The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting all Boards to meet the standard that 90% of patients start treatment within 18 weeks of referral. We continue to provide targeted, tailored support towards those Boards with the longest waits and poorest performance.

We have allocated £48.6 million of supplementary funding to Boards this year via the Mental Health Outcomes Framework to improve the quality and delivery of mental health services for all. This is in addition to £36.7 million allocated to Health Boards via the Outcomes Framework in 2022-23; and to the total package of core funding that Health Boards receive.

Within the Outcomes Framework funding for this year, Boards are expected to: build capacity within psychological therapy services to deliver the standard and reduce backlogs; improve quality and access in response to local need; and implement the forthcoming national specification for psychological therapies.

We thank the Scottish Retail Consortium for their considered paper and look forward to constructive engagement with stakeholders across Scotland as we work to produce and deliver the 2024-25 Scottish Budget. For example, the Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance will attend a budget focused roundtable discussion chaired by the SRC on 26 September.

As set out in the Programme for Government, the Scottish Government’s priority is to grow the economy to tackle poverty and improve our public services. We recognise these are challenging times and difficult choices will have to be made to deliver a balanced Budget. We will set out the spending and tax plans to achieve this when we publish the 2024-25 Budget document.

The Scottish Government and the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) fully recognise the need to ensure prison infrastructure is fit for purpose for those that live and work in prisons, and supports the rehabilitation of people living there.

As set out in the Programme for Government 2023-24 we continue to invest in the prison estate, working towards replacing prisons in Inverness and Glasgow to ensure modern facilities that promote rehabilitation into communities and reduced reoffending. Given the current significant financial and operational pressures, we are having to prioritise capital investment based on risks and pressures across the estate.

Scottish Government grant making is allocated across portfolios to various parts of the third sector to improve a wide range of outcomes. Some Scottish Government funding will also be issued through independent grant makers or intermediary organisations. Each grant funding programme will have its own specific application criteria related to desired policy outcomes.

Through our Fair Work First policy we are seeking to further promote and enable employers’ commitment to fair work by applying Fair Work principles to public sector grants, other funding and contracts where it’s relevant and proportionate to do so. We published updated Fair Work First guidance on 24th of March 2023 to support the adoption of this new conditionality. The Scottish Government model grant offer letter template has been amended to incorporate this new conditionality, as has relevant guidance, including grant policy guidance, and the Scottish Public Finance Manual.

Local Authorities may occasionally commission external consulting support where this provides value for money and there is a requirement for a specific skill or service that cannot be delivered within existing capacity.

As Local Authorities make their own independent arrangements with external contractors, the information requested is not routinely gathered or held centrally by the Scottish Government. Information of this nature can be attained by approaching individual Local Authorities accordingly.

The Scottish Government does not routinely collect or monitor information on local authority autism strategies for data purposes.

The Scottish Government is represented on the ETSU steering group by officials from the Directorate for Energy and Climate Change.

The Scottish Government's contingent liabilities are considered and approved in line with the guidance contained within the Scottish Public Finance Manual and the Written Agreement between the Scottish Government and the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

There is no separate requirement for the prior permission of HM Treasury for novel or particularly large contingent liabilities for activities either within the Fiscal Framework or elsewhere.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-20927 on 19 September 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 .

Initial teacher education programmes ensure student teachers are exposed to a range of pedagogies to teach literacy and reading instruction. This can include systematic synthetic phonics, as well as other approaches.