Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government takes seriously the need to ensure there are effective school transport arrangements in place during the Covid-19 pandemic. Scottish Ministers issued guidance to local authorities to support the reopening of schools in August. A £50 million education recovery fund has also been established which can be used to supplement existing funding for school transport services. The Covid-19 School Transport Retrofit Fund is providing £1.5m of capital funding to assist local authorities and bus operators to fit infection control and mitigation measures on school transport vehicles.

Local Authorities have a responsibility in law under the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 to make the arrangements they consider necessary for the transport of school pupils between home and school. The Scottish Government does not hold information regarding the levels of school transport services being provided by individual local authorities.

Breakfast clubs in Scotland are currently delivered by a wide variety of providers, including by local authorities in schools, but also by private and third sector organisations and in a range of community settings. In developing and implementing the universal provision of breakfast clubs for all primary school pupils it will be important to consider how and where this is provided to ensure it offers the best experience for children and families, as well as value for money.

Data on deaths by suicide is published annually by National Records of Scotland and Public Health Scotland. The most recent data, that for 2019, was published on 24 November 2020. The data for 2020 is scheduled to be published in June 2021.

The Modern Apprenticeship Quarter 2 statistics, published on 10 November 2020 provided more evidence of the continued impact of COVID-19 restrictions on all parts of the Scottish economy. The latest statistics, covering July-September, showed a slight increase in starts compared to the previous period, but are still lower than in previous years. Many sectors that are active employers of apprentices were necessarily placed into lockdown by COVID-19 and are experiencing the consequences of these restrictions.

The Scottish Government remains committed to our apprenticeship programme and will continue to do all we can to support apprentices and their employers during this time. Apprenticeships are at the heart of our skills system in Scotland and are an important part of Scotland’s Young Person’s Guarantee. They will play a key role in our economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting high-quality jobs and enabling employers to gain skilled workers.

The Scottish Government has created a new Apprenticeship Employer Grant to encourage employers to take on Modern and Graduate apprenticeships. Recognising the challenging circumstances for employers as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19), and the impact on opportunities for young people, more businesses will now be able to access financial support to help them take on young people through the new £15 million Apprenticeship Employer Grant.

Supporting the Scottish Government’s aim of maximising apprenticeship opportunities in the coming months, the grant will help increase the number of employers able to take on an apprentice or upskill an existing staff member.

The grant makes available £5,000 for employers taking on a 16 to 24 year old apprentice, and for those aged up to 29 years old who are disabled, care leavers and Minority Ethnic. Any employers who take on an apprentice aged 25 or older will receive a financial incentive of £3,500.

Funding will be available for eligible employers where the apprenticeship start date was on or after 1 December 2020 and funding will be available for apprenticeship starts until 25 March 2021.

In partnership with the National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group, we have been working closely with Public Health Scotland and Police Scotland to establish protocols that will provide more timely local data on possible suicides. This approach will enable local services to provide a faster, more effective response to those impacted by possible suicides. We expect these protocols to be ready for implementation early next year.

In developing the various measures set out in Scotland’s Route Map and Scotland's Strategic Framework, the Scottish Government has taken a 4 harms approach, which includes consideration of the impacts on Scottish society and on inequalities.

A range of support is in place for people and communities at risk. This is supported by expert advice through the Social Renewal Advisory Board, the Expert Reference Group on COVID-19 and Ethnicity, and the First Minister's National Taskforce for Human Rights Leadership.

Equality Impact Assessments have been carried out for the various Coronavirus Regulations, including the Regulations implementing Scotland's Strategic Framework and can be found on www.legislation.gov.uk under the appropriate instrument.

Equality Impact Assessments have also accompanied Scotland’s Route Map and can be found on the Scottish Government website.

The Scottish Government is clear that, in a prosperous country like Scotland, everyone should have a roof over their head and no-one should be forced to choose between heating and eating. We have integrated human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals in to our National Performance Framework to ensure that equality and rights are at the centre of policy-making and delivery.

Investing in action to address poverty is a key step. We invested £1.96 billion in 2019-20 alone to support low income households. During the current COVID pandemic, which has had a range of impacts on household finances, we have invested over £130 million in tackling food insecurity including the provision of free school meal support during school closures and holidays, and have made over
‎ £57.6 million available for the Scottish Welfare Fund. Our £100m Winter Plan for Social Protection will further support people and communities in the months ahead.

Our Good Food Nation ambition is underpinned by the idea that everyone should be able to take pride and pleasure in, and benefit from, the food they produce, buy, cook, serve, and eat each day. Like all Scottish Government action, this work will continue to be informed by our international obligations. Scottish Ministers have committed to develop a new statement on food policy, to build on recent experience of the Coronavirus response, which will consider rights, security, production and availability of food.

