Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is fully committed to supporting Gillian Mackay MSP's Abortion Services Safe Access Zones (Scotland) Bill. To this end, the First Minister met with Ms Mackay during his first full week in office to recommit his unwavering support.

In addition, I have continued the regular series of meetings with Ms Mackay and her team established by Maree Todd, when Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport. During these meetings, Ms Mackay and I share progress updates and explore any additional areas where Scottish Government support would be useful.

A Safe Access Zones Bill team within Scottish Government has been working closely with Ms Mackay to progress the Bill, including supporting a programme of stakeholder engagement and key aspects of policy development.

In my statement to Parliament on 30 May 2023, I announced that the Public Health (Restriction of Promotions) Bill will not be introduced. We instead plan to consult on the detail of proposed regulations to restrict promotions of food and drink high in fat, sugar or salt where they are sold to the public this autumn.

My statement is available on the Scottish Parliament website .

The Scottish Government has today published Cash-First: Towards Ending the Need for Food Banks in Scotland. This sets out our human rights approach to tackling food insecurity and details nine actions that we will take in collaboration with partners over the next three years to improve the response to financial hardship and reduce the need for emergency food parcels.

Scotland is the first nation in the UK to have such a plan and the actions will help to identify measures that move us closer towards our longer term ambition of a Scotland without the need for food banks.

The next set of results for the SCJS will be published in Autumn 2023. These results will cover a full years' worth of interviews through to December 2022.

Along with the other large household surveys that rely on face-to-face interviews, the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) was suspended in March 2020 to restrict social contact during the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, no SCJS interviews were conducted during 2020-21 and no report will be published for that year. In recognition of the evidence gap opened up by the suspension, the Scottish Government introduced the Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey as a discrete and additional collection to the SCJS. This asked people about their experiences and perceptions of crime, safety and policing during the COVID-19 pandemic, with findings available at: Coronavirus (COVID-19): Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey 2020 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . Fieldwork for the SCJS resumed in late 2021.

A first release of Official Statistics on Winter Heating Payment will be published on 6 June 2023. This will provide information on Winter Heating Payment, including the number of eligible clients and number of payments issued, up to 30 April 2023.

The Official Statistics for Winter Heating Payment can be found at: https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/about/statistics/social-security-scotland-statistics-publications

We welcome the focus on perinatal support in the report from the Maternal Mental Health Alliance. Development of perinatal mental health services is a key priority for the Scottish Government to improve the wellbeing and experiences of women, infants and families.

Since 2019, our investment of over £26 million has delivered a substantial increase in statutory and third sector services across Scotland leading to:

o 11 new and 3 expanded Community Perinatal Mental Health Teams

o 10 new and 4 in development Infant Mental Health Services

o 9 new and 1 expanded Maternity and Neonatal Psychological Intervention Services

During this period of significant expansion, some NHS Boards have understandably experienced a number of challenges including around recruitment. The Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Service Development Adviser is regularly in contact with identified NHS leads to help identify and tackle such issues; and we continue to work closely with the Network to look at additional ways to put support in place.

The Scottish Government is committed to continuing to work with NHS boards to support them in managing their allocations and the successful implementation of perinatal and infant mental health services.

In March 2022, the Scottish Government agreed that the Delivering Equally Safe (DES) funding period should be extended by 18 months beyond September 2023, to allow suitable lead in time for a new funding model to be developed, following the conclusion of the Independent Strategic Funding Review.

The Scottish Government established the Independent Strategic Review of Funding and Commissioning of violence against women and girls services to develop a new funding model to ensure victims have access to high-quality, accessible specialist support.

The Scottish Government is aware of the planned roll out of car park charges at a number of additional Forestry and Land Scotland recreation car parks as part of the agency’s sustainable forest and visitor management strategy. Equality mitigations already planned include keeping tariffs low, money-saving annual parking passes and free parking for Blue Badge holders. However, the Scottish Government is in discussion with Forestry and Land Scotland to see what further mitigations can be put in place to further reduce the impact on families at this time.

The Scottish Government has noted the report of the independent review of the Victim Notification Scheme (VNS) as published on 12 May, including the recommendation that victims be automatically referred to a new Victim Contact Team (itself subject to a separate recommendation in the report) to be offered enrolment on the VNS, given information on the process, and their rights and entitlements.

As the report makes clear, a number of organisations have a role to play in delivering the current scheme (including the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Scottish Prison Service and the Parole Board for Scotland).

Therefore, the Scottish Government intends to consider the report’s recommendations (including the automatic referral recommendation) in collaboration with stakeholders in the current months to fully explore their implications. This approach is particularly important for recommendations that are likely to have a direct impact on victims. We intend to take forward these discussions in the coming months as a matter of priority, and to publish a formal response to the report in due course.

No finance options have been explored given that full dualling of the A77 was not recommended as an outcome of the South West Transport Scotland Study published in January 2020. Instead, options for targeted improvements and road safety measures were recommended and these were subsequently appraised and formed the basis of Recommendation #40 of the second Strategic Transport Projects Review published in December 2022.