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As outlined in the Access to period products: Monitoring and Evaluation strategy 2021/22 - 2024/25, we intended to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021(the Act) in 2025. However, due to funding for local authorities being baselined from this financial year (2024-25) under the Verity House Agreement, the Scottish Government and COSLA agreed that local authorities will not be asked to collect any data going forward. This means that the planned evaluation will no longer take place.

Local authorities are under a statutory duty to meet the requirements of the Act and are open to challenge by Judicial Review.

The first meeting of the Tree Planting Taskforce took place on 28 November with Ministers representing the Scottish, UK, Welsh and Northern Ireland Governments in attendance. The Scottish Government outlined the importance of forestry in Scotland, and our recent successes in delivering the majority of woodland creation across the UK.

The Taskforce was an opportunity to highlight the importance of all types of trees, both native and productive, as part of increasing biodiversity and driving woodland creation.

There was broad agreement within the group about the value of further cross-border collaboration and the collective challenges we face, such as future woodland management, addressing the skills shortage in the sector and tackling the threat of pests and diseases. The next steps and detailed future work of the Taskforce is still to be decided and agreed by its members.

The UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021 (‘the Continuity Act’) provides Scottish Ministers with a power to help meet the Scottish Government’s commitment to align with future developments in EU law, where it is appropriate and meaningful to do so. This is important to maintain and advance regulatory standards in Scotland.

Petroineos first approached the Scottish Government in early 2024 to seek support for Project Willow. The Scottish Government has supported this with £799,000 of funding and has successfully leveraged the UK Government to do the same.

The Project Willow cross site study is examining the enablers and blockers to deploying low carbon technologies at Grangemouth that will support our commitment to secure a long term and sustainable future for the industrial cluster. Petroineos has contracted Ernst & Young Parthenon (Ernst & Young) to undertake this study which commenced in August and is due to report early in the New Year.

The Scottish Government, UK Government, Scottish Enterprise, Petroineos and INEOS have a joint governance function for the study and Unite the Union engage via regular standing committee meetings.

The programme of work has undertaken extensive stakeholder engagement including businesses, sector specialists, the local community, and the public sector.

Consideration was given to over 80 technologies at different levels of readiness before developing a shorter list of viable alternatives - including sustainable aviation fuel, e-fuels, and low carbon hydrogen - which are now being scrutinised through the following lenses: technical; economic; commercial; regulatory; climate/environmental; community; and skills. Feedstock availability and scalability are two of several key criteria being considered by Ernst & Young.

The Scottish Government will provide an update to Parliament on the findings of Project Willow upon its conclusion.

To support the development of, ‘A Trading Nation: Realising Scotland's Hydrogen Potential - A Plan for Exports’, Scottish Government officials engaged extensively with stakeholders, including key policy leads within the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

HMRC undertakes an on-going programme of activities to ensure Scottish taxpayers are accurately identified. Scottish Government scrutinise this work through a joint quarterly income tax board.

This work includes, comparing PAYE submissions with HMRC’s own records to identify cases where employers are not correctly applying Scottish tax codes and checking address data against third party sources. Individuals who complete a tax return come under greater scrutiny and are required to confirm address details annually.

HMRC view the risks associated with Scottish-specific non-compliance as being small, whilst we are reassured with this assessment - we are not complacent and continue to focus on scrutinising HMRC performance in identifying the Scottish tax base.

Registration service fees are set by the Registrar General for Scotland with the approval of the Scottish Ministers.

The Scottish Government has not considered waiving or reducing the statutory fees associated with marriage. The Scottish Government’s policy as set out in guidance in the Scottish Public Finance Manual is that charges for public services should generally allow for full cost recovery: Fees and charges - Scottish Public Finance Manual - gov.scot Consequently, the aim is for local authority registration services to recover the true cost of their statutory services via the fees set by the Registrar General.

With effect from 1 May 2022, the fee for submitting each marriage notice was increased to £45 from £30: The Registration Services (Fees, etc.) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022. This was the first increase in the marriage notice fee since April 2010.

The current fee for a civil marriage ceremony is £55 and the fee for the marriage certificate is £10 if purchasing within a month of the registration of the marriage.

The Scottish Government gathered information in advance of the 2022 Regulations about the overall costs of weddings for many couples: see under the heading of “Consumer Assessment” in the Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment for the 2022 Regulations.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally.

The Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 make it an offence for a person who, in the course of a business, supplies, offers to supply, or has in their possession for supply any of the products listed below:

• single-use expanded polystyrene beverage containers
• single-use expanded polystyrene beverage cups
• single-use expanded polystyrene food containers
• single-use plastic beverage stirrers
• single-use plastic cutlery
• single-use plastic plates
• single-use plastic balloon stick (unless supplied for attaching to balloons for industrial or other professional uses and applications that are only distributed to persons acting in the course of a business),
• single-use plastic straw (if supplying to an end-user, subject to exemptions)

Estimated figures for the amount of these products placed on the market in Scotland before the Regulations came into force were included in the Environmental Report for the Single-use Plastic Products Regulations, published on the Scottish Government’s website here. And were included in the answer to S6W-04456 on 29 November 2021.

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 2018 GP contract committed Health Boards to set up Community Treatment and Care (CTAC) services to transfer workload from GP practices to NHS Board-employed staff allowing GP practices to focus on what only they can do. Territorial Health Boards and Integration Authorities are responsible for designing and delivering these services in their areas, working with local partners and teams. The Scottish Government publishes annual progress reports on GP contract implementation based on data provided by Integration Authorities. The most recent report uses data from March 2024 - Primary care improvement plans: implementation progress summary - March 2024 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Although it is the statutory responsibility of local authorities to manage and maintain their school estate, Scottish Government and Scottish Futures Trust continue to engage with local authorities about Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC).

In September, the Scottish Government published a report regarding RAAC across the public sector in Scotland, and it contains a dedicated section on schools and early learning and childcare.