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Transport Scotland only holds information on charge points registered on the ChargePlace Scotland network, however this information is not held by parliamentary constituency only by Local Authority boundary.

Across all the local authorities that this constituency covers there are 455 rapid chargers on CPS. The location of these chargers can be viewed on the CPS map. Information on rapid chargers operated by other networks is available on electric vehicle charging platform Zap Map.

The Scottish Government will provide the allocated £10 million budget across 2022-23 to continue the Fuel Insecurity Fund, which will be delivered through third sector partner organisations, specifically the Fuel Bank Foundation, Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and Advice Direct Scotland. This will support people struggling with their energy bills to the point that they are at risk of self-rationing their energy use, or self-disconnecting entirely. It includes provision for households on any tariff type and using any type of fuel.

This builds upon the success of the funding first provided to help people struggling with their energy costs over winter 2020-21, in addition to the £10 million previously distributed to trusted partner organisations from the Fuel Insecurity Fund last year in 2021-22.

For the financial year 2021-22, Scottish Development International (SDI) and its partners recorded 3721 new jobs and 4059 safeguarded jobs. These job numbers only cover the projects or companies that were directly supported or assisted by SDI. While the Scottish Government are not able to collect data on all jobs created in Scotland as a result of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the recently published EY Attractiveness Survey 2022 estimates projected jobs created in Scotland from FDI to be around 10,000 in 2021.

In spite of the challenging economic climate of the past two years, Scotland has continued its strong performance in attracting Foreign Direct Investment. The EY recent results shows Scotland’s FDI projects (in calendar year 2021) outpaced Europe and the rest of the UK – Scottish projects were up by 14% from 2020, compared to 5.4% increase in Europe and 1.8% increase in UK. This resulted in a record number of FDI projects in Scotland, 122 projects in 2021, up from 107 projects in 2020. Scotland maintained its position as the top performing FDI region or nation of the UK, outside of London, for the 7th year running. The benefits of our approach are being felt right across the country with five of Scotland’s cities/towns in the top 20 UK locations for investment, and Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen in the top 10 UK cities.

These are fantastic results for Scotland and shows that our Inward Investment Plan is working. It also demonstrates the importance of FDI in supporting the ambitions set out in our National Strategy for Economic Transformation, by attracting high quality inward investment and technologies required in areas such as Energy Transition, Decarbonisation of Transport and Space.

There are no plans to combine these systems which operate under distinct legislative requirements.

Both systems, however, seek to achieve shared strategic objectives, including achieving net zero emissions. Our work on planning reform is ongoing, including taking forward the provisions of the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 through policy, regulations and guidance. Building regulations address a wide range of building functions or performance standards, and complement broader provisions of the planning system. Improved energy standards will apply from December this year and changes will be made in 2023 to introduce provision for electric charge points in new developments.

Work is also ongoing to improve the consistency, transparency and accessibility of information in both the planning and building standards systems as part of our five year digital planning transformation programme.

Work is proceeding to hold a procurement competition for new battery and electric trains to operate decarbonised rail passenger services on the Fife Circle and Borders routes, which will allow replacement of 42 ScotRail Class 156 diesel trains. We will also use the opportunity to secure options for further electric trains in future.

Abellio ScotRail (at the time), Network Rail and Transport Scotland were all involved in the development work leading to the publication of the Decarbonisation Action Plan ( Rail Services Decarbonisation Action Plan | Transport Scotland ) in July 2020. Battery trains, supported by partial electrification of routes were set out as an option alongside other forms of rail traction.

Transport Scotland and (now) ScotRail Trains Limited are regularly engaged in discussions over planning for the procurement of new zero emission rolling stock.

We met the commitment to begin providing free bikes to schoolchildren within 100 days of the new Government by commencing the ongoing pilot programme. The pilot programme is, by its nature, focused in scope with 9 projects testing a range of delivery models. We aim to roll the programme out more widely in 2023.

The pilot period will conclude at the end of August 2022. The projected spend to the end of the pilot period is £2,601,356.22. This is £870,369.34 resource and £1,730,986.88 capital. The resource element of the budget is not used to procure bikes, but to fund activity such as training sessions and staffing to support the objectives of the pilot programme.

The total number of bikes issued to date is 2067. We expect to have issued 3000 bikes by the end of the pilot period. The bikes include adapted and non-standard bikes to cater for a range of needs.

In addition, fleet bikes delivered by Sustrans Scotland to participating schools, but not given to any individual child, have been used 2927 times.

We do not record data on bike numbers at local authority level. However, considering bikes issued and associated training and promotion sessions, free bikes activities have taken place in 20 of 32 local authority areas. The 9 pilots are running across a range of locations including in urban, rural and island communities.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-09714 on 29 July 2022. 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 .

The Regulations underpinning Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) do not mandate specific labelling requirements, but rather give producers and the scheme administrator the flexibility to decide on their preferred approach. We decided to take this approach following consultation with businesses during the development of the Regulations. You can read a summary of the consultation responses in paragraphs 160 – 162 of the Final Business and Regulator Impact Assessment (BRIA), published on 22 December 2021.

As independent Scheme Administrator established by businesses, Circularity Scotland Ltd (CSL) has developed its own labelling requirements for those businesses who wish to have CSL administer their obligations relating to DRS.

The specific level of the producer fee is for Circularity Scotland Ltd (CSL), as a private business independent of Government, to set through a commercial negotiation with the producers which it agrees to represent. As such the Scottish Government was not consulted as part of the development of the producer fee.