There are no current regulations specifically aimed at the conduct of religious bodies, however, a number of areas of regulation may apply to religious bodies.

The Scottish Government is currently running a collection of four public consultations on different aspects of regulation of the funeral sector in Scotland. This may be of interest to religious bodies.

The collection of four consultations cover regulations on the following topics: alkaline hydrolysis (‘water cremation’), burial, inspection of burial authorities, cremation authorities and funeral directors and licensing for funeral directors.

The consultations are all available on the Scottish Government’s consultation hub, Citizen Space and will be live from 25 August – 17 November 2023.

Some religious bodies are registered charities in Scotland, and charity trustee duties are set out in the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005. The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice has committed to work with the third sector and partners to develop the scope for a wider review of charity regulation. Charity trustee duties may be considered as part of this scoping work.

The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2014 and the Civil partnership (Scotland) Act 2020 contain provisions on qualifying requirements for religious and belief bodies to meet before they can solemnise marriage (or register a

civil partnership). These provisions are not in force. The Scottish Government has committed to carrying out a full public consultation before making any regulations to introduce qualifying requirements. This consultation has not been a priority given other workload pressures.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that workers whistleblowing rights are protected, as outlined in the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. Employment powers are a matter reserved to the UK Parliament, however, the Scottish Government encourages all employers to provide fair and inclusive work, including an effective voice, to all workers.

All public sector organisations should have their own whistleblowing policy and procedures in place which should be consistent with the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, and with their own nominated officer and process for investigation. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to whistleblowing policy as policies will vary depending on the size and nature of the organisation. It is for each organisation to consider what training is required to support the effective implementation of their whistleblowing arrangements.

The National Treatment Centre at Perth Royal Infirmary is currently in the process of submitting their Outline Business Case to the Capital Investment Group, once this is approved a Full Business Case will be developed and upon its approval we will be able to provide a completion date for the project.

In mitigating the impacts of the cost of living crisis, the Scottish Government has taken action to reduce costs, including through our Emergency Budget Review (EBR) in autumn 2022. This responded to the new pressures arising from the crisis, and set out unprecedented reductions in planned spending totalling £1.2 billion, to ensure the Scottish Government was able to manage the annual budget prudently in the face of rising inflation and economic uncertainty.

The significant savings taken in the EBR were applied across government, the full list of which can be found here - Emergency Budget Review published - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Through this reprioritisation in the EBR, we were able to provide further help to those most impacted by the cost of living crisis. The Scottish Government recognises the pressure on household budgets which is why, both last year and this, we have allocated almost £3bn to support policies which tackle poverty and to protect people as far as possible during the ongoing cost of living crisis. This includes increasing the Scottish Child Payment to £25, emergency legislation to put in place a rent freeze, and a range of support for energy bills such as delivering energy efficiency and heating improvements.

The 2023-24 Budget built upon work in the EBR and involved taking difficult savings decisions to allocate around £700 million extra to fund enhanced pay deals.

The on-going cost of living crisis continues to present financial challenges to the Scottish Government. We are reviewing opportunities for more effective targeting of spend through the 2024-25 Budget, whilst prioritising programmes of work which have the greatest impact on the delivery of our core missions.

The Scottish Government have purchased the following laptops since 1st March 2020 for use on the SCOTS network.

We are committed to delivering drug checking facilities in Scotland and we are currently waiting for further information from the Home Office around their acceptable criteria for these facilities. This is required to inform the license applications being developed in Scotland.

In the meantime we continue to support local city leads as they produce their plans for implementing drug checking facilities and once the acceptable criteria has been clarified we anticipate license applications, seeking permission from the Home Office for drug-checking facilities in Scotland in Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow, to be submitted in the coming months.

If those applications are approved by the Home Office, we would work with those cities who are committed to implementing drug checking facilities to have them established as quickly as possible.