Everyone deserves to live in a home that is warm and affordable to heat. That is why we passed the Fuel Poverty (Targets, Definition and Strategy) (Scotland) Act 2019, which sets legally binding targets for us to reduce the number of households in fuel poverty. It is also why we have been investing heavily in improving the energy efficiency of the country’s housing. By the end of 2021, we will have invested over £1 billion since 2009 in tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency, including £198 million this year alone. This investment has already lowered bills and reduced CO2 emissions as well as supporting the creation of jobs, training opportunities and innovations.

People facing homelessness in Scotland already have some of the strongest rights in the world and we have committed in our updated Ending Homelessness Together Action Plan (2020) to go even further to ensure we eradicate homelessness and achieve our vision of everyone having a home to call their own. Having a settled home is the best way to ensure people can live their lives with good health, wellbeing, a sense of community and belonging, and is crucial to promoting inclusion and equality and to our vision for a fairer Scotland. We are already committed to supporting the development of a wider range of options for a settled home so that people are helped to find a housing solution that works for them.

Moving forward, The Scottish Government’s Social Renewal Advisory Board, as it looks to inform our recovery and renewal agenda, has a clear focus on reducing poverty and disadvantage, embedding a human-rights based approach and advancing equality.

Beyond this, the National Taskforce for Human Rights Leadership will also be exploring a new statutory human rights framework for Scotland and is currently considering the approach it will take to specific rights. In doing so, it will cover civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including measures to protect against poverty.

The Scottish Government has worked in partnership with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations to support digital participation for all and so far funding totalling around £1.5 million has supported 189 projects, 77 self-identifying as supporting older people.

In addition, in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Connecting Scotland programme was established in May 2020. It aims to provide a national, person-centred, consistent and comprehensive approach to reducing the rates of digital exclusion and digital marginalisation due to low income.

Phase one of the programme provides up to 9000 digitally excluded people at high clinical risk of Covid-19 with access to a device, internet connection and data, and training and support to be online for up to a year. This was subsequently extended to 2 years as a result of increased funding. Whilst analysis on those who are benefitting from the programme is in progress, it is clear that many households within this group have comprised of older people.

Phase two of the programme provides funding for low income families with children and young care leavers and will reach up to 23,000 households. This phase launched on 18 August with the first round of applications for Phase 2 closing on 5 October with awards and delivery of devices to take place from December onwards. Applications for the second round of Phase 2 will close on 18 January 2021.

Additional funding allocated through the Winter Support Fund, announced on 30 November, will allow the Connecting Scotland programme to provide up to 5,000 devices for socially isolated older people or disabled people.

This will allow the Connecting Scotland programme to reach up to 55,000 by the end of 2021 and with funding announced through the Programme for Government, to extend the offer of unlimited data, training and support from one year to two years.

We are determined to meet our child poverty targets. Our first Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, covering the period 2018-22 outlines comprehensive action to tackle child poverty, including the Scottish Child Payment - worth £10 per child per week. This Payment will be paid to 194,000 children when rolled out in full in 2022.

If the Scottish Child Payment is taken together with the Best Start Grant and the Best Start Food Support Payment, an eligible two-child family will be provided with around £10,000-worth of support in the early years of their children’s lives.

We will set out further action, at the scale and pace required, within our subsequent Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plans to be published in 2022 and 2026.

As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlight, efforts in Scotland must be matched by stronger support at a UK level. This includes retaining the uplift to the standard allowances in Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit and extending this to key legacy benefits.

Improving women’s position in the labour market is a priority for the Scottish Government and a key part of delivering inclusive economic growth. We are aware of the disproportionate affects COVID-19 is having on women, in particular young women. We are taking action by reviewing the actions within our Fairer Scotland for Women: Gender Pay Gap Action Plan , to ensure they remain fit for purpose and support women through the economic recovery from COVID-19 and to ensure equality and human rights are embedded in all we do to mitigate against the disproportionate impacts COVID-19 has and will continue to have on different groups including young women.

On 5 November the Scottish Government launched a £60 million investment in the development of the Young Person’s Guarantee. This includes providing an additional £30 million to fund local partnership activity, via Local Authorities, to provide a person centred and place based approach to the Guarantee. This means that support can be tailored to support young women who have been impacted by COVID-19.

A consultation exercise involving third sector representatives is also underway to ensure the Scottish Young Person’s Guarantee reflects the needs of all young people – with a particular focus on young people furthest removed from the labour market and at risk of entering a negative destination.

On 30 November, the First Minister announced two new initiatives to maximise apprenticeship uptake throughout Scotland and create opportunities for young people. These are the new Apprenticeship Employer Grant to encourage more employers to take on apprentices and also Pathway Apprenticeships which will provide work-based training for school-leavers up to the age of 18 to help young people gain key skills in sectors like construction, business, IT, engineering and early years.

We also look to ensure gender and broader equalities is a key consideration in the development and delivery of all our employment and skills programmes, including the Employability Fund, Community Jobs Scotland and No One Left Behind.