Chamber and committees

The Independent Review of Adult Social Care recommended that accountability for adult social care should be transferred from local authorities to Scottish Ministers, creating a National Care Service.

The Scottish Government is currently consulting on proposals for the remit and role of a National Care Service and wider proposals for community health and social care. The consultation also seeks views on whether children’s social work and social care services, and justice social work, should be included in the National Care Service.

Scottish Government welcomes ongoing engagement with local authorities and their participation in this consultation process. All responses to the consultation and engagement events will be carefully analysed to inform the Government’s position on the role and remit of the National Care Service. We will continue our engagement with key partners and stakeholders across the range of proposals for the new legislation.

Social Security Scotland routinely publish information as part of the quarterly Official Statistics release ‘Funeral Support Payment’. This includes information on the number and value of payments made since launch. In the most recent publication, which covered data up until the end of June 2021, 9,865 payments had been issued since the launch of Funeral Support Payment.

Information on Funeral Support Payment was last published on the 24 August 2021 and provided information up to the 30 June 2021. This publication is available from:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/funeral-support-payment-high-level-statistics-to-30-june-2021/

As we set out in our recent Programme for Government, we are committed to delivering the recommendations of the independent Grouse Moor Management Group review (the ‘Werritty Review’) as a matter of urgency.

This will include tighter regulation, including licensing, and oversight of muirburn, and a ban on burning on peatland (expect in very limited cases as part of an approved habitat restoration programme).

We will also undertake a review of the current definition of peatland, taking expert advice on whether it should be revised and a stricter definition imposed.

The timing of the legislation will depend on the future legislative programme for the Parliament, which will be set out in due course.

On 2 September 2021, the Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture announced that £250,000 would be made available from the Scottish Government’s Humanitarian Emergency Fund (HEF) to provide critical help for the people of Afghanistan.

The Scottish Government is in close contact with the charities involved in the HEF to determine how support could be delivered safely and effectively.

All members of the HEF Panel are obliged to comply with the HEF Operations Manual, which includes financial, safeguarding and fraud guidelines. Furthermore, project implementing partners are required to sign a grant offer letter with the Scottish Government before funding is released. Our grant conditions require all grant-holders to keep open and transparent records for all Scottish Government funds.

There are a number of subsidised training schemes provided by Scottish Government in regards to HGV and Bus Driver training including: Employability Fund, Modern Apprenticeships, National Transition Training Fund and Individual Training Accounts

A summary table has been provided, showing the number of people supported through the various schemes in relation to HGV and Bus driver training. To ensure consistency, we have provided figures based on financial years 2019-20, 2020-21 and Quarter 1 of 2021-22.

The Scottish Government recognises that the food we produce and consume has wide-ranging impacts in many areas of life. Our ambition is for Scotland to be a Good Food Nation where people from every walk of life take pride and pleasure in, and benefit from, the food they produce, buy, cook, serve, and eat each day. We have already been working across government on an extensive programme of measures to deliver on this ambition. This work will now be supported and underpinned in law by the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill, introduced on 7 October 2021.

The Bill will provide an over-arching framework for clear, consistent and coherent future Scottish food policy. It places duties on Scottish Ministers and certain public authorities to produce plans of their policies in relation to food and set out what they will do to make those plans real. These plans will also have to set out the main outcomes to be achieved in relation to food-related issues, the policies needed to do this and the measures we will use to assess progress. We want these plans to deliver outcomes which support our nation’s social and economic wellbeing, the environment, people’s health and economic development.

In Scotland, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is the environmental regulator responsible for making sure that watercourses are protected. As part of its role, SEPA monitors for contaminants of emerging concern, such as certain pharmaceuticals, in the water environment.

SEPA also works in collaboration with Scottish Water on its Chemicals Investigation Programme (Scotland), which analyses concentrations of a number of chemicals, including some pharmaceuticals, entering and leaving waste water treatment works across Scotland.

Scottish Water is responsible for monitoring and assessing public drinking water supplies to ensure that there is no danger to human health.

The Scottish Government welcomes, and is in the process of carefully considering, the recommendations set out in this important publication. The case for making any changes to air quality targets in Scotland to reflect the new guidelines will be assessed and taken forward during implementation of the Cleaner Air for Scotland 2 strategy.

As we further develop options for the design of rent controls, including through a full public consultation, we will carefully consider the potential impact on the quality and quantity of private rented housing. This will include gathering evidence and engaging with stakeholders in the private rented sector to develop a range of Impact Assessments, including a Business Regulatory Impact Assessment.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03402 on 20 October 2021. 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