The appearance of synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, in the Scottish drug supply has been a concern for some time. At the end of 2022 PHS flagged a small number of deaths related to nitazenes, a new synthetic opioid and issued a public health alert as a result in January 2023. Following recent deaths linked to these substances in England and Wales, the UK Government issued their own alert in June 2023. Changes in the production of heroin, particularly in areas such as Afghanistan, are also raising concerns amongst stakeholders of a likely rise in the supply of synthetic opioids and the danger this will pose to the UK drug supply.

The ability to know what is in the drug supply and when substances of concern, such as synthetic opioids appear, is vital. Recognising the need to understand changes in the substances people are taking, alongside being able to identify potential threats, has meant that through our National Mission we have invested in developing our surveillance abilities. Public Health Scotland now operate their Rapid Action Drug Alerts and Response (RADAR) system which issues quarterly reports, but they have also released two health alerts relating to specific substances to raise awareness to individuals and to enable service providers to deliver vital harm reduction services, including provision of Naloxone. The use of fentanyl testing strips is also currently under consideration. In addition, we are continuing to progress the establishment of drug checking facilities in Scotland through proposed pilot sites in Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee. These facilities will be able to provide real-time information about the substances in circulation, issue alerts about anything of concern and provide essential harm-reduction information to individuals using the service.

Scottish Government officials met with UK Government officials recently to discuss the Global Coalition on Synthetic Drugs and are contributing to the sub-working groups on this.

Planning is also underway to host a meeting of national and international partners to discuss this issue and learn from the experience of other countries. A lot of the harm reduction interventions we already have in place are what is recommended to counter the dangers of these new substances.

Public Health Scotland Publish information on the number of GPs and patients nationally and by Health Board and this is available at:

General Practice - GP Workforce and practice list sizes 2012 - 2022 - General Practice - GP workforce and practice list sizes - Publications - Public Health Scotland

Table 2 sets out the number of GPs nationally and in each board area and Table 4 shows the registered number of patients nationally and in each Health Board, over the past 10 years.

It is disappointing to see an overall increase in households becoming homeless from the private rented sector. However, there was a notable decrease between the first and last six months of the year. This is likely due to the cost of living legislation that was introduced in October 2022.

The cost of living crisis continues to place people across Scotland in a precarious position. On 1 June we laid regulations which would – subject to the approval of Parliament – extend emergency measures to cap in-tenancy rents and give additional eviction protections for a further, and final six months, to 31 March 2024, provided they remain necessary and proportionate.

If approved by Parliament, these measures will continue to help stabilise housing costs for private tenants and ensure that the enforcement of evictions will continue to be paused for up to six months across all tenures except in a limited number of circumstances. This provides tenants with additional protection where an eviction order/decree is granted - giving them more time to access the support they need and to find alternative accommodation.

We know that the best way to end homelessness is to prevent it from happening in the first place. As stated in this year’s Programme for Government (published 5 September 2023), in the coming year we will introduce a Housing Bill which will include new duties aimed at the prevention of homelessness.

Through local authorities we have provided over £8.8 million to support more than 6,620 households in rent arrears through the Tenant Grant Fund.

Discretionary Housing Payments play a vital role in safeguarding tenancies. In 2023-24, we are making £83.7 million available to local authorities to spend on Discretionary Housing Payments:

• £69.7 million to fully mitigate the bedroom tax, helping over 92,000 households in Scotland sustain their tenancies
• £6.2 million to mitigate the benefit cap as fully as possible within devolved powers
• £7.9 million to mitigate against the damaging impact of other UK Government welfare cuts, including the ongoing freeze to Local Housing Allowance rates

The Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs has three scheduled meetings per year with representatives from the Scottish Police Federation and met with them on 21 December 2022, 10 May 2023 and next scheduled for 21 September 2023. The Scottish Police Federation also meet regularly with senior Scottish Government officials.

Police pay is not discussed in these meetings as negotiations take place through the Police Negotiating Board for Scotland. I am delighted that an agreement has now been reached in police officer pay negotiations for 2023-24.