Chamber and committees

In October 2021 I launched the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults, providing an initial £15 million to support small scale, community mental health and wellbeing activities. In light of the very positive response to the Fund, and the number of high quality bids received, in February I provided an additional £6 million for this work in financial year 2021-22.

Since the launch of the Fund, the Scottish Government has worked with the 32 Third Sector Interface organisations across Scotland to support hundreds of grass roots, community groups to deliver programmes for adults which tackle priority issues such as suicide prevention, social isolation and loneliness.

Projects are being funded across the whole of Scotland, supporting activities involving sport, nature, the arts and community cafes. There is a clear focus on people who are more vulnerable and in need, including those facing social isolation, refugees, the LGBTQ+ community, and carers.

Officials are currently collating learning from year one of the Fund, which will be used to inform a further £15 million investment in the coming year.

On April the 1st, ScotRail passenger services were successfully brought into public ownership. This move now offers us the opportunity to take the right actions to make rail travel more sustainable, affordable and accessible for the people of Scotland.

Affordable rail travel, including a consideration of peak rail fares, will be considered by the Fair Fares review. This review will seek to consider the affordability of public transport across the network, whilst also considering how journeys can be better connected through integrated ticketing, for example. In the context of the cost of living crisis it is absolutely essential that all Governments consider how to support an affordable public transport network.

The Scottish Government is working closely with local authorities and COSLA to ensure that all appropriate checks are carried out on properties. These checks include an enhanced disclosure process, a local authority systems check and a property check to ensure there are no known safeguarding or visible accommodation issues.

The visits will ensure the accommodation provided is of an approved standard, meets the minimum requirements to live in, and there are no concerns of overcrowding. More information about home visits, including what is being checked, can be found on the Super Sponsor Scheme and Homes for Ukraine guidance for local authorities website.

The Scottish Government is working closely with local authorities on this work. Guidance for all local authorities supporting displaced people from Ukraine through the Scottish Super Sponsor Scheme and who match through the Homes for Ukraine Scheme has been published: Super Sponsor Scheme and Homes for Ukraine guidance for local authorities .

It is a requirement for all hosts to agree to a home visit by a local authority before a guest is placed with that host, or as soon as a local authority is made aware a person has matched individually.

We welcome the scrutiny into the procurement, award and regrettable delays associated with Hulls 801 and 802. We have engaged fully with both the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee (RECC) inquiry, and with Audit Scotland’s recent review and have endeavoured to provide all requested information. In recent evidence, the Auditor General confirmed that there is no evidence that material has been deliberately destroyed that otherwise should have been retained as part of the formal record, although it is noted that a specific response cannot be located.

The Scottish Government is fully committed to compliance with the requirements of the Public Records (Scotland) Act. The Scottish Government therefore follows procedures that aim to ensure that all employees, contractors, agents, consultants and other trusted third parties who have access to any information held within the Government, are fully aware of and abide by their duties under the Act.

The audit trail here is a matter of public record. Advice was put to the then Cabinet Secretary Keith Brown on 20 August 2015, setting out CMAL’s identification of FMEL as the preferred bidder. Advice was also put to the then Minister for Transport and Islands on 7 October 2015, setting out risk associated with contract award in the absence of a guarantee, and mitigation that would be put in place.

The memos to Ministers mentioned have been in the public domain since 2019 and can be found at the following link: Ferguson Marine: key documents - 2015 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

There was no Ministerial direction in relation to the contract award and Ministers did not direct CMAL to enter into the contract. The contract was awarded by CMAL in its capacity as procuring authority following a robust procurement process.

While CMAL did express concerns about the absence of a refund guarantee, mitigations were agreed that were sufficient to assuage those concerns.

The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill includes a specific provision which places a duty on the Registrar General to report annually on the number of applications received and the number of applications granted.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-07951 on 20 April 2022. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Government has worked at pace to deliver emergency business support to creative businesses, via Creative Scotland, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Scottish Government has announced £256 million support to the culture, creative, heritage and events sectors.

In March 2021, the Scottish Government launched a £1 million Creative Digital Initiative to help develop the digital capabilities of creative businesses in response to the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The programme has been developed through a partnership of enterprise and development agencies, including Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland.

The Scottish Government established a creative industries ‘Future Focus’ working group to enable detailed discussion with Scottish Enterprise, Creative Scotland and other key partner agencies throughout the pandemic to consider key issues facing the creative industries, business resilience and support, and opportunities for partnership working.

The Scottish Government has a Programme for Government commitment to refresh the Creative Industries Policy Statement and will work with CS, SE and other partner agencies to refresh this statement, as well as the Creative Industries Framework Agreement , in order to ensure these documents reflect the priorities of the creative industries and signpost creative businesses to the expertise and business support available to the sector.

Local authorities are obliged by law to offer the minimum of temporary accommodation, advice and assistance to anyone at risk of homelessness. Anyone who is threatened with or experiencing homelessness should contact their local authority in the first instance.

We already have a national strategy to end homelessness and rough sleeping in Scotland, which was updated in October 2020. Our Ending Homelessness Together action plan, backed by funding of £100 million between 2018-26, demonstrates our commitment to end homelessness in Scotland and we publish an annual report to show the progress being made to tackle these issues.

The Scottish Government is committed to bringing forward a Student Accommodation Strategy for Scotland which, in part, will be informed by a review of Purpose Built Student Accommodation, now underway. We will look to develop and incorporate this alongside and within the Rented Sector Strategy. This will include issues such as supply, affordability and wider planning and regulatory issues.