 Y prif Weinidog yng Nghymru i'r Prif Weinidog, 9.618, yn yŷn y George Adam, at ystafell y Ploeddeniau Fawciol, yn cynhyrchu i'r prif Weinidog, y cwrs honno, byw i'n mynd i'r prif wedi'i cymdeithasol y pwg sy'n mynd i'i prif wedi'i cymdeithasol y pwygyrch. Rydyn ni'n gallu cymdeithasol y pwygyrch a'r prif Weinidog i'r prif Weinidog i'r prif Weinidog. No member has asked to speak against the motion. Therefore, the question is that motion 9618 be agreed. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed. The next item of business is topical questions. At question number one, I call Liam Kerr. To ask the Scottish Government what work is being done to support local communities that have recently been affected by water shortages. Cabinet Secretary, Mary McCallan. Water levels are lower than usual for this time of year, and with little sustained rain forecast, shortages could potentially become more likely and widespread. However, I can confirm that the public water supply network is largely operating normally. Scottish Water can maintain supplies during prolonged dry periods thanks to continued investment in resilience measures, but I would ask everyone to use water responsibly. There are specific challenges in smaller supplies, particularly in rural areas, which we continue to monitor very closely last week. Prompt action from the Scottish Government permitted Scottish Water to secure and maintain water supplies for the Broadford community on Skye during an isolated incident. The Scottish Government-funded emergency bottled water scheme has also reopened providing water to households affected by shortages. Any household affected should contact their local authority, and I have asked officials and they have done an outreach to local authorities, asking them to proactively advertise that. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer, but SEPA reports that every part of Scotland now finds itself with a shortage of water. The situation is, as they put it, deteriorating fast, with the current dry spell perhaps lasting into July. SEPA says that it is preparing to prevent farmers and other industrial customers from abstracting water in certain parts of the country. The question for the cabinet secretary is when did SEPA first alert the Scottish Government to the possibility of water shortages this summer, and precisely what engagement did the Scottish Government have with SEPA in advance of the 8th of June report? Before I ask the cabinet secretary to reply, I will ask members who are commenting from a sedentary position to cease as it is making it very difficult to hear. The circumstances that Liam Kerr narrates are an early sign in Scotland of the manifestation of climate change, and therefore I very much hope that he and his party will reconsider their apparent standing against everything that this Government tries to do. On the point about water scarcity monitoring between Scottish Government, Scottish Water, our public water company and our independent regulator in SEPA, we have an exceptionally robust mechanism for monitoring scarcity and water levels generally across the country. SEPA proactively publish the water scarcity position in Scotland, just as it does the flooding position, so I would encourage Liam Kerr for his own behalf, and on behalf of his constituents, presumably, to look online for that information. I am happy to confirm to him that SEPA has a network of around 350 river gauges. Those record water levels and flows at 15-minute intervals 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That is being monitored very closely. As I say, between that tripartite of organisations, we will continue to make sure that Scotland is served with water. Liam Kerr warns people what is going on. The thing that will concern people most is that, in July last year, SEPA warned that water shortages would become more frequent and could seriously affect water supplies. In August, SEPA warned that the situation was getting worse and said that serious action needed to be taken. Mr Kerr, can I ask you to have a seat? Mr Swinney, can I ask you to refrain from commenting while members are putting questions? The same month, August 2022, it was reported that Scottish Water was leaking 185 olympic-sized swimming pools of water each year due to faulty infrastructure. So why then, Cabinet Secretary, did this Government ignore SEPA's warnings and instead cut over £8 million from Scottish Water's 2021 budget? There is no part of the very important work that SEPA does and that Scottish Water does in this regard, that the Scottish Government ignores quite the opposite. We are in almost constant contact with it. My colleague, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, met SEPA colleagues on Thursday last week. I met again with officials on the matter on Friday and, as I said, we keep each other very closely up to date. The First Minister himself has organised a score meeting where the Government's resilience organisation was put in place. We were assured that the mechanisms that are in place are robust and are working well to make sure that Scotland is served by water, including, as