Chamber and committees

The Homeowner Feedback Survey and the Home Energy Efficiency Equity Loan Pilot Call for Evidence were published in March this year. The Scottish Government will consider the possibility of a national rollout of such a scheme as part a suite of financial solutions to support our decarbonisation and energy efficiency targets with the Green Heat Finance Taskforce, who will be publishing their interim recommendations in mid-March next year and final recommendations in September 2023.

This data is not collected centrally.

Currently breakfast club provision in Scotland is delivered through a mixed model of in-school, private and voluntary services which often combine food provision with early morning childcare. Many parents will pay directly for breakfast clubs with costs varying according to how and where the service is delivered. Many local authorities subsidise or provide breakfast clubs for free with funding coming from general revenue funds.

We are committed to funding the expansion of free school meals to all pupils in primary and special schools, as well as introducing free year-round breakfast and lunch provision to support eligible children and young people outside of the school term. In order to effectively deliver an expanded breakfast offer we need to better understand the extent of current breakfast provision across local authorities. Our priority this year is to is to map existing provision and plan what delivery of a future breakfast offer should look like to best meet the needs of children and families in Scotland. Appropriate funding to support breakfast provision across the whole of Scotland will then be allocated once we understand both the gaps in provision and funding.

This year we are providing £21.75M of targeted support for food provision during the school holidays for all eligible primary and secondary children and young people. We have also provided £10M of funding for our summer 2022 childcare, food and activities programme which will test models of providing holiday services for families recognising the need for childcare and food, particularly in the summer holiday period.

The numbers of confirmed strokes admitted during 2016 - 2021 showing median time (minutes) to brain imaging are shown in the following table:

The Scottish Government welcomes the work of the European Stroke Organisation and agree that it is vital to ensure improvements are made to stroke pathways and services, including prevention, treatment and care.

Through our Programme for Government commitments and the Stroke Improvement Plan, we are already reflecting the aims of the European Stroke Organisation’s appeal targets.

We are supporting the National Advisory Committee on Stroke to develop a progressive stroke pathway document which will set out the vision of what stroke services across Scotland should deliver across the whole patient pathway, including access to stroke rehabilitation, and access to support for people who have experienced a stroke. However, at this time, the Scottish Government does not have plans to use the tracker. The Scottish Stroke Care Audit will continue to track our progress against the Scottish stroke care standards.

Table 1 below presents the findings of HM Treasury’s analysis of education spending per head across Scotland, England and Wales.

Table 1 - Identifiable education expenditure by country, per head, 2016-17 to 2020-21

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 provides local authorities with a discretionary power to set up workplace parking licensing (WPL) schemes. It will be for local authorities to decide whether to implement a WPL scheme in their local area, and to make decisions on how their local scheme will operate.

If implemented by local authorities, the WPL charge will be levied on employers and it will be a matter for employers, including the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament to decide whether they pass the cost of schemes onto employees. However, no specific workplace parking licensing schemes have yet been proposed.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-06852 on 11 March 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 .

We apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused any individual. We are aware of a very small number of instances of this occurring in the first few days of operation, out of the 2.7M Internet Access codes (IAC) issued. This issue was resolved. If required, a replacement IAC can be requested via the census website: www.census.gov.scot/request or by contacting our free helpline on 0800 030 8308.

Whilst Census Day is Sunday 20th March, there is still plenty of time to complete the census, as in previous exercises returns are accepted after this date.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07181 on 24 March 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 .