Chamber and committees

The Minister and I had a constructive meeting last year in Paris during which we discussed the scope for further developing Franco-Scottish relations and discussed the challenges of welcoming refugees following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

The subject of Scottish independence was not an agenda item in discussions. However, Scottish ministers will always be polite enough during international meetings to answer any questions put to them about the Scottish Government's stated policies, including a legal, constitutionally sound referendum, as set out in our Programme for Government.

State Secretary Marko Štucin and I had a constructive meeting last year during which we discussed areas for collaboration including equalities and AI.

The subject of Scottish independence was not an agenda item in discussions. However, Scottish ministers will always be polite enough during international meetings to answer any questions put to them about the Scottish Government's stated policies, including a legal, constitutionally sound referendum, as set out in our Programme for Government.

Thank you for this question however this information is not held centrally.

Social Security Scotland’s priority is to get decisions right first time and an extremely low number of re-determinations are carried out. The re-determination request rate for Child Disability Payment decisions made by Social Security Scotland is 4.6%, which indicates that the vast majority of clients are happy with the initial decision.

Re-determinations are an important part of the decision-making process as they give clients the opportunity to ask Social Security Scotland to look at their application afresh before lodging an appeal.

Child Disability Payment decisions are usually changed at re-determination stage because the client provides additional information that was not available when the initial decision was made. Social Security Scotland staff now make additional contact with clients at the initial decision stage. While this may add to overall processing times, it will help ensure that such information is available first time round.

The First Minister appointed myself as Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, and I will have responsibility for Ukraine Resettlement and continue to support displaced people from Ukraine across Scotland.

The number of General Practices located in the most and least deprived areas in Scotland is shown in the following table, based on data published by Public Health Scotland relating to 1 January 2023.

As a result of the difficult decisions which had to be taken through the Emergency Budget review, recruitment of the 1,000 additional roles to support community mental health resilience, ensuring every GP Practice has access to a mental health and wellbeing service has not yet commenced. We have already prioritised significant investment to build mental health capacity in primary care through Action 15 of the Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027 and the Primary Care Improvement Fund.

We remain committed to improving mental health service provision in primary care settings. We are therefore working closely with stakeholders, including the Mental Health in Primary Care National Oversight Group, to develop plans to best use the resource available across the system in 2023-24, and in future years to improve support, assessment and treatment in primary care settings.

Social Security Scotland’s Local Delivery service has teams based in every Scottish Local Authority, and in many cases are co-located with existing services to make sure that they bring support to places that people currently go. This localised approach to support also means that visibility of the service is tailored to meet the demands and demographics of each Local Authority area.

Through analysis of their data, Social Security Scotland are able to identify areas with low take-up or high rates of unsuccessful applications. This evidence can then be used to target engagement with local stakeholders to raise awareness of Scottish benefits and effectively support people to take up their entitlements.

Ministers meet representatives of civil society organisations from time to time to discuss matters of common interest. Meetings with the Human Rights Consortium Scotland have been held on a number of occasions since May 2021.

Information about ministerial engagements is proactively released and is publicly available on the Scottish Government website .

Civil society organisations contribute in other ways to the development and delivery of public policy in Scotland, for example through participation in working groups and advisory boards.

The Human Rights Consortium Scotland is a member of the Governance and Engagement Board for the Scottish Government’s proposed Human Rights Bill. Details are available on the Scottish Government website .

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

National Records of Scotland (NRS) are the official producer of statistics relating to deaths, including where the cause was related to COVID-19. The information they hold is restricted to that recorded at death registration and therefore they do not hold sufficient detail to identify where a person had in place a do not resuscitate order.

A one off analysis of COVID-19 deaths by disability was made possible by linking information on death registrations to data on long-term health problems and disabilities from Scotland’s Census 2011. This is publicly available on the NRS website: Deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) in Scotland, Week 11: Report (nrscotland.gov.uk)

There is no ongoing or planned work to look further at the level of detail outlined in the question.