evidenced by what happened on Sky at the weekend. It is a matter of public record that last summer was the first time that SEPA's abstraction alterations had to be put into place. I repeat to the member that that is a matter of climate change manifesting in this country and he really ought to reconsider his party's very disappointing approach to virtually every policy that this Government tries to bring forward to tackle climate change. Scotland is already experiencing the effects of climate change, such as warmer summers and wetter winters, and it is expected that those trends will not only continue but intensify. Can the cabinet secretary outline what steps the Scottish Government has taken to adapt and build resilience to the impacts of climate change, such as the water scarcity? As a nation, our social and economic prosperity is increasingly reliant on how well we both mitigate climate change and adapt to the impacts of it that are already embedded. On that point about adaptation, our climate adaptation programme brings together 170 policies and programmes in order to prepare Scotland for the impacts of climate change that are built in. Specifically on scarcity, our approach this year has been to build on lessons learned from 2018-22, as I narrated in response to Liam Kerr. SEPA is already planning a further update to the national scarcity water plan this autumn to develop our national approach even further, and we are looking for ways in particular to support farmers because they are often the first affected when there is water scarcity and abstraction licenses have to be looked at. I should add, Presiding Officer, that last week I invited all MSPs to an update session, which will take place this afternoon with Scottish Water, SEPA and the Met Office. I encourage everyone who I understand will be concerned for their constituents to come to that and to ask questions. Last June, the Scottish Government announced that it would be investing in a pilot programme with Aberdeenshire Council to bring more properties on to mains water supplies. Around 50,000 properties are served by private supplies, often in remote and rural communities, which are more vulnerable to water shortages year on year. Can the cabinet secretary share what progress has been made on the Aberdeenshire pilot and how many of those 50,000 properties has that pilot brought on to mains supplies since last June? I am personally on a private water supply, so I know very keenly how vulnerable private water supplies can be to changes in the water levels, as many are experiencing across the country now. I repeat to them that bottled water is available from their local authority and they should seek it out. The piece of work that she mentions about piloting the connections to the public supply in Aberdeenshire is a critical piece of work. It is on-going. A great amount of important research is coming out of that, including the costs of connecting those who are not currently connected to the private supply network. On the detail that she asks for, if she does not mind, I will go away and I will get the figures separately and I will update her with the accuracy in writing that I would prefer to have before responding. Maurice Golden. Does the cabinet secretary believe that river basin management plans are fit for purpose, and would the cabinet secretary consider the development and introduction of a water use hierarchy to allow transparency over our precious resource? I have absolute confidence in the river basin management plans, just as I have confidence in Scotland's independent environment protection agency. If Maurice Golden wishes to cast doubt on that, he should raise that with me directly or with SEPA. A great deal of work is on-going, as I have narrated, within SEPA, within Scottish Water to 24-7, 365 days a year, monitor the water levels in this country as regards scarcity and flooding. I encourage every MSP to sign up for the proactive alerts that are connected with that. On the matter of a hierarchy, when it comes to questions of car licences and an abstraction being stopped in the case of scarcity, questions have to be asked about how appropriate it is that certain practices continue to abstract water. That is exactly what the experts within SEPA are grappling with as we deal with increasing scarcity across the country. To ask the Scottish Government regarding any implications for its deposit return scheme when it and its agencies were informed of Circularity Scotland's financial position, including the company's reported need to send staff home. We have learned today that a process is under way to appoint administrators to CSL, leaving their staff in an extremely difficult position. This is an unforgivable consequence of the UK Government's 11th-hour intervention, which undermined our deposit return scheme, made progress impossible and is now resulting in these jobs being lost. That is clearly a concerning time for staff at Circularity Scotland, and we have been in regular contact with Circularity Scotland since the UK Government's decision. I wrote to Circularity Scotland to thank their staff for their hard work