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Regulation of electricity networks is reserved to the UK Government. Matters pertaining to the retention of electric lines on land are governed by schedule 4 to the Electricity Act 1989. The schedule sets out the circumstances and the timeframe within which an electricity network distribution licence holder may, following the service of a notice to remove the electric line from the land, not be obliged to comply with the notice and retain the electric line on the land.

Epidemiological investigations at each of the six infected premises (IPs) involving gamebird establishments, declared in Scotland in 2023, revealed that all of the birds involved were open to direct or indirect contact with wild birds, either through unroofed netted release pens, open potholes or, in the cases of fully netted release pens and housed birds, through holes in the netting or walls.

It is important that we take the time to work closely with industry, with investors and with our partners across the public and private sectors to ensure that we get our approach to this right. This process is already well-underway and will update the market once it has been completed.

Delivery of the £500 million Just Transition Fund remains ongoing with £75 million allocated to date, supporting projects and communities across the North East and Moray to create jobs, support innovation, and secure the highly skilled workforce of the future.

We are already working closely with private and public sector partners, including developers and investors, through a variety of fora to ensure that together, we maximise the economic benefits that the offshore renewables sector can deliver for Scotland.

We are working closely our partners in the Enterprise Agencies and the Scottish National Investment Bank to develop an approach that will allow us to respond at pace to market needs. We will provide more detail to the market in due course.

There are a number of recommendations that have been made through the Independent Review of Audiology Services in Scotland, many of which are targeted specifically at Health Boards and other partners, as well as the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government is considering all of the recommendations made. Given the broad scope of the recommendations, and the seriousness of the issues raised, it is important that sufficient time is taken to fully plan how any actions will be taken forward.

We will provide an update to Parliament in due course.

The Energy sector is reserved to the UK Government. This limits the Scottish Government ’ s ability to directly engage with energy network operators and ask for a review of their processes.

Our emergency planning portal, ready.scot, was updated in June 2022 to include a new "Learn" section to support the public, community groups and voluntary sector partners by raising awareness of emergency resilience structures and processes, and helping them to understand how they may participate in an effective and joined up response to an emergency. Between March and April 2023, we also ran a series of 4 online community resilience workshops which were attended by approximately 240 participants.

We will continue to work with the sector, and in particular Local Authorities, who have the lead role on engaging with local communities, to understand their training needs and provide additional resources if required.

The Scottish Government did not provide any direct funding to Relationships Scotland Tayside & Fife in 2022.

Relationships Scotland operate a network of 21 Member Services across Scotland, including Relationships Scotland Tayside & Fife.

In 2022, the Scottish Government provided Relationships Scotland with core funding via the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention and Adult Learning & Empowering Communities third sector fund; and with grant funding to provide child contact services.

The Scottish Government’s latest annual progress report on child poverty , published on 13 June 2023, sets out progress toward the meeting the child poverty targets and in implementing the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’.

Modelling published alongside this year’s progress report estimates that 90,000 fewer children will live in relative and absolute poverty in 2023-24 as a result of Scottish Government policies, with poverty levels 9% points lower that they would have otherwise been. This includes lifting an estimated 50,000 children out of relative poverty through our Scottish Child Payment. However, we will not know if the interim child poverty targets have been met until March 2025.

Our approach to tackling child poverty is in stark contrast to that of the UK Government. Scottish Government analysis, published in April 2022, estimated that reversing key UK Government welfare changes that have taken place just since 2015 could lift an estimated 70,000 people out of poverty in Scotland, including 30,000 children, and put £780 million in the pockets of Scottish households this year.

As official statistics on rates of relative poverty in Scotland come from the Family Resources Survey which is run by the Department for Work and Pensions, which is a sample survey. This therefore this does not allow a breakdown to be produced below the national figure for Scotland.