Seòmar agus comataidhean

As I outlined in my response to S6W-07615 on 25 April 2022, funding allocated to Abernethy is for a range of purposes and is our assessment that this has been of value for money despite the decline in capercaillie numbers.

While the status of the capercaillie population in Scotland remains vulnerable, without the investment that has been made to the likes of Abernethy it is likely that we would have lost capercaillie from Scotland.

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 Scottish Government, it’s partners and agencies have funded actions to support capercaillie conservation across Scotland through a range of schemes. Funding has been awarded to estates as well as eNGO’s and individuals and we expect this to continue.

Funding is awarded to projects that would benefit capercaillie conservation but are not specifically for this purpose. This could include supporting new pine wood planting in capercaillie areas, the management and improvement of existing habitat as well as it's extension through actions such as controlling deer numbers, fence marking or removal, and thinning to improve light levels.

An evaluation report was written in 2017 which reviewed the pilot Access to Elected Office Fund (Scotland) (AEOFS) programme and made recommendations for the future of such a scheme. Thereafter, operational funding was maintained for the Fund until October 2021, and further funding was provided through the Equality and Human Rights Fund to run the programme for a further 3 years.

Various changes were made to improve the programme in its second iteration, including opening the new fund for applications well in advance of the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, leaving a longer lead in time to support those running for selection and as a candidate; and committing to funding AEOFS awards with no upper limit, ensuring that as many candidates as possible can apply for selection and be secure in the knowledge that funding will not be a barrier to their success. Further consideration was also given to addressing the particular barriers faced by BSL users, and the fund supported the first BSL user to be elected to a Scottish Local Authority in a by-election in 2019.

In addition, an ‘Access to Politics Charter’ was developed with disabled activists to support political parties to be more inclusive and promote disabled people as potential candidates. The Charter addressed a range of issues raised in the evaluation report. All of the five parliamentary political parties have signed up to the ‘Access to Politics Charter’ and each now has a disabled members’ group following charter principles.

Scottish Government policy towards local authority spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant as part of the annual local government finance settlement.

It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them (including any funding for arts and culture).

Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS) who are the National Development Body for the Scottish museums sector, distribute funding on behalf of Scottish Government.

Details of the grants awarded by MGS are provided below however please note that their grant processing sytem only provides details of the grants awarded since 2015.

a) Aberdeen City Council Area

The integration of care across emergency and community mental health services is vital to ensure that anyone in crisis receives continuous, compassionate care.

At the end of last year, the Government appointed the former chief executive of Penumbra, Nigel Henderson, as National Lead for suicidal crisis responses, with responsibility for driving forward the National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group (NSPLG)’s recommendations on suicidal crisis responses. The NSPLG’s recommendations did not prescribe a fixed model for crisis support, but highlighted the need for people in crisis to receive Time, Space and Compassion wherever they present – be that in statutory services, front line services, and across our communities.

In taking forward this work, the National Lead has established an action group, which includes a range of statutory and third sector partners, including Penumbra; he is also engaging with statutory partners and communities. This engagement is focussed on identifying models of good practice (including pathways between services), that reflect the diversity of people and places in Scotland, This learning will inform a Scotland wide programme to further embed compassionate crisis responses right across our communities.

The Edinburgh crisis centre is an example of an established crisis support service. There are other community based services, such as the recently established Neuk in Perth. A Ministerial visit has not taken place to either service, however good engagement is happening at official level to ensure learning is shared.

Finally, the Government’s national Distress Brief Intervention programme is a world-leading example where compassionate support is provided for people in distress within their communities; with direct referrals from emergency services, where appropriate. The Government’s investment in alternatives to emergency care will also ensure that every GP practice has access to a mental health and wellbeing service by 2026, with 1,000 additional roles.

The Scottish Government will continue to support Police Scotland and wider partners as they respond to Dame Elish Angiolini’s review. We will launch a public consultation this year on those recommendations which require legislative change including creating an explicit duty of candour for police officers. The responses to this consultation will provide the basis for bringing forward a Bill and Regulations which will promote fairness and transparency and strengthen public confidence in our police. I will provide a further update to Parliament in due course.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07862 on  25 April 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

As part of the Bute House Agreement with the Scottish Green Party, the Scottish Government has committed to undertaking a Programme of Work and analysis to better understand our energy requirements as we transition to net zero and how this aligns with our climate change targets and the goal of the Paris agreement to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. This work is detailed in the Scottish Government’s response to question S6W-03953 on 25 October 2021.

The Programme of Work’s evidence base and some of its initial outputs will feature in the Scottish Government’s draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan (ESJTP) which will be published in Autumn 2022. The ESJTP will consider the whole energy system as part of the strategy and indicate the change required in electricity generation, heat, transport and all energy demand across Scotland.

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

NHS 24 has recently completed an initial review of the cancer specific information on NHS Inform, to ensure it is clinically safe and any out of date information has been removed. Meanwhile NHS 24 is in discussions with a third sector organisation on the potential for an API (Application Programming Interface) to facilitate the sharing of information through enabling information to be systematically gathered and displayed on NHS Inform.

The information you have requested is publically available at the Scottish Energy Statistics Hub (shinyapps.io) taken originally from National Grid - : https://carbonintensity.org.uk/ .

In addition to that, the recent announcement of ScotWind has seen aspirations from consortia to develop up to 25GW of offshore wind capacity. This will allow us to make huge progress in further decarbonising our energy supply while securing commitments from ScotWind developers to invest at least £1bn in Scotland’s supply chain for every gigawatt of power.

The Scottish Government is clear that nuclear energy represents a bad deal for consumers and our priority continues to be to support energy efficiency, develop Scotland’s huge renewable resource and to promote storage and flexibility.