Chamber and committees

The Emergency Budget Review (EBR) sets out in-year redistribution of funding within the Health and Social Care Portfolio. Future years funding will be set out in each year’s Scottish Budget, with the 2023-24 Budget to be published on 15 December 2022.

According to the most recent year for which there is complete data, April 2021 to March 2022, a total of 792 studies were active and open to recruitment across these portfolio areas. Details for each portfolio area are indexed in the following table.

Table 1. NRS studies active between April 2021 to March 2022.

A full breakdown of the implications of the Emergency Budget Review (EBR) measures on the Scottish Budget was included within the guide to the Autumn Budget Revision (ABR) provided to the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

Of the initial £560 million line items included within the Deputy First Minister’s letter to the Committee in September, £369 million is included within the ABR as either a return of budget or a funding change. The balancing figure of £191 million are reductions to previously unfunded pressures which have emerged since the Scottish Budget was published and savings which will come through the SBR exercise.

The new commitments detailed in the EBR document published earlier this month are also reflected in the ABR position. The additional savings outlined will be processed, where necessary as part of the Spring Budget Revision.

The impact of the reallocations in the Emergency Budget Review, including public sector pay, will have a significant bearing on the 2023-24 Scottish Budget. Further details of the effect of these considerations on proposed portfolio allocations will be published within the Scottish Budget document in December.

The oil and gas sector continues to play an important role in our economy, and a bright future lies ahead for a revitalised North Sea in supporting a net zero energy system. Our highly skilled oil and gas workforce have long been at the forefront of energy innovation and we are committed to a just transition that supports them to capitalise on the employment opportunities of net zero energy. The draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan will outline a co-ordinated vision for Scotland’s future energy system, ensuring a cohesive and joined up framework for action, and will be published for consultation in the coming months.

Our £75m Energy Transition Fund, £100m Green Jobs Fund and £500m Just Transition Fund are supporting the North East and Moray to become a centre of excellence for the transition to a net zero economy, with our investment supporting transformation across the region.

The Alexander Thomson Hotel is used by Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership (GHSCP) to provide temporary accommodation to people experiencing homelessness, in line with their statutory duties. We are aware that this has at times included asylum seeking families with children, who have not accessed Home Office asylum accommodation, and that concerns have been raised about the suitability of bed and breakfast accommodation for families and the length of time families were accommodated at the hotel.

GHSCP has responded to these concerns and has now secured temporary furnished accommodation for families who had been accommodated in the hotel for an unsuitable period of time. They have also undertaken a review of practice in relation to access to accommodation in circumstances where asylum seeking families with children present to homeless services. The Home Office has a duty to provide accommodation to people who would otherwise be destitute while awaiting a decision on their application, and this duty takes precedence over local authority provision of temporary accommodation.

Asylum is reserved to the UK Parliament and handled by the Home Office. This includes the provision of asylum accommodation. As far as the Scottish Government is aware, the Home Office has not used the Alexander Thomson Hotel to provide asylum accommodation. The Scottish Government has not, therefore, engaged with the Home Office regarding the standard of accommodation at this hotel for people seeking asylum, but has raised significant concerns with the Home Office about its use of hotels to accommodate people seeking asylum and will continue to do so.

GHSCP has committed to ending the use of bed and breakfast accommodation in the city overall through the implementation of their Temporary Accommodation Strategy. However, while they continue to use this type of accommodation in emergency situations, they will prioritise dispersed temporary furnished accommodation for families with children and will minimise the time families spend in unsuitable accommodation.

The Scottish Government has also taken action to ensure temporary accommodation in Scotland is high quality, is only used for short periods and meets all the household’s needs. In May 2020 we extended the Unsuitable Accommodation Order to all homeless households so that no homeless household should be placed in unsuitable accommodation, such as hotels or bed and breakfast accommodation, for more than seven days. In October 2021 we established the Temporary Accommodation Standards working group to produce a standards framework for temporary accommodation and to consider how this can be regulated and legally enforced. This will ensure that temporary accommodation used by local authorities to fulfil their duty to accommodate homeless households is safe, warm and of good quality, and that there is a consistency in the standard of temporary accommodation across all local authorities in Scotland.

The recent BBC investigation was heavily reliant on data sourced from third party websites and limited anecdotal evidence from a very small proportion of the network as opposed to comprehensive, consistent, verified data directly from the CPS operator. The third party website utilised in their investigation does not present accurate up-to-date information and should be treated with caution when used to form the basis of overarching claims about reliability.

CPS network reliability has consistently improved in the last year, with the entire network now up and running at around 95% of the time each month. Furthermore, the vast majority of faults are being closed swiftly and with minimal impact on driver experience with approximately 90% closed within 24-48 hours.

The CPS website now provides the public with ready access to detailed information on the performance of the public charging network, showing each charge point’s reliability levels, fault history and usage. CPS is also working closely with third party EV charging websites to ensure they have access to more up-to-date information.

Ministers remain fully committed to utilising every lever within their devolved competence to support and grow domestic supply chain which is why we are working to realise our ambitions for the offshore wind supply chain in Scotland through The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council.

Our Collaborative Framework will help forge effective partnerships to deliver on supply chain potential. New ScotWind leaseholders have joined existing Scottish offshore wind developers in signing up to a Collaborative Framework Charter, agreeing to work jointly together to build a pipeline of supply chain work greater than the sum of its individual parts. 24 organisations, including representatives of all 17 ScotWind projects with signed lease option agreements, have agreed to work together in the development and delivery of this Collaborative Framework.

The budget allocated to the Cladding Remediation programme is £400 million in total, this includes the £6 million identified in the Emergency Budget Review. The focus of funding in this financial year has been on expanding our pilot towards 100 surveys, surveys cost less than remediation but are a key commitment and an essential step before remediation work can start. There has been no impact on projects or on the overall budget.

The Scottish Government is working closely with developers in the assessment of buildings in the Single Building Assessment pilot to identify and remediate unsafe cladding. The Scottish Government is not providing direct financial support to housing developers. We will work with developers to implement the Scottish Safer Buildings Accord which will set out the expectation that developers will make financial contributions to remediate their buildings.