Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government continues to prioritise investment in health and social care and to work with health boards to address financial pressures across the system. Investment of over £73 billion over the Resource Spending Review period, and a further £1.3 billion capital investment to 2025-26, will support recovery and redesign of services and delivery of a financially, environmentally and socially sustainable health service.

The upcoming NHS Climate Emergency and Sustainability Strategy calls for Health Boards to focus on energy efficiency measures and the generation of on-site renewable electricity through solar panels and wind turbines. Short and medium term reductions in electricity use will provide reductions in cumulative emissions, i.e. the total emissions resulting from the NHS over the period, as well as limiting energy bills.

The Scottish Government’s Heat in Buildings Strategy sets out that its Green Public Sector Estate Decarbonisation scheme will invest a minimum of £200 million between 2021-2026 in public sector energy efficiency and decarbonisation improvements. Health Boards have successfully applied for funding in the first round of that scheme and will be supported to apply to future rounds as well. Up to £50,000 of pre-capital funding is also available per organisation to carry out measures such as energy audits to inform the development of energy efficiency and transition programmes.

We recognise that language is a critical element of integration and that this may be challenging for displaced people and hosts alike. We appreciate those that have opened their homes to guests from Ukraine.

We have published guidance to support hosts who have generously opened their homes to displaced people and we would suggest hosts make use of free online translation services. The Scottish Refugee Council also provides helpful guidance around interpretation here: Where to find help and information if you are from Ukraine - Google Docs

It may be helpful to note that when displaced people are accessing public services, such as GPs and social services, licensed interpreters are available.

The Scottish Government are committed to continuing to improve the promotion, quality, and implementation of Self-directed Support.

Due to changes in SG accounting systems and SG Retention Policies it has not been possible to obtain details of all funding awarded since 1997. Since the Self-Directed Support Scotland Act 2013 came into force in 2014, Scottish Government has provided a total of £46.6m to strategic delivery partners which include Social Work Scotland, Inspiring Scotland, In Control, Self-Directed Support Scotland, The Alliance and Transformation a Funding to all Local Authorities. These Strategic Delivery Partners support the delivery of SDS and direct payments through, in excess of 1000, membership organisations.

It has not been possible to estimate funding spent solely on promotion of direct payments and Self-Directed Support since 1997. This is due to funding recipients not recording actual spend for direct promotional activities, however all funding recipients promote the use of direct payments and self-directed support in all activities funded. Therefore, as all the Self-directed Support Strategic Delivery partners support all people that require social care, the full amount of funding supports disabled people's organisations either directly or indirectly through our strategic delivery partners membership organisations throughout Scotland.

Promotion of direct payments and Self-directed Support has been different for each organisation and has taken many forms such as expenditure on communication, engagement with social work users and working with Local Authorities to raise awareness of available processes therefore making it difficult to define and determine exactly how much budget has been used towards it

Scottish Government has invested £2,959,658.23 in the Support in the Right Direction (SiRD) programme in financial year 2022-23. The SIRD programme is managed by Inspiring Scotland and has a presence in all 32 local authority areas, with each SiRD organisation providing services targeted to the needs of disabled people.

As all Self-directed Support Strategic Delivery partners support all people that require social care, Inspiring Scotland are committed to ensuring that all funding made available to SiRDS organisations either directly or indirectly support the needs of disabled people through accessing services provided by SiRD organisations

Over the course of this parliament, we have committed to investing £1.8 billion into zero emissions heating and energy efficiency across Scotland. This includes the Scottish Government’s Home Energy Scotland Loan and Cashback scheme which currently provides households with up to £17,500 of combined loan and cashback funding for the installation of zero emissions heating systems.

The current Home Energy Scotland loan scheme has been operational and supporting households for some time, with the cashback element introduced in 2020. Through the Heat in Buildings Strategy we have also committed to replacing the cashback element of the scheme with a standalone grant during the course of 2022-23.

In developing the new grant scheme and setting grant levels, we are examining a range of evidence. This consideration will include the recent reports published by Nesta. This report and follow up report ‘how to increase the demand for heat pumps’ published in June 2022 by Nesta raises many informative findings, amongst them that a combination of incentives was found to be the most effective in increasing heat pump uptake, in particular a grant combined with lower running costs of the system.

The Scottish Government aims to make the installation of zero emissions heating systems both desirable and achievable for households across Scotland, and the future development of the Home Energy Scotland Loan and Grant scheme will play a large part in this.

The following table provides a breakdown by local authority area of all applications to the Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme received in Round 1, for funding in financial year 2021-22.

The second Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH2) does not prescribe what measures a landlord should install.

The Scottish Housing Regulator does not currently publish data on the value of investment on complying with EESSH2 nor on the individual measures installed in order to comply with EESSH2 milestones.

Between 2018 and 2021, £7 million was made available by the Scottish Government to Local Authority and Housing Association landlords through the Energy Efficient Scotland Transition Programme’s Decarbonisation Fund to assist in compliance with EESSH and EESSH2. The funding was for energy efficiency measures, such as insulation and internal works, within projects that included decarbonisation activity (e.g. ground source heat pumps, air source heat pumps, biomass, solar PV and storage) and the conversion of off-gas grid properties to these technologies. The Scottish Government did not provide direct funding for heating in these properties.

Since 2020, the Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund has committed £14.33 million of grant funding to 20 social housing decarbonisation retrofit projects across Scotland. This includes the installation of zero emissions heating systems and “fabric first” energy efficiency upgrades. Non-zero-emissions solutions are not eligible for support under this fund. The Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme (LCITP) has provided a further £6.1 million of grant funding to two projects involving the installation of zero emissions heating.

Latest HMRC (Regional Trade Statistics) RTS statistics show that in 2021, based on total trade in goods (imports plus exports), Scotland’s largest trading partner was the USA at £5.5 billion. Note this data only includes trade in goods and not services and excludes oil and gas (SITC 3 – Mineral fuels).

The Scottish Government are committed to continuing to improve the promotion, quality, and implementation of Self-directed Support.

Due to changes in SG accounting systems and SG Retention Policies it has not been possible to obtain details of all funding awarded since 1997. Since the Self-Directed Support Scotland Act 2013 came into force in 2014, Scottish Government has provided a total of £46.6m to Strategic Delivery Partners which include Social Work Scotland, Inspiring Scotland, In Control, Self-Directed Support Scotland, The Alliance and Transformational Funding to all Local Authorities.

It has not been possible to estimate funding spent solely on promotion of direct payments and Self-Directed Support since 1997. This is due to funding recipients not recording actual spend for direct promotional activities, however all funding recipients promote the use of direct payments and self-directed support in all activities funded

Scotland’s export performance is published annually in the Export Statistics Scotland (ESS) report at the start of each year and provides the Scottish Government with estimates of Scotland’s international and domestic trade in both good and services, excluding oil and gas. The timing and content of the ESS publication is determined independently of ministers.

ESS relies heavily on company data collected through the Global Connections Survey (GCS). However, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in the postponement of that survey in 2020 and impacted the publishing the ESS in 2020 and 2021. However, data collection for the GGS 2020 and 2021 data is due to start imminently.

Our most reliable and up to date source of export data is provided by the ESS 2019 report - Export statistics Scotland: 2019 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . Based on ESS 2019, the USA is our top international export destination with an estimated value of just over £6bn in total exports.