Chamber and committees

The terms of reference for the Scottish COVID-19 Public Inquiry are designed in such a way that they do not constrain the chair in seeking views and evidence from any group or individual affected by the matters the inquiry is asked to investigate.

Scottish inquiries set up under the Inquiries Act 2005 cannot investigate reserved matters. However we recognise that learning lessons from the pandemic will involve analysis of devolved and reserved issues across a spectrum of topics. To that end, we are engaged with the UK Government to understand the approach to the UK-wide COVID-19 inquiry. We will use our position as a statutory consultee on the terms of reference for the UK inquiry to make clear the importance of examining the impact of policies during the pandemic on those seeking asylum and living under immigration control in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all school-aged children and young people in Scotland have access to a digital device by the end of this parliament. Given the scale and complexity of this programme of work, the 100 days commitment was to commence planning not to deliver the devices.

In 2020/21, we provided £25 million of funding to councils across Scotland to tackle digital exclusion, resulting in over 72,000 pupils receiving a device to support their learning.

The following table shows the number of devices distributed via that funding, as reported by individual local authorities.

Tackling child poverty is a national mission for this government and we are delivering a range of direct support to families.

The Scottish Child Payment is currently supporting around 106,000 children under 6 with £10 a week payments. Together with Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods this provides families with £5,300 of financial support by the time their first child turns 6.

For children of school age, we are paying £520 this year through Bridging Payments, supporting around 150,000 children and young people from low income families ahead of the roll out of the Scottish Child Payment to under-16s by the end of 2022 – with £160 to be paid this month. We have also increased the School Clothing Grant to a new national minimum of £120 for primary school and £150 for secondary school children – helping to meet the cost of the school day for families.

Additionally we delivered a £130 Low Income Pandemic Payment for around 500,000 low income households by the end of October, helping to meet increased costs of living for families.

We have also announced plans to invest a further £41 million in a Winter Support Fund for low income households to help people struggling financially during the winter. This includes £10 million to help people who are struggling to pay fuel bills, £25 million of flexible funding for local authorities to help support wellbeing and respond to financial insecurity based on local needs, and £6 million for third sector partners to support low income families.

The Scottish Government is currently working with the UK Government and other governments of the UK to gather and review the lessons of COP26 and to discuss implications for the UK Presidency of COP. As part of its Presidency role, the UK Government will be working with the Government of Egypt who are responsible for hosting COP27 and with the UNFCCC.

The Scottish Government has agreed to grant £1 million to the Climate Justice Resilience Fund to support their work to address the needs of communities suffering the most acute impacts of climate change and develop and test a framework for delivering loss & damage programming. We will be working with the Fund to develop further details on programming in the first quarter of 2022.

As in all Climate Justice Fund programming, the perspectives of communities will be central to the design and determination of priorities.

The Scottish Government will continue to build on the discussion and networking that was in place before and was developed through the Glasgow Climate Dialogues at COP26. This includes hearing directly from partners in the Global South and working in collaboration on shared issues.

As European co-chair, Scotland is committed to promoting values of justice and inclusivity within the Under2 Coalition. This includes championing dialogue with and response to the interests of members from the Global South.

The Just Transition Alliance the Scottish Government established at COP26 will act as a vehicle for discussion, knowledge sharing and action across Coalition members on issues of voice, inclusion and fairness.

The Scottish Government was pleased to work with Stop Climate Chaos Scotland and partners to deliver the Glasgow Climate Dialogues, and its communique which set out recommendations for COP26 from four thematic dialogues.

The Scottish Government has already advanced communique recommendations for our climate justice work, including our announcements on funding to address loss and damage, and – following the evaluation of the Climate Justice Fund - by committing to ensure communities themselves are central in future project design. The final Glasgow Climate Dialogues meeting, to take place in January, will discuss post-COP26 actions.

COP26 delivered some progress on Loss and Damage – and, in pledging £2 million, the Scottish Government were pleased to lead the way as the first [developed nation] to pledge funds. However it is widely acknowledged the issue requires greater prominence and wider action at scale. In the run up to COP27, the Scottish Government will be working with international colleagues including Under 2 members such as Wallonia, research communities and philanthropic partners with the aim of building broader consensus and plans for programming on Loss and Damage.

We recognise that the scale of finance needed far outstrips what Scotland alone can commit but we hope that our action will galvanise others to be similarly ambitious. We will be working closely over this coming year with international colleagues.

Ministers and officials are in regular contact with Police Scotland and other stakeholders on a range of issues associated with the COVID-19 Status Certification scheme, which includes but not limited to security of the certification.

The app has a number of counter fraud elements built in. This includes a secure QR code, visual motion elements including a ‘shimmer’ icon, and a clock showing the current time which protects against screenshots being presented as certificates. In addition, we have a secure identification verification process.

Although not a requirement for business to use, we also encourage use of the NHS Scotland Covid Check App as it is specifically designed to verify the authenticity of a certificate by checking that the QR code was issued by a trusted authority (e.g. NHS Scotland, or any of the countries linked to the EU Digital Covid Certificate).

Chronic Pain services in Scotland are currently unable to gather electronic data on return appointments in a consistent manner and one that could support routine national data collection by Public Health Scotland (PHS).

The 18 Weeks Referral To Treatment (RTT) standard applies to the entire patient journey from the initial referral to the start of treatment and so repeat appointments after the start of treatment would not be included in this metric. Achieving the target depends on waiting times for diagnostic tests, new outpatient appointments, inpatient and day case treatment.