to get to a position where the DRS was ready to launch in Scotland and to express our deep regret that we are now in this position. We continue to liaise with Circularity Scotland to consider how we may be able to support its staff, including providing paced support, which is the Scottish Government's initiative for providing advice and guidance to people at risk of redundancy. In terms of when the Scottish Government knew that Circularity Scotland faced financial challenges, we warned the UK Government repeatedly that a failure to agree an exclusion to the UK Internal Market Act would jeopardise the scheme. At 9.45pm, on Friday 26 May, having first spent the day briefing the media, the UK Government informed us that it would only grant a partial, temporary and highly conditional exclusion. It was clear then that the UK Government had torpedoed Scotland's scheme. I will have to ask you to conclude this response. Since then Circularity Scotland has been working tirelessly to identify a viable business model to take them forward and they have kept us informed throughout. Minister, we are in a situation where we now know that approximately 60 staff are sitting at home where they are unaware if they will be paid, with their chief executive advertising them on LinkedIn as 60 brilliant people available for roles. In her answer to written question S6W-18398, the minister said that CSL has been a trusted partner. The minister told us, and we know from press releases, that Circularity Scotland said that the scheme could go ahead. Can the minister really say that a company that acts like this does not even follow the regulations set by this Parliament to inform ministers in sepa of material changes in circumstances, is a partner that she is working with and the Scottish Government is working with? How do we know what is going to happen next? The minister claimed that she did not know last week when we were all reading it in the newspapers. As I say, there is a lot of interest in this. I would be grateful for concise questions and responses. Circularity Scotland had confidence that the scheme could go ahead without glass. However, the matter that is pernicious that actually blocks the scheme is those of those unreasonable conditions that were also placed at the same time as glass were removed. The member will recall that one of those conditions was that we matched the deposit level, a cap that the UK has. The UK has not published its regulations and told us what that deposit level is. It is impossible for me to launch a deposit return scheme when I cannot even tell businesses what the level of that deposit might be. That is why we were not able to go forward. In terms of Circularity Scotland, it will now be appointing an administrator and it will be for the administrator to decide how to move that forward. Under the regulations agreed by this Parliament, a scheme administrator has to be able to subsist for a period of five years. If it cannot, it must inform ministers and SEPAs of a change in circumstances which could ultimately require the minister to draw its approval. Does the minister have confidence that Circularity Scotland will be able to subsist for the entirety of the next five years? What does going into hibernation mean? As I have just told Parliament, Circularity Scotland is entering into administration. It is applying an administrator. The conditions for the application of the scheme administrator were valid at the time that that is done. The situation has changed in the last couple of weeks since that May 26 decision by the UK Government. We are adapting and Circularity Scotland are reacting to the situation that has been inflicted on us by the UK Government, who have changed its mind. Up until January this year, the UK Government was saying in writing that it was for devolved administrations to decide on their deposit return schemes. They changed their mind in May at the last possible minute, and this is the situation that we are all now having to adapt to. I call Kevin Stewart. This is a deeply regrettable situation, but staff who are now losing their jobs at CSL are not the only victims of the UK Government destroying Scotland's scheme. Circularity Scotland and its partners Biffa were also progressing a £7.7 million counting centre in Aberdeen and a similar facility in Motherwell. Can the minister say how many jobs and livelihoods have been destroyed by the UK Government's decision to undermine Scotland's scheme? Scotland's deposit return scheme would have created up to 500 new green jobs, including as the member highlights in Aberdeen and Motherwell. We are in the very regrettable position that these new jobs are now at risk with our DRS being unable to launch. The UK Government clearly is not interested in investment in Scotland, in jobs in Scotland nor in respecting businesses in Scotland. I call Douglas Lumsden. The Scottish National Investment Bank invested £9 million of public money into Circularity Scotland. Is that money now gone? The Scottish National Investment Bank is independent of government and ministers are not involved in the decision-making at the Scottish National