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The Scottish Government is taking robust action to ensure that women feel safe by improving our laws, encouraging more victims of recent and historical cases to come forward and improving support. That is why our Equally Safe strategy continues to have a decisive focus on preventing violence and tackling the underlying attitudes that perpetuate it. Our new two-year Delivering Equally Safe fund will award £38 million to projects which focus on early intervention and prevention.

We have established an independent Misogyny and Criminal Justice in Scotland Working Group, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC. The Working Group’s report will be published in February 2022 and will inform the further policy decisions we take to further address the many forms of violence, transgression, and abuse experienced by women.

Police Scotland's new verification procedure, following the murder of Sarah Everard, has a clear message that the onus is on the service to provide reassurance to women. However, effectively tackling and challenging gender based violence is not just the responsibility of women or frontline organisations. It is incumbent on men to take action to prevent such behaviour and make communities safer places.

Since reporting requirements came into force on 31 st October 2019, no operators have, to date, been found liable for environmental damage under the Environmental Liability (Scotland) Regulations 2009, as amended by The Environmental Liability etc. (EU Exit) (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2019.

The Scottish Government welcomed the recommendations of the Overton Report on Deepening Collaboration on Food and Drink in Scotland, including the recommended physical co-location of key personnel within food and drink industry leadership bodies and the public sector. These recommendations have informed how the Scotland Food and Drink Partnership has evolved over time and helped foster deeper collaboration and integration across the public and private sectors to achieve common goals. Scotland Food and Drink and Seafood Scotland are now co-located at Ratho Park.

While the impacts of COVID have created a demanding operating environment for businesses, home and hybrid working arrangements have also facilitated much closer working between the bodies that make up the Partnership and removed physical location as a barrier to collaboration.

The Scottish Government has provided support to households for energy saving measures through a number of support and advice schemes over the last 5 years. Home Energy Scotland, administered on behalf of the Scottish Government through Energy Saving Trust, acts as a single point of access for advice on sustainable energy and fuel poverty support in Scotland. We also offer support and advice through other Scottish Government schemes providing energy saving help or fuel poverty relief to households. The information on these schemes has been provided to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre at BIB number 63123.

During the COVID-19 pandemic we prioritised work on the Short-term lets Licensing Order and Amendment Regulations for short-term let control areas. This enabled the statutory instruments for these to be considered by the Scottish Parliament in this session and meant the review of the tax treatment of short-term lets was deferred.

We intend to recommence the tax treatment review in the coming months to ensure that short-term lets make an appropriate contribution to the communities they operate in.

From the 26 July 2021 to the 21 November 2021, 65 applications for Child Disability Payment did not progress to part 2 within the six week time period.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) came into being as a national service on 1 April 2013. In its first year of operation (2013-14) employment statistics were collated by the Scottish Government and in that year SFRS had 7690 FTE employees at 31 March 2014. For reporting year 2014-15 and onwards, SFRS has been responsible for producing these statistics and employment figures are published annually on the SFRS website www.firescotland.gov.uk as part of its Organisational Statistics.

Prior to 2013-14 fire and rescue services were provided by the 8 regional fire and rescue services which formed part of local government. Statistics on the number of employees in these services is not held centrally.

New homes built to a standard which results in lower energy demand and emissions than are achieved under current regulations would make a positive contribution to achieving Scotland's climate targets.

Accordingly, consideration of the performance and processes of Passivhaus and similar standards remains a topic within the ongoing review of Scottish building regulations. We intend to publish revised standards in April, which will apply from October this year. Discussion on further change beyond 2022 will also continue.

New homes built to a standard which delivers lower energy demand and emissions than are achieved under current regulations would have a positive impact on reducing both domestic energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions.

Accordingly, consideration of the performance and processes of Passivhaus and similar standards remains a topic within the ongoing review of Scottish building regulations. We intend to publish revised standards in April, which will apply from October this year. Discussion on further change beyond 2022 will also continue.

In CivTech, the Scottish Government is already resourcing an outstanding accelerator/incubator programme that is delivering in the low-carbon and net zero areas.

The Scottish Government’s CivTech programme is the world’s first successful public sector focused accelerator programme, with a mission to drive daring and innovation in the public sector by collaboratively solving challenges to make people’s lives better – and in doing so create generations of sustainable, high growth potential businesses. Its collaborative approach to incubation combines public sector ‘domain expertise’ with private sector innovation and citizen engagement to produce innovative solutions. More than 90% of the private sector applicants to the CivTech Accelerators are SMEs, many early stage. Combining open challenges and ‘Silicon Valley best practice’ repurposed for public benefit, it is very highly regarded as an accelerator/incubator [it has been described as the ‘gold standard’ in innovation drivers] and over the past six years it has delivered more than 60 Challenges across the National Performance Framework and Scottish Government priorities.

One of these priorities is the climate emergency, and working closely with organisations including NatureScot, SEPA and Forestry and Land Scotland, CivTech has delivered climate related projects since its inception. These include award-winning products and technologies to help us meet tree planting targets, and mitigate the effects of climate change through community based flood warning systems. This year’s CivTech 6 programme includes three Challenges in the Net Zero and Low Carbon areas, focused on the decarbonisation of the manufacturing supply chain, more effective peatland restoration, and help for land managers making informed land-use decisions to increase carbon capture and storage.

One of the great advantages of the CivTech model is that it delivers Challenges across a wide range of disciplines: the ‘cross collateralisation’ of knowledge, knowhow, skills and experience this produces is an acknowledged, core driver of innovation, and avoids the ‘siloed’ approach of many single-focus incubators/accelerators. CivTech is clearly delivering very positive results and the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government of September 2021 included a significant commitment to scale CivTech and investment in its Challenges. With CivTech’s focus on government priorities, this will offer a significant increases in opportunities and funding for private sector innovators to develop technologies which tackle the climate crisis.

Scotland’s strength in public accelerator climate technologies was recognised during CoP 26 when the CivTech Alliance, an international collaboration of public sector accelerator programmes, demonstrated climate technologies from across the world. This included companies from Scotland, and offered a showcase opportunity for companies that came through the CivTech programme.