Chamber and committees

The information is not held centrally.

Some data are available for Revolve certified organisations. Revolve is Scotland’s National Reuse Quality Standard and Revolve stores are supported to work to key standards, and are committed to quality.

In 2020-21 sales through Revolve certified community stores reported to Zero Waste Scotland were over £22 million. The 95 Revolve stores which reported to Zero Waste Scotland recorded 680 full time staff employed and 52,873 volunteer hours from 1,095 volunteers recorded in those same organisations, and approximately 22,000 tonnes of material was estimated to be diverted from landfill. It is not appropriate to compare these totals directly with those of previous years, as a different proportion of stores provided monitoring data and, because of COVID-19, stores were operational for only a fraction of the year.

The Scottish Government supports the principles underpinning the green taxonomy, especially the need to establish criteria for sustainable economic activity, to give investors certainty on the sustainability of projects, and to combat greenwashing, and we look forward to continuing to work internationally with our partners in the European Union and its Member States to combat climate change.

The Scottish Government position on nuclear power is clear – we do not support the building of new nuclear power stations in Scotland under current technologies. Given that new nuclear power will take years, if not decades, to become operational and will be expensive, we do not believe classifying nuclear as sustainable or transitional should be our focus.

The best pathway to net zero is through increased investment in renewables, storage, hydrogen and carbon capture. Concentrating growth in these technologies is better for both energy security and the climate. As the UK taxonomy is a reserved matter, we are working with UK government to ensure the forthcoming UK taxonomy reflects the level of climate ambition the Scottish Government has set. We will be publishing our Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan later this year, including energy scenarios that will set out how Scotland can achieve our climate targets and meets our energy needs in a sustainable manner by 2050, and will provide a long term basis for investment in energy generation in Scotland.

All territorial NHS Boards were invited to submit proposals to the Strategic Network on managing the long term effects of COVID-19 for how they intended to utilise long COVID Support Funding across 2022-23. Returns were received from 13 Health Boards.

Following review by the Network’s Strategic Oversight Board, the funding allocations outlined in the table below were confirmed to these Boards on 19 May 2022 to support the delivery of activities identified within their proposals.

The Scottish Government has always been clear the triangulation of learning from complaints and incidents must be a corner stone of clinical governance and improvement and that is why we wrote to NHS Board Chief Executives about the British Academy of Audiology (BAA) reports in December 2021.

In their returns Boards outlined specific actions which included the development of local action plans, review of protocols and guidelines, additional training and professional development sessions. All Chief Executives confirmed a Lead Director and single point of contact in the service for the Independent Review of Audiology which will examine governance and quality assurance arrangements for audiology services in Scotland as a part of its remit.

The Scottish Government welcomes any activity that can lead to a positive impact on the health of our veteran community.

As the armed forces are subject to the reserved responsibility of the UK Government, the Veterans’ Health Innovation Fund is open to applications from Scottish projects as well as projects from the rest of the UK.

It is a one-off fund being administered by the Defence and Security Accelerator on behalf of UK Office of Veterans’ Affairs and is open to projects – including in Scotland – that will drive forward innovation in techniques and pathways for meeting veterans’ physical and mental health needs. It aims to ensure treatment is informed by the latest research and developments in clinical care.

The Scottish Government is a member of the fund’s steering board. The steering Board will determine which projects are successful against set criteria and be put forward for UKG ministerial approval.

This is a matter for Public Health Scotland. The information requested is not held centrally.

Hospital at Home services have been developing in Scotland for a number of years, with the first service established in Lanarkshire in 2011, followed by Fife in 2012 and the Lothian Partnerships between 2013 and 2016, and Dundee in 2018.

To further support development the Scottish Government commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to develop the Hospital at Home Guiding Principles, which were subsequently published in January 2020 ( https://ihub.scot/project-toolkits/hospital-at-home/hospital-at-home/ ). In April 2020 HIS began providing improvement support to partnerships developing a Hospital at Home service, supported by Scottish Government funding. To date, this support has increased the number of partnerships in Scotland providing a Hospital at Home service to 20.

The following table provides details of the number of patients supported by a Hospital at Home service, by Financial Year and Health Board between 2014-15 and 2021-22.

The Scottish Government meet regularly with NHS Lothian in relation to their current status on the NHS board performance escalation framework, this involves the Board working through and reporting progress against a formal Recovery Plan that covers all the BAA recommended actions. The telephone helpline, established by NHS Lothian, also continues to be in operation to allow families to make direct contact with NHS Lothian about any audiology concerns.

The war in Ukraine has sent shockwaves through the global food system and the impacts are being felt by producers and consumers in Scotland. This has compounded the challenging operating environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit.

I committed to support active farming and food production with direct payments - which provides certainty to the industry - and we delivered 2021 Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) payments to schedule with over £564 million issued to date. In addition, this year, to support farmers with the cost of living, the Scottish Government has brought forward the advance payment start date to as early in the year as is practicably possible. The intention is to support businesses, as far as possible, with immediate cash flow challenges.

The Scottish Government is also monitoring the impacts of energy prices and other input costs on agriculture, fisheries and food sectors. For example, in March, we set up the Short-life Food Security and Supply Taskforce jointly with industry to monitor, identify and respond to any potential disruption to food security and supply, as a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Its report was published in June 2022: www.gov.scot/news/safeguarding-food-security .

The First Minister has issued a letter to the Prime Minister calling for an emergency meeting of the 4 Nations’ Heads of Government Council and has convened the Scottish Government Resilience Committee, which will now meet weekly. However, it remains the case that the powers and resources needed to tackle this emergency on the scale required - access to borrowing, welfare, VAT on fuel, taxation of windfall profits, regulation of the energy market - lie with the UK Government. Scottish Ministers have repeatedly called for the UK Government to urgently take further, tangible action.

I know that many consumers across Scotland are facing long waits for energy meters to be installed and this has been a source of much frustration.

Regulation of energy markets, including in relation to the installation of meters, remains reserved to the UK Government meaning that the Scottish Government's potential actions in regards to this are limited.

My officials have raised this issue with Ofgem, the energy regulator.