Scotland’s Sustainable Development Commissioner has spoken of her fears of how progress on sustainable development could suffer following the discontinuation of UK Government funding for the Whitehall branch of the organisation.

Professor Jan Bebbington also told Holyrood that there were question marks over the future of the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) in Scotland, and said that she was extremely keen to find out whether or not the Scottish Government planned to continue funding for the independent advisory body.

If funding was to be discontinued, Bebbington said that she worried progress on sustainability would be more fragmented.

She said: “I think in terms of having a big cohort of people for whom this is their core business . .

. and there’s a transfer of learning between the different governments, I think that’s lost when you take away a cross-UK body.”