Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has had no discussions with either party on this matter as local government pay and other employment matters are delegated to local authorities and COSLA.

However, we urge all parties to continue open, constructive dialogue to find a resolution which avoids any potential industrial action and reaches a satisfactory conclusion for both sides.

Pay for local government employees, including ancillary school staff, is negotiated between the trade unions and COSLA through the Scottish Joint Committee (SJC).

The Scottish Government is not a member of the SJC and does not take part in those negotiations. Any action to address or increase the pay of the non-teaching workforce is therefore a matter for COSLA.

Administrators FRP have advised it is their understanding that the vast majority of employees previously employed by Dawnfresh Seafoods have secured alternative employment. PACE support is continuing to be provided as required to the remaining employees.

We continue to monitor the influence of PACE support through a PACE Client Experience Survey which we undertake every two years. The latest report published in December 2020, indicated that 81% of individuals surveyed who had received PACE support, secured alternative employment within six months. The 2022 survey will be published later this year.

The wellbeing and safety of children and young people in Scotland are key priorities for the Scottish Government. All children have the right to be cared for and protected from harm. GTC Scotland is the independent registration and regulation body for the teaching profession in Scotland. Their role is to help maintain trust in the teaching profession. They do this by keeping the Register of Teachers and setting and regulating the standards for entry to, and continued inclusion on, the Register. In the year April 2020 - March 2021, GTC Scotland received fitness to teach referrals in respect of 0.2% of the total number of registrants. For referrals for sexual misconduct specifically, this drops to 0.02%. These figures are consistent with previous years.

The Scottish Government recognise that GPs are often the first port of call for people in distress, or those seeking mental health and wellbeing support. We are already investing to meet our commitment to ensure that every GP Practice will have access to a mental health and wellbeing service by 2026. This will create 1,000 additional staff who can help grow community mental health resilience and direct social prescribing. £1.5 million was allocated in 2021-22 to support local planning and development and we will continue to invest in this.

This new commitment builds on the significant investment already made to recruit additional mental health workers in primary care settings. At 1 January 2022, 263.5 WTE additional Mental Health Worker posts had been created in GP settings through Action 15 of the Mental Health Strategy and, at the 31 March 2021, 215.7 WTE Mental Health Worker posts had been created under the Primary Care Improvement Fund.

The implementation of these multi-disciplinary mental health and wellbeing services will ensure more timely access to assessment, support and treatment and they will be available to all age groups, including children and young people. These services will interface with wider community support, such as the Distress Brief Intervention model which provides an innovative alternative for staff in Primary Care who encounter people in distress who are assessed as not requiring emergency clinical intervention, but need emotional and practical support. DBI is now available nationally to those aged 16 or over, and we are also trialling DBI for 14/15 year olds.

Additionally, in 2021-22, we allocated around an extra £40 million to NHS to support implementation of the National Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service Specification. However, not all children and young people who require mental health and wellbeing support require treatment by CAMHS. That is why we provided local authorities with £15 million last year to deliver a range of mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people experiencing emotional distress in their communities. There are now over 230 new supports and services available across Scotland that supported over 18,500 children and young people between June-December 2021. We have committed to double the investment in children and young people’s community mental health support by the end of this Parliament.

We know that providing emotional support to school age children is vital. As a result of our £16 Million per annum investment, every secondary school now has access to counselling support.

The National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group is setting up a Youth Advisory Group to bring together young people with lived experience of suicide, self-harm and poor mental health. This Group will ensure suicide prevention policies and approaches are designed to reach, and support, children and young people. This includes informing the new suicide prevention strategy which will publish in September. Finally, the NSPLG is planning a social media campaign over the coming months aimed at young people, with the objective of encouraging young people to talk more openly about suicide, and to seek help.

The Scottish Government is absolutely committed to reaching net zero by 2045. The decarbonisation of our infrastructure will be central to this goal.

Our five-year Infrastructure Investment Plan published in February 2021 includes details of around £26 billion of major projects and national programmes with more to be confirmed in future years.

The Plan delivers our National Infrastructure Mission and sets a long-term vision of infrastructure supporting an inclusive, net zero carbon economy in Scotland.

The £26 billion pipeline of major projects and national programmes includes almost £9 billion for environmental sustainability and the transition to net zero emissions, including over £280 million to support 18,000 hectares of forestry and restoring peatlands.

The NHS and Public Health Scotland provide support to expectant mothers for a healthy and safe pregnancy. Currently, the Committee on Toxicity has been supporting Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition by conducting a large scale risk assessment of the maternal health issues associated with legacy pesticides such as hexachlorocyclohexanes, endosulfan, and other organochlorine pesticides; and the plastic additive bisphenol A (BPA).

Additionally, The Scottish Government have legislated to end the supply and manufacture of the single use plastic items most commonly found littered, as set in the Programme for Government 2021-2021. The new regulations on single-use plastics are coming into force on 01 June 2022.

The Scottish Government is supporting organisations across Scotland to tackle the climate emergency. This includes, a further £1 million this year for the continued rollout of Green Growth Accelerators to support local authorities to develop low carbon projects and deliver £100 million over the next five years to help businesses via the Green Jobs Fund. Bespoke advice and support for businesses is also available through the enterprise agencies, Zero Waste Scotland, Business Gateway and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. We are also supporting workers to engage in a just transition through the £100,000 we have provided for union capacity building. Our framework of regional climate action hubs and climate action towns is also enabling communities to engage in collective climate action.

We provide a wide range of antenatal support to help reduce the effects of poverty. For example, Best Start Foods provides pregnant women in receipt of benefits, with £18 every four weeks. To improve the nutrition of pregnant women, we provide free vitamins and are working, on a UK basis, to introduce mandatory fortification with folic acid. We provide £2.3m annually to NHS Boards to implement the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Framework (2011) and we have agreed standards with them to ensure early access to antenatal services where fetal growth, smoking/alcohol use, diet and maternal wellbeing is monitored.

The Women’s Health Plan is a three year strategy, published in August 2021, which underpins actions to improve women’s health inequalities. The Plan includes the long term ambition to adopt a life course approach across all services to improve women’s health holistically.

Through the Respiratory Care Action Plan for Scotland we aim to improve outcomes for people living with respiratory conditions in Scotland. The Plan sets out our priorities and commitments for driving improvement in the prevention, diagnosis, care, treatment and support of people living with respiratory conditions including asthma.