Chamber and committees

Decisions on non-domestic rates beyond 2022-23, including any reliefs, will be considered in the context of the Scottish Budget and in line with the Framework for Tax, prevailing economic conditions and other government priorities.

The Scottish Government has taken forward a range of measures to support the efficient delivery of Scotland’s Redress Scheme, which is survivor led with feedback encouraged and acted upon.

The scheme was established to provide acknowledgement and tangible recognition of the harm that has been caused to those who experienced abuse in care, with the commitment that it would be less adversarial and swifter than civil court action. The redress payment reflects part of that tangible recognition and is not considered compensation in the same way as a sum awarded by a court.

In direct response to feedback about timescales the number of case workers has increased from 12 in December 2021 to 23 in November 2022, and as a result we will see swifter allocation of completed applications to case workers from January.

The operating model was changed in April 2022 to ensure all applications received are initially triaged by the case work team and applicants are then advised what further information is required to progress their application. With applicants consent, case workers make referrals to the Redress Support Service to progress applications where additional information is required. This can include support from organisations specialised in record searches. To date, 834 referrals have been made to this service.

A group has been established which is considering ways in which we might be able to improve the process of applicants accessing care records as it is recognised that some applicants are having challenges in this area.

The Survivor Forum, which was established in March, has reported on its first survey and feedback on the scheme has been provided to both the Scottish Government and Redress Scotland, the independent decision making body. The forum will also increase its activity and engagement with applicants in early 2023, providing further opportunities to provide feedback on what is working well and what could be done better or differently.

Scottish Child Payment offers financial support to families with children, and is paid as a top-up of certain qualifying reserved benefits, such as Universal Credit. Applicants must also demonstrate child responsibility to meet the qualifying criteria in full.

The regulations for Scottish Child Payment specifically define kinship care as a way of meeting child responsibility and so low-income families that are also kinship carers may be eligible for Scottish Child Payment if they meet all the eligibility criteria. We recently amended the definition of kinship care to ensure more low income kinship carers are eligible now we have rolled out Scottish Child Payment to children under 16. These regulations can be found at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2022/336/contents/made ..

Low income families that are also foster carers are not eligible for Scottish Child Payment. This is because children in foster care are considered looked after by the local authority and, as such, foster carers do not satisfy the legal responsibilities or rights that entitle them to child responsibility benefits. Foster carers receive allowances from local authorities to cover the needs of children living with them.

The Scottish Government will not be represented at the World Cup in Qatar .

NHS National Services Scotland is currently conducting a procurement process to robustly assess digital products available to support the assessment and screening of people with long COVID, and determine which one is best placed to meet the needs highlighted by NHS Boards.

This national procurement process is expected to identify a preferred supplier shortly, after which licences for the selected product would be procured.

The Scottish Government currently has no plans to reduce the speed limit on the M8 through Glasgow for the purposes of assessing the relationship between speed limit and congestion, noise and air pollution.

It is not possible for the Scottish Government to mandate the provision of community benefits through energy regulation because the relevant powers are reserved to the UK Government. However, we continue to encourage renewable energy businesses to offer community benefit packages in line with our Good Practice Principles; promoting a national level equivalent to £5,000 per installed megawatt per annum for onshore renewable developments, index linked for the operational lifetime of the project.

Local Energy Scotland, who deliver our Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES), administer a voluntary register of community benefits payments and a community benefits map. This indicates a community benefit commitment of around £24 million will have been paid out from renewable energy projects in Scotland over the past year (from November 2021 to November 2022).

All developers of renewable energy developments and local communities in receipt of community benefit payments are encouraged to use and input to the register. The register and map can be viewed here: https://localenergy.scot/community-benefits-map/

Work is underway to review the Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Offshore Renewable Energy Developments.

The Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery – Implementation Plan was published in July 2022 and sets out the actions the Scottish Government are taking to improve care and services for people with chronic pain.

The Implementation Plan acknowledges the importance of specialist pain management services and includes a number of specific actions to improve access and quality of care provided by these services. This includes convening an expert working group to review pathways into specialist care and identify opportunities to share and promote best practice as well as piloting new digital pathways to improve how people access specialist services.

As part of this work it is expected that challenges around staffing of specialist services will also be explored. This activity will also be informed by a new national pain service managers network which will help to identify and prioritise key issues affecting the resilience and quality of specialist pain services, including workforce. In addition, the Scottish Government will publish, for the first time, projections of required workforce growth across health and social care as part of the National Workforce Strategy. Once generated these will be reviewed annually.

There were 2,467 cases of exclusion (temporary or permanent) from publicly funded schools in Scotland during 2020-21 where the reason recorded was either physical assault using improvised weapon, physical assault using weapon or physical assault with no weapon (against either a pupil or staff member). This is down from 4,458 in 2018-19 and 5,374 in 2016-17.

This information is not held centrally; it is a matter for the individual territorial and national Health Boards that make up NHS Scotland.