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There are currently 49 members of Scottish government staff in specific COP26 posts, with 11 further specific posts under recruitment. A wide range of other staff members across the Scottish Government contribute a percentage of their time to working on COP26.

Network Rail is due to undertake ground investigation and survey works of the Edinburgh to Aberdeen route during autumn 2021. The outputs from this will inform the next stage of development and planning to determine the appropriate electrification programme.

The Scottish Government has not carried out specific analysis on this issue.

There are complexities and a variety of international travel possibilities within the global international oil and gas industry. Risk of Covid infection for workers travelling to and from installations on the UK continental shelf (UKCS) cannot be attributed to any single factor, but a comprehensive range of infection control measures has been implemented to reduce this to as low as reasonably practicable.

The regulation of occupational health and safety is reserved to the UK Government. Statutory responsibilities for enforcement in the offshore oil and gas industry lies with the Health and Safety Executive.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 employers have a statutory duty to protect the health and safety of their employees, to undertake appropriate risk assessments and to put in place appropriate mitigations.

The Scottish Government has no statutory involvement in workplace health and safety regulation.

The Scottish Government agreed with CalMac Ferries Limited (CFL) that the crew of the MV Arrow, though not covered by CFL terms and conditions or collective bargaining agreements, should receive the National Living Wage for the duration of the charter .

ScotRail led maintenance, overhaul and repair works are carried out in Scotland at their own maintenance depots in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Inverness.

Where specialist repairs are required ScotRail utilise local facilities such as Brodie Engineering in Kilmarnock and Assenta Rail in Hamilton, however ScotRail engage with the wider market to ensure a value for money procurement exercise is conducted.

Train owners may engage with the wider UK market and decide on where their heavy maintenance contracts are awarded but ScotRail does not decide this. The following train owner led workstreams have been sent out of Scotland over the last 2 years. As these works have not been led by ScotRail, the commercial value of these works is unable to be confirmed:-

• Class 156 Refurbishment. 15 units at Landore, Wales.
• Class 170 C6 Overhaul. 17 units at Crewe.
  

There were 5,902 tonnes of plastic waste produced from the construction and demolition sector in 2018 in Scotland. Waste (from all sources) (sepa.org.uk)

UK official waste figures for Construction and Demolition show that plastic waste is around 0.05% of the total waste stream. The percentage is similar in Scotland.

Zero Waste Scotland has taken a variety of actions to tackle waste in the construction and demolition sector. In 2020-2021, Zero Waste Scotland undertook a packaging project with national housebuilders to drive down the consumption of packaging waste, including plastics, on site.

In 2020-2021, Zero Waste Scotland also commissioned the development of a methodology to measure the true cost of waste on a construction site. Testing this methodology on a new build housing site, 14% of the waste was identified as plastics.

Zero Waste Scotland provides a range of support and advice to help the Construction and Demolition sector to be more circular Circular Construction | Zero Waste Scotland . In 2021-2022 Zero Waste Scotland will be working with the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA) on the development of a national Onsite Best Practice Guide.

The Scottish Government, through the Home Energy Scotland (HES) Loan and Cashback scheme, provides interest-free loans with up to 75% cashback grant funding for homeowners to replace fossil-fuel heating systems such as gas with low or zero emissions heating systems such as heat pumps.

To further support households to make their homes greener, we provide:

• free, impartial advice through Home Energy Scotland, including specialist home renewables advice;
• HES loans with up to 40% cashback for energy efficiency measures;
• the Green Homes Network which allows households to find out about the experience of others who have already installed measures; and
• the Renewable Installer Finder Tool which helps households find installers and suppliers in their area.

These advice and support schemes can be accessed through Home Energy Scotland, run by the Energy Saving Trust.

It is for developers and the market to decide whether or not to bring forward proposals for new electricity generating stations in Scotland.

Our 2017 Energy Strategy set out our priority for a whole system approach that promotes renewables and other low carbon alternatives as part of a diverse, well balanced energy supply. The Strategy confirmed that we do not support a new generation of nuclear stations under current technologies. The economics of these stations are prohibitive, especially given the falling costs of renewable and storage technologies.

The presence of working interlinked fire alarms is proven to save lives and is one of the most important investments home owners can make to protect life and property. Regulations setting out this new standard were unanimously approved by the previous Local Government and Communities Committee at their meeting on 18 December 2019.

Home owners are responsible for the costs of on-going work needed to protect and preserve their own property, which includes the costs for the fire alarms to meet the new standard. The cost of the alarms will vary according to what householders choose to install. We estimate that the cost for an average three bedroom house which requires three smoke alarms, one heat alarm and one carbon monoxide detector will be around £220. This is based on using the type of alarms that can be installed by the homeowner, without the need for an electrician.

In our Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment for the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987 (Tolerable Standard) (Extension of Criteria) Order 2019 we estimated that 600,000 owner occupied properties were likely to fall below the proposed standard. Updating this to the latest 2019 Scottish House Condition Survey data: of the approximately 1.55m owner occupied properties in Scotland, 7% (or around 100,000) of homes did not have any smoke alarm at all, and around a quarter (or 400,000) had only one alarm. This indicates that around 500,000 owner-occupied properties are likely to fall below the proposed standard. It is possible that a proportion of the remaining 1,005,000 properties with more than one alarm would also not comply with the standard, although it is not possible to determine this from the available data.

It is not possible to determine exactly how many owner occupied homes have alarms of the prescribed type installed as this information is not currently collected as part of the Scottish House Condition Survey. In the future, when the regulations on the new fire alarm standard have come into effect, it will be possible to collect more precise data because compliance with the tolerable standard is included in the Survey. This will allow us to monitor progress in bringing Scotland’s homes up to the new standard.

Statistics on the number of patients waiting for reconstructive surgery following treatment for breast cancer are not held centrally by Public Health Scotland (PHS). In the case of patients waiting for inpatient or day case treatment the national Waiting Time data collection is designed to identify the procedure that the patient is waiting for. However, not all Boards submit this information consistently and so it is incomplete. In addition, no information is collected on the diagnoses or conditions that relate to the planned procedure.

Statistics relating to the waits patients experience for inpatient or day case admissions, at specialty level are published up to 31 March 2021 using the link below.

https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/8036/ipdc_may21.xlsx