand that this will be published in autumn 2022.

Transport Scotland has still not received any data or analysis from the trials in England from the UK Government. My officials will continue to push for sight of this data.

The Scottish Government is currently consulting on its final proposals for the New Build Heat Standard. This consultation will inform the final regulations which are expected to be laid during 2023 before coming into force in April 2024. Alongside those regulations we will publish a Business Regulatory Impact Assessment. This will set out estimated costs and benefits of the approach, including emissions reductions.

The Scottish Government welcomes the publication Making the Switch, prepared by the Energy Transition Institute at Robert Gordon University, with funding from the Scottish Government through the North East Economic Recovery and Skills Fund . It highlights the potential for the North East to become a net zero energy hub that supports workers in existing oil and gas roles into the renewable and low carbon jobs of the future. In the Goldilocks zone, there is synchronous decline in the traditional oil and gas sector and uptick in renewables and low carbon, with workers able to transfer readily between energy sectors.

The Scottish Government is supporting the development of new skills and jobs in the North East through a number of programmes. These include the Energy Transition Zone skills programme which will accelerate the growth of a globally integrated energy cluster, creating 2,500 FTEs in Aberdeen at its peak and catalysing a further 10,000 energy transition related jobs in the region.

The Global Underwater Hub Skills programme, also funded through the Energy Transition Fund, is focussed on the technical skills, management and leadership capabilities required to meet the local and global demands of the growing underwater sectors and changing business environment. Detailed skills mapping will be carried out to highlight gaps in the current industry skills pool and identify areas of shortfall around future, new and growth areas. Strategies to tackle any gaps will be developed in collaboration with Skills Development Scotland (SDS).

The Scottish Government’s Green Jobs Fund is a five-year, capital fund of up to £100 million, which will support businesses and their supply chains to help them better transition to a low carbon economy. Already, more than 57 projects have been approved for funding, with around 3886 FTE jobs to be created and safeguarded.

The Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan is central to realising our ambition to create a future workforce that can support our transition to a net zero economy. It identifies immediate and long term actions needed to ensure our current and future workforce has the skills to support Scotland’s transition to net zero. The Green Jobs Workforce Academy, established to help workers take a green approach to their career, skills and job search, is accessible to all users, enabling a greater understanding of the relevance of their existing skills and signposting to green job opportunities.

Making the Switch also underlines how important carbon capture and storage will be to future-proofing jobs in the North East and why it is essential for the UK Government to support the Scottish Cluster to progress with urgency.

The information that has been requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

Official statistical reports relating to the Scottish Ambulance Service can be found on the following link.

Public Health Scotland

The individual clinical management of patients is a matter for territorial health boards. We do however expect that all patients are treated and cared for in a person centred way. When there are no SIGN guideline in place, NHS Boards and Integration Authorities may choose to consider other relevant guideline such as those of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the planning and delivery of services.

In Scotland we use the Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer, which were revised and published in 2019. These national guidelines are based on clinical evidence and review to help support clinicians across the country to refer those patients who are most likely to have cancer, including myeloma, into diagnostic services swiftly.

The Scottish Government is aware of a backlog affecting a small number of cases with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) while they recover from the effects of the Covid pandemic. The SPSO is a wholly independent office, not subject to the direction or control of the Scottish Government. We are aware however that the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body has agreed to supply of extra resources and recruitment of more staff which is allowing the SPSO to resource their COVID recovery plan. Further details can be found on the SPSO website.

Under the current constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom the application process for all immigration routes is fully reserved to the UK Government and is dealt with by the Home Office.

The following link contains visa data and arrivals for the four nations of the UK, and includes a breakdown of data relating to visas sponsored by the Scottish Government: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ukraine-sponsorship-scheme-visa-data-by-country-upper-and-lower-tier-local-authority. The webpage includes the Devolved Administrations and Local Authorities datasets.

Scottish Government will be publishing a further breakdown of those placed in accommodation in due course.

As set out in our Part II consultation on the New Build Heat Standard (NBHS) ( New build heat standard consultation: part II - Scottish Government - Citizen Space ), the Scottish Government proposes that from 2024, new buildings must use zero direct emissions heating systems of the sort set out at section 2.2.1 of that consultation.

It is our intention for these regulations to be technology-neutral, to ensure developers have flexibility in achieving compliance.

The Scottish Government has previously commissioned research to establish the direct greenhouse gas emissions associated with all readily available low and zero direct emissions heating systems. A copy of this research is available here: Direct greenhouse gas emissions from low and zero carbon heating systems (climatexchange.org.uk)

Our Heat in Buildings Workforce Assessment Project, published in June 2022, provided an analysis of the current scale of the existing workforce in Scotland trained to fit certain zero emission heating systems such as heat pumps. The report highlighted that there are no publicly available statistics regarding the total number of heat pump installers in the UK and Scotland, but estimated that there are around 500 trained heat pump installers currently active in Scotland, based on data from the Microrenewable Certification Scheme. The report highlights that other forms of zero direct emissions heating such as direct electric radiators can be installed by an electrician, without any specialist heating knowledge, and there were an estimated 22,000 electricians operating in Scotland in 2018.

Ultimately, sending employees on training courses to develop new skills is the responsibility of businesses in the supply chain and this will be guided by commercial drivers. However we have sought to support businesses by offering free heat pump training in Scottish colleges through our National Transition Training Fund, with over £470,000 funding to support over 500 college places since 2020. This support combined with our early signal of intent and consultation on the proposed NBHS standard has provided businesses with an opportunity to prepare their workforce for regulation.

There are no specific statutory minimum qualifications required to install zero direct emissions heating systems, however we have worked with industry to define the minimum skillsets and recommended minimum qualifications required to install a full spectrum of zero direct emission heating systems, and have published this as part of an Installer Skill Matrix .

We have worked to integrate this matrix into the certification schemes that underpin quality assurance in any public funded work, and we would encourage the private sector to also use this in any non-public funded works.

To date we have provided £164,700 capital investment in colleges in the North of Scotland for heat pump and thermal insulation training equipment, with further investment in the South of Scotland provided by the Scottish Power Green Economy Fund. According to the Energy Skills Partnership, there are currently 11 colleges in Scotland with capacity to train up to 120 heat pump engineers each month. Three new training facilities will come online later this year, taking capacity to 150 each month. We understand that this provision is capable of meeting existing levels of demand for training in the sector.

We are committed to working with the new build sector to ensure that our investment in skills and training matches the needs of the sector as demand grows in the future.