Seòmar agus comataidhean

We are currently reviewing the F-gas Regulation jointly with the UK and Welsh Governments. We will publish an assessment report on the efficacy of the Regulation in the coming weeks.

Following the report, we will jointly consider policy options to ensure our regulations continue to support our ambitious Net Zero targets. As part of this, we will also consider other important issues including leakage incidents. We expect to publish a joint consultation on these future policy proposals in due course.

The New Scots refugee integration strategy is built on partnership and collaboration, led by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council, and involves a wide range of partners across different sectors.

The New Scots Core Group brings together key stakeholders and is responsible for monitoring and reviewing progress against the overarching outcomes of the strategy. The Core Group is chaired by Professor Alison Phipps, UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow.

The Core Group usually meets four times a year. This year, the group undertook a two-part workshop in January and February, as part of the New Scots Refugee Integration Delivery Project. The Core Group then met in June and in October, with the final meeting of the year set to take place in December.

The workshops in January and February were run by our external evaluator and looked at the Theory of Change for the New Scots strategy as part of the external evaluation. Details of these workshops will be made available in a wider ScotCen evaluation report which is due to be published in March 2023.

We will publish the minutes from the Core Group’s June meeting shortly.

There have been a number of significant changes to Public Health policies in relation to Covid over the summer, resulting in the profile of Covid spend reducing significantly compared to when funding was provided to IJBs.

In response to this, surplus Covid reserves will be redistributed across the sector to meet current Covid priorities, including Test and Protect and PPE provisions.

The Scottish Government is currently discussing the Late Payment (commercial transactions) Common Framework with the UK Government, Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive and will report back on this work in due course.

I am pleased to confirm the publication today of the Scottish Government’s fourth thematic report on implementation progress following Dame Elish Angiolini’s Final Report. This not only includes a narrative, context and additional information about key recommendations but, importantly, also has a tracker showing what progress has been made.

This shows that 55 of the non-legislative recommendations are now complete leaving only 16 non-legislative recommendations still in progress and one to be kept under review.

Through their leadership and commitment, policing partners have delivered major business transformation and service redesign to improve how complaints are handled, bringing greater transparency, fairness and accessibility to systems, policies and processes.

Building on this and as announced in the Programme for Government, the Scottish Government will introduce a Police Complaints and Misconduct Handling Bill in this Parliamentary year to further strengthen public confidence in policing in Scotland.

I commend Police Scotland, the Scottish Police Authority, the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland for their dedication to this important work.

The report can be accessed here: http://www.gov.scot/ISBN/9781805252610

In August 2021, funding of £10m was made available to local authorities in relation to improving ventilation in schools, and this was claimed in full.

Additionally, in January 2022, funding of up to £4.8m was made available to local authorities. Of that funding, £3.8m was claimed.

Therefore, in total, £13.8m has been allocated to local authorities in relation to improving ventilation in schools.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-12798 on 12 December. 2022. 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 15km value noted in the Strategic Transport Projects Review is representative of the average maximum range from the benchmarking study of similar cities and aligns well with the adjoining urban area of Greater Glasgow. However it is indicative, the exact extents of any Metro system will be for consideration as part of the future business case and design development work to determine.

No further flood protection schemes or engineering works have been removed from the list of the 42 formal flood protection schemes since the answer to question S6W-05146.

A benchmarking exercise was undertaken, as part of the second Strategic Transport Projects Review’s appraisal of Clyde Metro. That work considered UK and international cities, with a comparable population to Glasgow for both the city itself and the wider urban areas and/or metropolitan area and a comparable mix of urban public transport offerings in terms of mode, historical systems, modern systems, etc.

Applying this criteria, resulted in the identification of a list of thirteen cities across the UK and eight other European countries, comprising:

• Newcastle (UK);
• Manchester (UK)
• Copenhagen (Denmark);
• Dortmund (Germany);
• Dusseldorf (Germany);
• Rotterdam (The Netherlands);
• Bilbao (Spain);
• Lille (France),
• Gdansk (Poland);
• Nuremberg (Germany);
• Lyon (France);
• Helsinki (Finland); and
• Oslo (Norway).

The transport systems in each of the above cities was then reviewed against the following criteria; the different public transport systems on offer (e.g. commuter rail, metro, tram) and the interaction between these; the historical development of the network; socio economic factors; engineering aspects including underground running; density of stations; total length of network; and distance served by mode.

The average distance of Metro services was assessed at around 14km from a City Centre, while Tram has an average range of 9km and Commuter Rail has an average range of 40km. The 14km range is comparable to the urban area of greater Glasgow and Glasgow also had a good suburban rail network density. Therefore it was on this basis that Clyde Metro was put forward as a transport system serving up to around 15km in range from the city centre.