Chamber and committees

The war in Ukraine has sent shockwaves through the global food system and the impacts are being felt by producers and consumers in Scotland. This has compounded the challenging operating environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit.

I committed to support active farming and food production with direct payments - which provides certainty to the industry - and we delivered 2021 Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) payments to schedule with over £564 million issued to date. In addition, this year, to support farmers with the cost of living, the Scottish Government has brought forward the advance payment start date to as early in the year as is practicably possible. The intention is to support businesses, as far as possible, with immediate cash flow challenges.

The Scottish Government is also monitoring the impacts of energy prices and other input costs on agriculture, fisheries and food sectors. For example, in March, we set up the Short-life Food Security and Supply Taskforce jointly with industry to monitor, identify and respond to any potential disruption to food security and supply, as a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Its report was published in June 2022: www.gov.scot/news/safeguarding-food-security .

The First Minister has issued a letter to the Prime Minister calling for an emergency meeting of the 4 Nations’ Heads of Government Council and has convened the Scottish Government Resilience Committee, which will now meet weekly. However, it remains the case that the powers and resources needed to tackle this emergency on the scale required - access to borrowing, welfare, VAT on fuel, taxation of windfall profits, regulation of the energy market - lie with the UK Government. Scottish Ministers have repeatedly called for the UK Government to urgently take further, tangible action.

Following the publication of the review findings in December 2021, NHS Lothian has had extensive interactions with a wide range of professionals who work with children and young people to highlight the key findings in the report and this has included Speech and Language Therapists, Health Visitors, General Practice, Ear Nose and Throat clinicians, Community Paediatricians and teaching staff, with further communication to the Director of Education. This has involved individual meetings with professionals as well as the development of a staff briefing document, which was widely circulated across key networks. As part of this process, those working with children who had any concerns about a child's hearing were encouraged to contact the Audiology department directly or to refer the child through the normal referral route (e.g. Health Visitor, Speech and Language, GPs).

This is a matter for Public Health Scotland. The information requested is not held centrally.

The National Audiology Review Group convened on 3 May 2022 and on 28 June 2022. Review Group members were invited to share their key priorities for development of the Terms of Reference to help shape the future of audiology services in Scotland.

The Terms of Reference were agreed by the Group on 7 July 2022 and will be published on the Scottish Government’s website alongside minutes and a current membership list. Independent Review of Audiology Services in Scotland - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Scottish Government supports the principles underpinning the green taxonomy, especially the need to establish criteria for sustainable economic activity, to give investors certainty on the sustainability of projects, and to combat greenwashing, and we look forward to continuing to work internationally with our partners in the European Union and its Member States to combat climate change.

The Scottish Government position on nuclear power is clear – we do not support the building of new nuclear power stations in Scotland under current technologies. Given that new nuclear power will take years, if not decades, to become operational and will be expensive, we do not believe classifying nuclear as sustainable or transitional should be our focus.

The best pathway to net zero is through increased investment in renewables, storage, hydrogen and carbon capture. Concentrating growth in these technologies is better for both energy security and the climate. As the UK taxonomy is a reserved matter, we are working with UK government to ensure the forthcoming UK taxonomy reflects the level of climate ambition the Scottish Government has set. We will be publishing our Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan later this year, including energy scenarios that will set out how Scotland can achieve our climate targets and meets our energy needs in a sustainable manner by 2050, and will provide a long term basis for investment in energy generation in Scotland.

All territorial NHS Boards were invited to submit proposals to the Strategic Network on managing the long term effects of COVID-19 for how they intended to utilise long COVID Support Funding across 2022-23. Returns were received from 13 Health Boards.

Following review by the Network’s Strategic Oversight Board, the funding allocations outlined in the table below were confirmed to these Boards on 19 May 2022 to support the delivery of activities identified within their proposals.

Under the provisions of Curriculum for Excellence education authorities and schools have the flexibility to decide upon the content of their own lessons at the local level, this includes for activities offered in physical education (PE) lessons, taking into account the local needs and circumstances of all children and young people, including boys and girls.

The Scottish Government does not hold information about how many schools offer access to football as a part of their PE lessons or afterschool clubs, however schools can offer football training where is a demand for it.

Active Schools aim to provide more and higher quality opportunities to take part in sport and physical activity before school, during lunchtime and after school, and to develop effective pathways between schools and sports clubs in the local community. sport scotland works in partnership with all 32 local authorities to invest in and support the Active Schools Network.

All Active Schools teams are working to deliver their mainstream extracurricular programmes with an inclusive focus whilst targeting those groups in greatest need of inclusion. This allows for local teams to use their local data to determine who the inactive are for their school communities to ensure that they can tailor delivery on a need led basis.Specific activities such as football, and the structure of these activities, provided through Active Schools are at the discretion of each local authority/Active Schools team.

I understand that sport scotland will write to Mr Ruskell separately to highlight various opportunities that girls and young women have to take part in sport and physical activity – including Active Schools, and more widely across club and community sport. sport scotland are currently processing the 2021-22 Active Schools data. Data on girls and young women’s participation in football through the Active Schools programme will be shared with Mr Ruskell by sport scotland once available.

As set out in the response to S6W-06821 on 10 March 2022 the vast majority of homelessness funding provided to local authorities has been included in the block grant. It is at each local authority’s discretion as to how they use this resource to prevent and respond to homelessness.

In addition, the Scottish Government provides local authorities with an annual share of £23.5 million for homelessness prevention and response measures and an annual share of £8 million to support the implementation of rapid rehousing transition plans (RRTPs). This funding is transferred to local government over the course of the year, and the breakdown of this funding for 2021-22, the last full financial year, is set out in the tables below. The final table includes resource provided to local authorities for coordination of the five Housing Options Hubs across Scotland.

In 2021-2022, the Scottish Government invested over £12 million to support free income maximisation, welfare and debt advice services and has allocated the same amount in 2022-2023. This overall figure includes frontline and second tier advice and debt services.

We also invest in a range of other services that provide advice and information to people on specific issues including Housing, Consumer, Additional Support for Learning, Kinship Care, NHS Patient Support and Fuel costs. In 2021-2022, we invested over £17.5 million in these services and have allocated over £20 million in 2022-2023.

Information on the number of children receiving free school meals, broken down by parliamentary constituency, is not available. The Pupil Census of 2021 reported there were 274,938 children in primaries 1 to 5 at all schools across Scotland, and 17,482 of those were registered with schools managed by South Lanarkshire Council.

Free school lunches are available to all children in primaries 1 to 5 during school term-time, therefore all children within this age group are automatically registered to receive them if they wish. We estimate that providing free school meals will save families around £400 per child, per year on average.