Chamber and committees

A number of discussions were held with those involved in the scheme in the weeks prior to the announcement including Circularity Scotland and business groups. To reach a decision on the next steps for the Deposit Return Scheme Scottish Government officials also provided advice to the First Minister and Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity.

The Scottish Government have been working with Scottish Swimming, Education Scotland, sport scotland and Scottish Water to develop interventions and approaches to provide opportunities for children to become confident, safer and competent swimmers.

sport scotland’s investment into Scottish Swimming includes support to enable delivery of 4 school swimming pilot projects for evaluation and to develop a School Swimming Framework that can be used by partners.

The Delivery Model Pilots will take place across 2022-23 to support schools to understand and consider different approaches and models of delivery to help educate and provide opportunities for children across Scotland to experience the water in a fun, safe and inclusive approach. This reflects the many different scenarios faced by schools when deciding how best to support young people to access school swimming.

Whilst there is no eligibility criteria for primary school children to receive swimming lessons, inclusion is central to our approach and there will be a specific focus on targeting areas within quintile 1 of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Active Schools has a key role to play in complementing PE in schools by developing opportunities for physical activity and sport. Specific activities, such as swimming, provided through Active Schools is at the discretion of each local authority/Active Schools team.

In addition Active Schools plays a role in supporting local swimming clubs to link to schools, making pupils aware of the opportunities that exist to participate in swimming in the club setting and we would encourage local authorities to provide Active Schools activity free of charge to ensure activity is accessible to all.

The Ministerial-led working group last convened on 26 th October 2022 and the minutes of this meeting will be published within the coming weeks. The working group was formed to consider short, medium and long term actions to address anti-abortion activities which take place outside of healthcare facilities providing abortion services.

A significant proportion of the group’s work was to consider the use of Local Authority bye-laws to potentially deliver the zones. The Scottish Government was committed to supporting councils to use bye-laws to implement safe access zones, but Local Authorities concluded that national legislation would be a more appropriate route, and the work to consider bye-laws has now concluded.

We are now clear that delivering national legislation is the best and most secure route to ensure buffer zones are delivered and sustained. We are therefore fully focused on supporting the drafting and development of Gillian Mackay MSP’s national Abortion Service Safe Access Zones (Scotland) Bill. We will continue to take forward discussions with stakeholders to ensure that robust and effective legislation is introduced as soon as possible.

Although there are no plans for a final report of the working group’s findings to be published, the group agreed that the Scottish Government should commission research into the impact of protests and vigils in Scotland. This research is ongoing, and a final report on this will be published following its completion.

Ear syringing is no longer the recommended procedure for clinicians due to concerns about uncontrolled water pressure. Instead NICE recommends that patients should be asked to self-administer with ear drops first and follow up care should be irrigation or suction.

Formerly most ear wax management procedures were carried out in GP practices. The new GP contract, introduced in 2018, committed Health Boards to set up Community Treatment and Care (CTAC) services to shift workload away from GP practices to NHS Board employed staff so that GP practices could focus on what only they can do. CTAC has been defined in GP contract regulations as including phlebotomy, chronic disease monitoring, the collection of biometric information, attending to minor injuries, changing dressings, suture removal and ear syringing. The Scottish Government has confirmed to Health Boards that CTAC services should cover ear wax management generally.

The process of transfer was underway when many practices stopped administering syringing, irrigation or suction as treatments in March 2020 amid concerns that they might be Aerosol Generating Procedures that could spread COVID-19. Despite this, and other constraints, implementation of the new GP contract continued throughout the pandemic. There are now 3,220 whole time equivalent healthcare professionals in multi-disciplinary teams supporting practices with CTAC and pharmacotherapy services as well as delivering the childhood and seasonal vaccination programmes but we are aware that gaps in delivery remain.

Scottish Government officials are now working with Health Boards to collect and review the data on the workforce and financial resources required to fully deliver these services to inform consideration of the potential for additional investment in 2023-24. We will then look to ensure that all Health Boards have appropriate communications regarding local pathways for ear wax management and other transferred services.

CalMac Ferries Limited have provided details that the repair to the Isle of Arran exhaust leak in April 2023 incurred a cost of £1,212.54.

This cost was included within their vessel maintenance budget.

The Scottish Government plans to publish a draft of the next Climate Change Plan in November 2023, with a final version due by March 2025.

There is no statutory duty on the Scottish Government to achieve a biodiversity net gain.

Scotland’s draft biodiversity strategy published in December 2022 sets out a clear ambition for Scotland to be nature positive by 2030, and to have substantially restored and regenerated biodiversity by 2045. Five year delivery plans will set out the actions we need to take to achieve that ambition. We will consult on the first delivery plan in the summer. We will also bring forward a Natural Environment Bill, which will put in place key legislative changes to restore and protect nature, including, but not restricted to, targets for nature restoration.

The National Planning Framework also places a strong emphasis on securing positive effects for biodiversity as one of its six statutory outcomes (as identified in section 3A(3)(c) of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997, as amended). The recently adopted National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) includes a cross-cutting theme to improve biodiversity and our strategy and policies support development that helps to secure positive effects for biodiversity. NPF4 Policy 3 sets out that development proposals will contribute to the enhancement of biodiversity, including where relevant, restoring degraded habitats and building and strengthening nature networks.

(a) There were 149 admissions of under 18s to secure accommodation during 2021-22. Details of those placements can be found in the Children’s Social Work Statistics Scotland: 2021 to 2022 .

(b) The Scottish Prison Population Statistics 2021-22 show the establishments where under 18s were held. This is detailed in the following table:

Collaboration and engagement is a cornerstone of all transport activity and there is community engagement at all levels of transport decision making. My predecessors and I, and Transport Scotland officials have engaged and will continue to engage with communities in developing and implementing strategies and on specific projects, such as the Islands Connectivity Plan and Project Neptune, and will continue to do so in the future.

For example, Transport Scotland recently chaired an Uig Resilience meeting on my behalf on 27 March 2023.

Whilst local transport issues are the responsibility of local authorities, Transport Scotland, my predecessors and I, have engaged and will continue to engage constructively with local authorities where proposals or projects are considered to have a potential impact on transport assets and services owned and/or provided by Scottish Ministers.

The Scottish Government has not had any discussions with the UK Government on the licensing of testosterone for women in perimenopause or menopause. The regulations for the licensing, safety and efficacy of medicines are currently reserved to the UK Government and are the responsibility of the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

For a medicine to be routinely prescribed, it firstly needs to receive a licence from the MHRA. It is the responsibility of individual companies to apply to the MHRA for a marketing authorisation (licence). The application process requires a company to provide data demonstrating the quality, safety and efficacy of the medicine.