Chamber and committees

The member can find details on the progress of the High Level Masonry inspections and the reopening of sites on the Historic Environment Scotland website at – https://www.historicenvironment.scot/conservation-works-happening-at-our-sites/

Historic Environment continues to review the budgetary requirements as the inspections programme delivers its findings, considering both capacity needed as well as funding. Against a challenging financial backdrop, the Scottish Government will continue to support Historic Environment Scotland to maintain Scotland’s heritage and historic environment, and I will continue to engage regularly with Historic Environment Scotland to discuss the closures and restrictions.

The Scottish Government is in the final stages of preparing a Carers Strategy which will set out our long-term approach to unpaid carers’ social and financial inclusion. This will apply to different caring situations, including unpaid older carers of adults with a learning disability. The strategy will include a focus on support made available through social security policies, the Scottish Welfare Fund and action taken by the Scottish Government on fuel poverty, employment and education. This will help support carers who are likely to be disproportionately impacted by the cost of living crisis.

We are using all the powers and resources available to us to support families with cost of living and have already invested almost £3 billion in a range of measures for households. That includes supporting energy bills, childcare, health and travel, as well as social security payments that are either not available anywhere else in the UK or are more generous, such as the Scottish Child Payment and Bridging Payment.

In addition, we uprated 8 Scottish benefits by 6% in April. Eligible carers in Scotland receive the Carer’s Allowance Supplement, funded from the Scottish Government budget and paying up to £491.40 this year on top of Carer’s Allowance. We will double our Fuel Insecurity Fund to £20 million in 2022-23, to help households at risk of self-disconnection or self-rationing energy use and to ensure support continues to protect people affected by rising energy costs.

We know that the current situation is causing anxiety for many households – and that many people may be missing out on support that is available to them. To help people understand the significant range of support that they may be able to access, we have also launched a Scottish Government “cost of living” website: https://www.gov.scot/cost-of-living-support/ . The website will help people find out what support may be available depending on their own personal circumstances, for example, unpaid carers of adults with a learning disability.

Since the Scottish Government's £50m Ukraine Longer Term Resettlement Fund was launched on 22 September 2022, there has been two successful applications:

Aberdeen City Council has been awarded up to £6.150m for up to 500 void properties on 28 October 2022.

North Ayrshire Council has been awarded up to £0.486m for up to 30 void properties on 6 October 2022

This follows on from a pilot project, where we awarded £5m to North Lanarkshire Council for the refurbishment of up to 200 homes on 6 July 2022.

My officials are continuing to work closely with Local Authorities and Registered Social Landlords as they come forward with other proposed projects.

I have engaged with all Cabinet Secretaries collectively throughout the EBR process.

The spending on the Lord Advocate’s reference to the Supreme Court as published on 22 September 2022 was on external legal fees. An additional £350 has been spent on Supreme Court filing fees.

We will be publishing updated costs of the reference, including a breakdown of them, in December.

The New Scots refugee integration strategy is built on partnership and collaboration, led by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council, and involves a wide range of partners across different sectors.

The New Scots Core Group brings together key stakeholders and is responsible for monitoring and reviewing progress against the overarching outcomes of the strategy. The Core Group is chaired by Professor Alison Phipps, UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow.

The Core Group usually meets four times per year. This year, the group undertook a two-part workshop in January and February, as part of the New Scots Refugee Integration Delivery Project. The Core Group then met in June and in October, with the final meeting of the year set to take place in December.

We will publish the minutes from the October meeting in December, once cleared by Core Group at the next meeting. We will also publish minutes of the Group’s other meetings from 2022.

This decision was taken on 14 September.

Scottish Government officials and COSLA are working together as a partnership to ensure all Ukrainian displaced people are supported during their time in Scotland. As they are a key stakeholder in this work, the Scottish Government has regular and ongoing engagement with COSLA at Ministerial and official level.

I met with the COSLA spokesperson for Community Wellbeing this week, and details of Ministerial engagements are regularly published on the Scottish Government’s website: Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The Scottish Government does not hold the information requested.

There are official figures available for businesses that have ceased trading during a given period. These figures do not represent a complete picture of business activity as only businesses that are registered for VAT and/or operate a PAYE scheme are included.

These figures, sourced from the Office for National Statistics Business Demography data, show that for Creative Industries in Scotland there were 1,810 businesses that ceased trading in 2019 and 2,170 in 2020 (Table 7.3 at Growth sector statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . Data for 2021 will be available in February 2023.

The Scottish Governments understands how deeply the cultural sector has been affected by rising energy costs and the cost of living crisis which have come just as they are beginning to recover from the pandemic.

The Scottish Government is meeting regularly with the sector to discuss these issues.

We recognise the significant role cultural organisations play in our lives and we are committed to the long term recovery of the sector.