Chamber and committees

The Women’s Health Plan: A plan for 2021 – 2024 aims to reduce health inequalities and improve health outcomes for women and girls. This iteration of the Plan focusses on a specific set of priorities where there is particular evidence of inequalities (heart health) and where women have told us improvements are needed (menopause and menstrual health including endometriosis).

The priorities for any future Women’s Health Plan are not yet determined. Future aims and priorities will be developed in collaboration with women and girls, including our lived experience stakeholder group, clinical experts and relevant stakeholders alongside the most up-to-date evidence base.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with the Scottish Perinatal Network and will write to NHS Boards again in June to assess how implementation of PlGF testing is progressing.

Scottish Ministers continue to encourage public bodies to share good practice on debt assistance and collection and to show empathy and dignity when working with people struggling with debt. At a recent meeting of the ‘Joint Working Group on Sourcing of Local Government Funding and Council Tax Reform’ ministers raised the issue of Council Tax Debt and Recovery with the COSLA President, Vice President and Resources Spokesperson.

Scottish Government has also taken considerable action to help people struggling with the impacts of the cost of living crisis. This year we will provide funding to local government in excess of £350 million to deliver the Council Tax Reduction Scheme, ensuring over 450,000 households receive some level of Council Tax Reduction and on average recipients save over £750 a year. More widely, in 2023-24 we are tripling the Fuel Insecurity Fund and maintaining our investment in the Scottish Welfare Fund at £41 million to support those most in need.

Every Public Body publishes an Annual Report and Accounts which will include details of amounts owed to them. These annual accounts will normally be available online on the website of the individual organisation.

The Scottish Government continues to support struggling households, which is why both last year and this, we have allocated almost £3 billion to support policies which tackle poverty and protect people as far as possible during the ongoing cost of living crisis. We will also allocate at least £11 million in 2023-24 to support free debt, welfare and income maximisation advice.

Quasi-government agencies (quangos) are referred to as devolved national public bodies. There is no requirement to maintaining financial records of devolved national public bodies as far back as 1999, therefore, this information is not held centrally.

The national directory of all devolved national public bodies is in the public domain, and may be accessed in the following link. It provides information on Scottish Government funding for the current year, where applicable. It also provides links to the webpages containing published accounts for the various bodies.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-public-bodies-directory/pages/introduction/

The Scottish Government does not hold this information and it is not collected by Public Health Scotland.

We know the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing structural inequalities within our society, putting some communities and groups within the population disproportionately at risk for more adverse impacts on their mental health. That is why we have committed to making the mental health of these groups a priority.

We have established an Equality and Human Rights Forum to help influence and deliver measurably improved outcomes for minority ethnic groups. The forum will set out actions to address racialised mental health inequalities in the upcoming Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Delivery Plan and will build on our existing work.

We are also considering the report from the Scottish Mental Health Law Review which included recommendations to improve monitoring and address ethnicity in rates of detention and compulsory treatment. We intend to set out our initial response to the report, including priority actions, by summer 2023.

This year we will publish a Public Engagement Strategy setting out how we will raise public awareness and understanding of the changes we all need to make to our home heating to meet the net zero targets by 2045.

We will need to communicate in a coordinated way across all levels, including nationally and through trusted grassroots and local messengers.

This will include taking a place-based approach through working with local government to communicate to the public what the transition will mean for them, informed by upcoming Local Heat & Energy Efficiency Strategy Delivery Plans. This will help to ensure that people know whether they can expect to connect to a local heat network or will need to install renewable technologies such as a heat pump, the steps involved and how they can access any support available. We will use a range of tactics to achieve this, including multi-channel marketing and community engagement initiatives.

There are 17 owned buildings on the Scottish Government Core Estate. 11 have EPC ratings lower than C.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-17798 on 17 May 2023 . 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 .

The Scottish Government does not hold the information requested.

Responsibility for the management of the (a) police estate is for Police Scotland, which is accountable to the Scottish Police Authority; and (b) the fire estate is for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

Meeting health and safety requirements across their estates continues to be a high priority for both Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.