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The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is a globally respected organisation and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the world’s most comprehensive data resource on the status of species. The List does not however, include all Scottish species and for most of those that are included, assessments are for Great Britain as a whole.

In addition to Red List accounts, NatureScot also considers other factors when providing advice on priority setting, including information on species’ status in Scotland, as well as social and economic factors. This enables the inclusion of species for which there are not yet IUCN assessments available, and allows the Scottish Government to respond to new threats that may not yet be recognised in the Red Lists, which are typically updated every 10 years.

Correspondence from MSPs should routinely be answered by Scottish Government Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers. The Health and Social Care portfolio has experienced a huge and unprecedented increase in correspondence over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has impacted particularly on the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and the Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport. The pandemic saw a 2700% increase in volume of correspondence for these portfolios and the two portfolios combined currently deal with 49% of all correspondence across the Scottish Government.

To enable MSPs to receive timely responses in these exceptional circumstances, much of the correspondence previously signed by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport is being reviewed on their behalf by Scottish Government Deputy Directors. This arrangement is under continuous review and Ministerial Responses will resume as soon as volume and circumstances allow. The Scottish Government will keep MSPs informed of any further changes to this process.

The Scottish Government aim to respond to all ministerial correspondence within 20 working days. Correspondence from MSPs to Scottish Ministers is routinely answered by a Cabinet Secretary or Minister.

We have reviewed the border health measures closely over the last 28 days and have assessed that there continues to be a requirement for the regulations to remain in place to reduce the risk of imported transmission and safeguard public health in Scotland. The regulations continue to be an important and proportionate part of the Scottish Government response to managing the pandemic. As we have done throughout the pandemic, we will continue discussions with UK Government and the other devolved administrations and continue to seek to take a four-nations approach to future changes to regulations and the travel regime.

There is no formal right to request an appeal under the Rural Payments (Appeals) (Scotland) Regulation 2015 as these do not apply to the rejection of an application for a contract. If applicants query the reason for the rejection of an application then local staff will consider this informally but numbers of these are not recorded. The number of applications recorded as rejected in each Scheme year for the Crofting Agricultural Grant Scheme is provided in the following table for information.

The National Care Home Contract is negotiated annually between Scotland Excel, COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities), Scottish Care and CCPS (Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland). The Scottish Government is not a contractual party to this agreement.

Decisions on future local government finance settlements will be the subject of negotiations with COSLA on behalf of all 32 local authorities and announced as part of the outcome of future Scottish Budgets and/or Spending Reviews.

The following table displays the numbers of applications submitted and approved in each scheme year during the period the New Entrants Start-Up Grant Scheme was open for applications.

The following table displays the number of applications submitted and approved for the Beef Efficiency Scheme. There was one application window, which was 2016.

There is no formal right to request an appeal under the Rural Payments (Appeals) (Scotland) Regulation 2015 as these do not apply to the rejection of an application for a contract. If applicants query the reason for the rejection of an application then local staff will consider this informally but numbers of these are not recorded. The number of applications recorded as rejected in each Scheme year for the Crofting Agricultural Grant Scheme is provided in the following table for information.

The following table displays the number of applications submitted and approved in each scheme year during the period that the Young Farmers Start-Up Grant Scheme was open for applications.