Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government was deeply concerned to learn that Pladis (McVitie’s) is entering into a consultation with its workforce over the potential closure of its Tollcross site. The Scottish Government has engaged with Pladis, as well as unions (GMB and Unite the Union), Glasgow City Council and local partners with a firm commitment to exploring all possible options.

An Action Group has now been convened and will be co-chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy alongside Councillor Susan Aitken, Glasgow City Council. Other members of the Action group will include Trade Unions and Scottish Enterprise. The Action Group will work with the company during the consultation period to assess options for the site and support the workforce. We will pursue every opportunity to secure a viable future for the site, and we are seeking commitment from Pladis that it will be engaged in this process.

We are committed to strengthening residents’ rights in adult residential settings as part of a rights-based approach to care. This will include working quickly to assess what the most effective way, or ways, would be of giving effect to Anne’s law, where residents can access their nominated relatives or friends to partner in their care or support have increased access to care homes.

The Young Person’s Guarantee, launched in November 2020, has the ambition that, within two years, every person aged between 16 and 24 will have the opportunity to study; take up an apprenticeship, job or work experience; or participate in formal volunteering. It aims to give all young people the chance to succeed despite the economic impacts of Covid-19, while also ensuring employers continue to benefit from the fresh talent and new perspectives that young people bring to workplaces across Scotland.

Through our additional investment of £60 million in 2020-21, funding has been provided for around 18,000 new and enhanced opportunities to support young people in Scotland. These opportunities include up to:

• 11,000 opportunities through local authorities;
• 5,000 places in colleges;
• 1,400 new apprentice pathways; and
• Support for 1,300 vulnerable 16 and 17 year olds through third sector provision from Inspiring Scotland and the Princes Trust/Barnardo’s/Action for Children consortium which provides support for care experienced young people.

The early success of the Guarantee will be maintained during 2021-22. Additional investment of £125 million will go towards the Guarantee, the National Transition Training Fund, and other initiatives, ensuring the future workforce has the skills needed for a green recovery and supporting those at risk of long term unemployment. This includes personalised employment support and retraining for those who have been made unemployed or are at risk of redundancy due to the pandemic. This is in addition to our already significant investment in Education, Employability and Skills and also builds on DWP investment in Kickstart.

The £70 million for the Young Person’s Guarantee will provide:

• an additional £45 million for local partnerships to provide training and employer recruitment incentives
• a further £10 million for colleges to deliver around 5,000 more short, industry-focussed courses
• £10 million to continue to support the roll-out of new school coordinators as part of the internationally recognised youth employment strategy - Developing the Young Workforce
• £5 million for a new graduate internship scheme, increased volunteering capacity and third sector programmes

These new additional opportunities will complement our existing provision through schools, universities and colleges, our person-centered employability services Fair Start Scotland, No One Left Behind and the Employability Fund, and third sector support such as Discovering Your Potential, Our Future Now and Community Jobs Scotland.

As restrictions begin to ease, we are continuing to work closely with our delivery partners to maximise the number of young people being supported into these opportunities and to enable local partnerships to respond flexibly to meet the needs of young people during this challenging time.

Our commitment to becoming a net-zero society by 2045 is unwavering. In 2019, the whole-life carbon impact of Scotland’s household waste reached its lowest level since official recording began.

To further accelerate progress, Scottish Ministers are fully committed to ending the practice of sending biodegradable municipal waste to landfill by 2025. This is in line with recommendations previously made by the Committee on Climate Change.

We still need capacity to dispose of residual waste, which cannot be reused or recycled, while we make the transition to a circular economy in Scotland. However, we have committed to review the role that incineration plays in Scotland’s waste hierarchy.

In Scotland, it is illegal to incinerate materials that have been separately collected and are capable of being recycled, and waste incineration is strictly regulated in line with EU standards under the Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations.

The Scottish Government is working with a range of key sector stakeholders and local authorities to meet this commitment and make payments at the earliest opportunity within the first 100 days of the administration.

The Scottish Government has given a commitment to establishing a dignified, compassionate miscarriage service tailored to the needs of women. The aim is to support the development of individualised care plans after a woman’s first miscarriage and ensure maternity departments have dedicated facilities for women who are experiencing unexpected pregnancy complications.

We also welcome the findings of the Lancet series on miscarriage published on‎ 26 April 2021 and are considering the findings and recommendations made. Next steps are being discussed with stakeholders.

Data on vaccine allocation is published weekly at a national level.

As of Monday 26 April:

• Total number of doses allocated: 4,718,140
• Total number of doses delivered: 4,216,470
  

Total number of doses allocated refers to the number of doses that have been made available by Public Health England to the Scottish Government for ordering, and is the cumulative amount allocated up to 11:55 26 April 2021.

Total number of doses delivered refers to the number of doses that have been delivered from Public Health England to the ownership of the Scottish Government, and is the cumulative amount delivered by 23:59 25 April 2021.

This data is sensitive, so there is no NHS Board breakdown, however more information is available on the Scottish Government website, at: Coronavirus (COVID-19): daily data for Scotland - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

The Scottish Government has been very clear from day one that the pace of our national vaccine programme is dependent on vaccine supply and delivery timescales. We continue to work closely across the 4 nations to ensure this is as smooth as possible.

The SPIRE Multi-morbidity local report has the following Respiratory Conditions

•Patients with currently treated asthma

•Patients with Bronchiectasis

•Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

This is a local report which sits within local GP IT systems, and it is for practices to manage this information themselves.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting the vital role of Scottish Hospices. In June 2020, we provided £10.1m in emergency funding to hospices to meet in full their funding requests for loss of income during the first lockdown period.

On the 24 March 2021, we confirmed that an additional £16.9m will be provided to Scottish Hospices to fully meet their requests for support relating to loss of income during the most recent lockdown. As such, the total funding allocated to hospices to support their work during the pandemic in the financial year 2020-2021 is approximately £27m. The breakdown of payments can be viewed in the following table.

We have asked NHS Lothian to carry out a review of its eye care services.  We remain committed to working with NHS Lothian to support this and protect specialised eye services for the city and the wider region.  Health Boards do not receive the funding for major capital projects until the project has completed the approval process set out in the Scottish Capital Investment Manual.