Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill has now been introduced to the Scottish Parliament.

Information on the Bill can be found on the Parliament website here, and all supporting evidence and analysis relating to the Bill can be found here .

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21436 on 9 October 2023. 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 .

Fair work is the responsibility of all Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers across Government, but the responsibility for fair work in the culture sector sits with me.

However, the Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy maintains overall policy responsibility for Fair Work.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21436 on 9 October 2023. 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 .

Safety camera resources are primarily deployed in locations where they have the greatest potential to reduce injury collisions, and where there is evidence of both collisions and speeding. Safety cameras deployments are aimed at improving driver behaviours, leading to enhanced levels of speed limit compliance and ultimately resulting in fewer people being killed or injured on Scotland’s roads including trunk roads and main roads located within or close to local communities. This supports the delivery of Scotland’s Road Safety Framework to 2030 and its overarching vision of ensuring Scotland has the best road safety performance in the world.

An annual site prioritisation process is undertaken each year to determine new safety camera sites across our road network. This national exercise acts to ensure the right camera technology is in the right place at the right time. It involves a range of partners including the three regional safety camera units, all thirty-three road authorities and Police Scotland, and acts to identify potential new camera sites which meet the minimum criteria, while at the same time assessing the performance of existing enforcement strategies.

Electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure is owned by many different executive agencies and other public bodies (such as SEPA) which are funded by the Scottish Government, as well as a small proportion owned by the Scottish Government directly. Each individual organisation is responsible for managing their own charge point assets and for making decisions about whether they should be designated for staff, visitors and/or fleet vehicle usage or for general public access. Not all charge point sites are suitable for general public access, for example those in secure staff car parks or in fleet vehicle depots.

There are no plans to centralise the management of EV charging infrastructure across all Scottish Government agencies or public bodies.

Since 2011, the Scottish Government has provided £65 million to support the installation of over 2,600 public charge points across Scotland, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive public EV charging networks in the UK. The Scottish Government’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund aims to provide a further £60 million of public and private sector investment to increase the number of public charge points to 6,000 by 2026.

The Scottish Government does not hold information centrally on the percentage of anticipated community benefit payments made to communities from renewable energy projects, broken down by local authority area.

The Scottish Government’s Register of Community Benefit, administered by Local Energy Scotland, shows commitments from operational renewable energy projects and can be accessed here: https://localenergy.scot/community-benefits-register/

The Register relies on developers and communities voluntarily submitting data. It is not exhaustive and does not provide a full picture of community benefit payments across Scotland. The Register should therefore be seen as a guide to community benefit provisions across Scotland.

No primary care projects previously committed to by the Scottish Government have been cancelled or delayed in 2023-24.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-20954 on 19 September 2023.

The IUCN Red List classifies species at risk of global extinction into nine categories: Not Evaluated, Data Deficient, Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild and Extinct. NatureScot, working with stakeholders, have identified approximately 12,000 species in Scotland which fall into one of these categories, of which around 75% (8,381) are considered to be of Least Concern and not, therefore, considered to be at imminent risk of extinction.

1,748 species have been assessed as at some risk of extinction, with 148 assessed to be Critically Endangered, 295 Endangered, 673 Vulnerable and 632 Near Threatened.

Historically, monitoring of species has been influenced by various factors including the taxa, visibility and popularity, which has resulted in some data deficiencies, including in respect of some critically endangered species. NatureScot is working with stakeholders to address this, including through projects such as Species at Risk, which aims to bring all taxa onto a level playing field and focus more attention toward the lesser-known species. With new datasets and analytical tools becoming available, we are able to present trends in status for more species than ever before.

Our Scottish Biodiversity Strategy to 2045 recognises the importance of good quality biodiversity data to achieving our goals, and together with NatureScot we are providing £580,000 over two years to support the Better Biodiversity Data Project, led by the National Biodiversity Network Trust. The project will establish a Scottish Data Hub which will bring together biodiversity data from a range of sources and make it more accessible for analysis. More information on this is available at: https://nbn.org.uk/news/better-biodiversity-data-project/ .

Further details can also be found in the latest State of Nature Scotland Report for 2023, a collaborative work between government agencies and eNGOs, published on 28 September 2023. The report is available at: https://stateofnature.org.uk/countries/scotland/ .