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Scottish Government is working with the Board of FMPG as it develops its plans for the future. Decisions on which contracts to pursue are operational matters for the management and Board of the business.

One Scottish Government official attended the meeting.

100%. NatureScot deliver all their peatland restoration works via Peatland Action projects.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) provides advice to NHS Scotland on a ‘once for Scotland’ basis about the value for patients of newly licensed medicines, including innovative cell and gene therapies such as one-off gene-edited treatments for debilitating inherited conditions.

For example, in 2021, the SMC was the first health technology appraisal body in the UK to accept a gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy. This ensures that NHS patients have equal access to innovative medicines that are clinically and cost-effective. The SMC has a transparent and robust process that is fully described on its website.

The Scottish Law Commission is currently undertaking a project to consider homicide law reform. The Scottish Law Commission's homicide law project has been continued into their 11th Programme of Law Reform. In 2021, the Commission published their discussion paper on this subject. Scottish Government officials have recently engaged with the Scottish Law Commission who advise they hope to be in a position to publish their final report during 2024. The Scottish Government will consider carefully their final report and recommendations carefully when published.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring everyone who is eligible to vote can do so and is working with partners to look at potential new ways to increase registration levels amongst under-represented groups including young people.

Curriculum for Excellence provides opportunities for young people of all ages and stages to develop their political literacy skills. This is most likely to feature in the social studies curricular area, which, helps young people develop as responsible, informed citizens with a global outlook covering important topics, including democracy and voting.

To support schools and teachers there is an extensive range of materials and resources to draw on, including the “You Decide” Political Literacy resource from Education Scotland, which provides guidance on how to ensure that learners use their voice, participate and contribute to decision-making processes.

The Electoral Commission provides free, impartial resources for schools and youth groups to use to support young people to develop their understanding of the voting process. Their resources include a series of lesson plans linked to the curriculum and interactive activities and videos, which cover topics such as how to register to vote, what happens at the polling place and how to find information about candidates.

The Commission also works with education partners to run a campaign called Welcome to Your Vote Week each year to encourage schools and other organisations to have conversations with young people about democracy. They can get involved in a range of ways, including organising a voter registration event or democracy day. In 2023, 150 schools and youth organisations participated.

The Commission recently began a partnership with Children in Scotland to bring together young people from across Scotland to inform its future work and ensure it meets the needs of young people, including the messaging that will help drive registration levels.

Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) send Invitations to Register to all those on the schools lists that are eligible to register. EROs report good engagement with schools, particularly those run by local authorities, where they get a good response to invitations to register. The reduction in franchise age to 16 means that all attainers to the local government register are in full time education as they will be under the age of 16. Most EROs are also supplied with lists of all students at Scottish Universities who are resident and eligible to register.

It is not the Scottish Government’s role to act as a broker or fundraiser. Instead the Scottish Government is seeking to create the conditions which promote the flow of responsible private investment into nature restoration. Our forthcoming Natural Capital Markets Framework will strengthen our existing Interim Principles for Responsible Investment in Natural Capital and set out our approach to using public spending more effectively to leverage in responsible private capital.

The following table shows private investment in nature restoration efforts in each of the past five years in woodland, peatland and marine and coastal restoration activity:

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

Any concerns from residents in relation to general noise disturbances, fall under the remit of the local authority, in this instance Stirling Council.

The responsibility for determining applications for planning permission, and planning enforcement of such decisions, rests primarily with the planning authority for the area, in this case Stirling Council. Such applications are required to be determined in accordance with the development plan for the area unless material considerations indicate otherwise – More information can be found on the Scottish Government Website, specifically Planning circular 3/2022: development management procedures - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

SPS remains committed to engaging with local residents.

The Scottish Government has not conducted any feasibility studies but Hybrid Air Vehicles produced the “Airlander feasibility study for the Highlands & Islands of Scotland” in September 2023. Hybrid Air Vehicles are a consortium member of the Sustainable Aviation Test Environment (SATE) project at Kirkwall Airport and the Airlander could be tested in the Highlands and Islands in the future.

Today the Scottish Government published the third Delivery Plan for the National Transport Strategy , which outlines the actions it has taken to deliver the vision and priorities in 2023 and what actions will be undertaken in the coming year.

The first Report to Parliament was also published today, setting out the steps the Scottish Government has taken in delivering the Strategy since its launch in February 2020. The publication of the Report fulfils our commitment in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019.

Transport and travel data has been routinely collected through our annual official statistical publications, however it has not been possible to accurately report on the performance of the Strategy on an annual basis. This is primarily due to our data collection methods being affected by the pandemic and comparisons between the baseline position and travel in 2020 and 2021 not being robust due to the profound impact that the pandemic had on travel behaviour over this period.

The first monitoring and evaluation report setting out what progress has been made will be produced in 2024. The update will primarily provide analysis on the performance of the Strategy against headline indicators, utilising data gathered in 2020, 2021 and 2022, qualitative case studies from our stakeholder groups and transport partners and data from additional sources.