Investment Bank. Its investments are a commercial and in-confidence matter between the bank and CSL. The deposit return scheme was getting ready to go live, create jobs and make our streets cleaner before it was recklessly blocked by the UK Government. When the minister met with UK ministers to discuss their decision to impose unworkable conditions on our scheme, did they provide any reassurances that Scottish expertise and experience, much of which sits within Circularity Scotland, would be used to contribute to the development of a UK-wide scheme? I met the Minister for Environmental Quality and Resilience, Rebecca Powell, last week to discuss the implications and next steps for Scotland's deposit return scheme. I urged her to meet with Circularity Scotland as soon as possible to discuss how their expertise and experience could be utilised to deliver DRS across the UK in 2025. I also warned that by not utilising this experience and without industry support, CSL would face imminent demise. Unfortunately, UK Government ministers have not followed this up, and no meetings between CSL and the UK Government have taken place. This clearly shows that this catastrophic UK Government is simply unwilling to take responsibility for their decisions and are not interested in Scottish jobs or Scottish businesses. Last week, at the net zero committee, the minister praised the expertise and experiences of the 60 staff that now have no idea if they will get paid or have a job. Is the minister concerned about the impact that this job losses will have on the implementation of DRS? I am, of course, very concerned about the impact of the job losses on the people affected by these jobs, but it is telling that the producers who fund Circularity Scotland know that they are going to need to comply with a deposit return scheme down the line. We have said 2025 because that is what the UK Government is saying, but producers clearly have no confidence that the UK Government is able to meet that 2025 deadline, and hence they have pulled their support in this way. Delivering a deposit return scheme in 2025, which I absolutely hope that we can do, is dependent on the UK Government passing its regulations, putting in place a scheme administrator and doing all the work that we did here in Scotland. Their fastest route to success would be to take on board the expertise that we have developed here, and that includes the expertise at Circularity Scotland. CSL faced going into needless administration as a scheme could have launched next year if the Scottish Government had chosen, and instead the 60-plus staff are facing meaningless platitudes from the minister. Can I ask what support will be provided to those 60-plus staff facing redundancy? I am absolutely flabbergasted at how the member can say that we can go ahead with a deposit return scheme when the member himself cannot tell me what the Tories and Westminster would set the deposit to. Nor can he tell me what fees to producers would be, nor can he tell me what the fees to return handling fees would be. If he cannot tell me these, I cannot put together a viable business model for deposit return in Scotland. That is impossible. As for the staff at CSL, it is my understanding that they have been paid for the work that they are done, and we have offered pay support, which is the Scottish Government's initiative for providing advice and guidance to people at risk of redundancy. What an absolute disaster for the employees and for the country? Two Governments simply cannot work together. As a result, this Government's incompetence has real consequences. With Circularity Scotland now in administration, will that inevitably mean that industry pays twice to implement a deposit return scheme? I recognise the member's statement that this is a disaster for the staff members. What I do not recognise is the representation of two Governments working the same way. The Scottish Government, at every point, followed the common frameworks and provided the advice. We set out what we were going to do. The UK Government changed their mind at the last minute. Between January and May, they changed what they were going to do. They broke out of the common frameworks process. They have not been working in good faith, and they made these decisions, imposed them on us, knowing that it would have catastrophic effects on our scheme because I told them that that was the case. The member must not misrepresent what has happened here. We moved forward in good faith. We estimate that around £300 million of investment had been made. Scottish businesses were moving forward. We had IT systems, sorting centres, vehicles. The UK Government has not even got regulations. This is not two Governments not working together. This is us working very hard and the UK Government torpedoing us. That concludes topical questions. The next item of business is a statement by Eleanor Whitham on medication-assisted treatment standards implementation. The Minister will take questions at the end of her statement, and so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I'll just allow a moment while members move positions.