Chamber and committees

The Scottish Child Payment commenced for children under the age of 6 in February 2021 and eligibility is based on receipt of qualifying benefits, with 106,000 children receiving the payment as of September 2021 based on the latest data available.

Children who are home-schooled are not excluded from this support which will be increased to £20 per week as of April 2022. The Scottish Government remain committed to delivering the Scottish Child Payment in full by the end of 2022, subject to receipt of the necessary data from the Department for Work and Pensions, at which point around 430,000 children under the age of 16 will be eligible.

Until such times as the necessary data is made available by the Department for Work and Pensions it is not possible to expand the reach of the Scottish Child Payment to older children, including those who are home-schooled.

Ahead of the full roll out of Scottish Child Payment, the Scottish Government is working in partnership with local councils to deliver Bridging Payments. This innovative solution, which makes use of data available to local authorities, is enabling immediate support worth £520 in both 2021 and 2022 to be provided to as many children as possible. The Bridging Payments are made automatically for children of school age who receive Free School Meals on the basis of low income, reaching in the region of 150,000 children backed by investment of around £78 million a year.

In addition the Scottish Government has made £25 million of funding available to local authorities, as part of the £41 million Winter Support Fund, in order to tackle financial insecurity in their local areas. Scottish Government guidance , published in December 2021, encourages local authorities to utilise this funding to provide proactive financial assistance to those who may face hardship, including those not eligible for other support.

The scheduling of Cannabis Based Products for Medicinal Use (CBPMs) under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is a function reserved to the UK Government and the Scottish Government has no powers to alter its status.

Having considered possible options for funding private prescriptions for CBPMs for children in Scotland with uncontrolled epilepsy, the Scottish Government continues to consider that it would be inappropriate for the costs associated with a private prescription to be paid by the NHS, as this would have the effect of re-directing public funding from the NHS care to private care.

Despite the change under relevant UK legislation in 2018, many doctors remain concerned about the limited evidence on the safety and efficacy of those medicines which are unlicensed. The Scottish Government therefore considers that randomised controlled clinical trials are necessary as part of the medicine licensing process in order to demonstrate a product’s safety, quality and efficacy. This is why we are committed to working with NHS England and the National Institute for Health Research to build a clearer evidence base in order to enable clinicians to have the assurances they need to consider prescribing these products on the NHS.

Over the last five years the Scottish Government has spent £4,122,329 on public outdoor digital advertising in Scotland with public health campaigns and Covid-19 activity utilising the majority of this space. There has been a total of 181 weeks of advertising over the last five years, which are broken down as follows across the category of campaign:

Category - Number of Weeks Advertising is Active - Total Spend

Brand Scotland – 3 - £30,515

COP26 - 2.5 - £388,000

COP26 Travel - 2.5 - £79,289

Greener/Net Zero – 9 - £271,200

Health including Covid-19 – 112 - £2,996,724

Parental Support - 2 - £9,900

Safer including Road Safety – 33 - £250,622

Economy/Financial Support – 17 - £165,153

These figures do not include occasions when the Scottish Government has been offered the use of outdoor advertising space at no cost. For example, during the Coronavirus pandemic the Scottish Government has provided advertising materials to football clubs to be used on their pitch side advertising to support the promotion of important public health messages.

Outdoor advertising plays a pivotal role in ensuring that key public information can be effectively communicated to people in Scotland, especially when run in collaboration with other media such as television, digital and radio. Outdoor advertising can support the delivery of communications that need to target specific geographical locations. Digital outdoor advertising has the benefit over non-digital sites in that creative can have more visual impact than static poster sites, especially during non-daylight hours. There is also reduced lead time for production, which means messaging can be quickly updated or removed when required.

The information requested on how many people have been treated using hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy is not centrally held.

34 people were referred to England in 2017-18, 28 in 2018-19, 25 in 2019-20, 20 in 2020-21 and 13 people so far in 2021-22.

NHS Lothian have, as part of their action plan agreed with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, the British Academy of Audiology and the Scottish Government, contacted 92 children identified in the review as being of clinical concern and requiring possible retesting.

The Board continues to undertake work to review children known to the service who have risk factors for hearing loss and, based on the outcome of each review, recall children where appropriate in line with national guidance.

Organisations delivering services are responsible for implementing standards at a local level, and local quality frameworks and procedures will assist them in monitoring progress.

We are committed to exploring national governance arrangements as a part of the Independent Review of Audiology Services announced on 21 January 2022. This will include reviewing opportunities to improve data collection and a national peer review mechanism for monitoring progress in implementation of these standards across Scotland.

The information requested on the cancellation and postponement of hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy is not centrally held.

Since coming into post in August 2021 I have worked intensively with industry and stakeholders to agree a project plan that we can have confidence in to deliver Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS). This has included frequent engagement with Circularity Scotland Ltd (CSL) who have been open and realistic about the scale of challenge facing implementation of DRS due to COVID-19 and EU Exit, as the Gateway Review recognised.

In line with the principle of producer responsibility, CSL is a private company, established by industry to lead on delivery of Scotland’s DRS as scheme administrator. As an independent, industry-led organisation, CSL’s procurement decisions are not a matter for the Scottish Ministers.

Producers of in-scope drinks are responsible for having their scheme packaging collected from return points free of charge from the full implementation date for DRS, either directly or through a scheme administrator. Industry is therefore liable for delivery of DRS by the full implementation date whether or not a scheme administrator is in place by that date. Until and unless amended by the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Amendment Regulations 2022, that date is set in regulations as 1 July 2022.

The Scottish Government has no functions in relation to the Help to Buy ISA

The revised Affordable Housing Investment Benchmarks were introduced on 29 October 2021.