The Scottish Government has confirmed a budget of around £1.7m per year to deliver the actions contained within the Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus (SHBBV) Action Plan 2023-26. This includes a range of projects that support HIV transmission elimination, details of which were published with the SHBBV plan.

Within this, the Scottish Government has also provided funding for the national HIV anti-stigma campaign (£250,000 in 2022-23), the development of an ePrEP clinic (£400,000 in 2022-23), emergency department opt-out testing pilots (£145,000), online postal self-sampling for STIs and HIV (£119,000 in 2023-24, and £300,000 per year allocated in 2024-25 and 2025-26) and the Terrence Higgins Trust HIV self-test service (around £100,000 per year).

The Scottish Government recognises that certainty of funding is critical to allow Local Employability Partnerships to plan provision effectively and to provide security for the people accessing services through No One Left Behind. That is why the Scottish Budget 2024-25 sets out our commitment to explore future multi-year funding for employability. We will be working to determine the detail underpinning this commitment in the coming months.

The Scottish Budget confirmed that the financial outlook for 2024-25 across Government is particularly challenging with future prospects continuing to be volatile. As such, the 2024-25 budget is a single year spending plan and no decisions have been made in relation to the budget for the Strengthening Communities Programme from 1 April 2025.

Since 2011 Scottish Ministers have invested over £65 million in public EV charging. Scotland now has over 5,000 public EV charge points and is on target to have 6,000 public EV charge points by 2026, through a combination of public and increasing private sector investment. Scotland has the best provision of public EV charge points per head of population of anywhere in the UK, outside of London, and the most rapid charge points per head of population of any region in the UK.

Transport Scotland has also to-date provided £5.7 million to support the installation of 18,861 domestic charge points and £10.8 million to support 1,432 higher powered workplace charge points, complementing the public network.

In June 2023 the Scottish Government published its Vision for Scotland’s Public Electric Vehicle Charging Network, highlighting the need for a transition towards a public charging network that is largely financed and delivered by the private sector. In 2024, the private sector is forecast to invest £40 million to £55 million in public EV charging in Scotland.

The Government is investing a further £30 million through our EV infrastructure fund, supporting Local Authorities across Scotland, and prioritising areas of Scotland that are less likely to attract private investment, including rural and island communities.

Since 21-22, the Scottish Government has provided over £15 million of financial support to Local Authorities to support the installing of public EV charge points.

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) manage the nursing and midwifery Return to Practice education provision on behalf of Scottish Government.

Although the deadline has passed, the tender process is still live, and NES expects to publish the award on the Public Contracts Scotland website in the week commencing 24 June 2024.

The Armed Forces Pension Scheme and benefits including the War Pension Scheme are wholly reserved to the UK Government and are assessed and administered by Veterans UK on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. The Scottish Government is therefore unable to intervene on those matters. Nevertheless, the Scottish Government has previously been made aware of people experiencing issues with their pensions and Scottish Ministers wrote to former Ministers for Defence People and Veterans at the Ministry of Defence in 2021 and 2022 highlighting this. I will raise this again at my next meeting with the UK Minister for Veterans Affairs.

The movement of freight is a commercial matter and the Scottish Government’s leadership in support for rail freight is outlined in our 2016 rail freight strategy, and put into practice with significant investment, a freight-first approach, and through our regulatory rail freight growth targets. The Scottish Government does not hold detailed information on day to day rail freight movements but is aware that for both sites there is currently no traffic. Network Rail remains engaged with the industry through the Scotland Freight Joint Board and works with Freight Operating Companies and Freight End Users to enable modal shift to rail.

As outlined in my response to S6W-27647 on 31 May 2024, and in my recent letter to Ms Gosal, I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss further alongside your policy paper which outlines this particular ask. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

As outlined in my response to S6W-27647 on 31 May 2024, and in my recent letter to Ms Gosal, I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss further alongside your policy paper which outlines this particular ask. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

None of the benefits delivered by Social Security Scotland are directly means tested although some rely on a reserved UK benefit, such as Universal Credit as a qualifying benefit. In practice this means that armed forces compensation generally does not directly affect Scottish Government social security benefits. It may affect Funeral Support Payment. If the compensation payment has been issued to the deceased person it may be treated as funds that can cover or help towards funeral costs. This is to ensure that support goes to those who need it most.

Scottish Government officials do engage with The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on a range of subjects and in October 2023 raised the issue of war pensions being treated as income for pension credit. This engagement was prompted by Poppyscotland’s Credit their Service campaign. DWP made clear they had no plans to change their current policy, and as this is an area reserved to the UK Government, the Scottish Government is unable to intervene on this issue any further.