Chamber and committees

Universal Credit is available as support for those unemployed and there are other benefits such as Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), however these are all reserved to the UK Government. Furthermore Employment Law is also reserved to the UK Government and the Scottish Government has no powers over associated policies.

We have provided £240 million of additional investment over two financial years, and a further £145.5 million of permanent funding from April this year, to support the employment of additional teachers and support staff.

We will also fund 3,500 additional teachers and 500 support staff over this Parliamentary term – over and above the 1,400 teachers recruited during the pandemic.

We will continue to work closely with COSLA regarding the employment of teachers, to maximise the number of jobs available, including permanent posts.

Existing Environmental Science qualifications (available at National 3, National 4, National 5 and Higher) draw from the sciences and social sciences and take a problem-solving approach to attempt to develop solutions that prevent or reverse environmental deterioration and aim for sustainable practices.

Scottish Government is currently reviewing and strengthening the Learning for Sustainability Action plan. As part of this process, Scottish Government will invite SQA, who are responsible for the development of new qualifications, to consider whether the existing offer should be expanded.

There are no plans to review home educated pupils' entitlement to free school meals at present. Free school meals are not normally provided for children and young people whose parents have chosen to home educate them, as the local authority is not responsible for providing their education. Free school meals would only be provided to children and young people who are not receiving their education at a local authority run school if they had entered into an agreement to do so through their local authority. The Scottish Government is not normally made aware of these arrangements.

Local authorities have the flexibility to make discretionary offers of free school meals to families experiencing financial hardship due to exceptional circumstances if they do not meet the regular eligibility criteria. We would urge any families who are home educating their children and experiencing financial hardship to contact their local authority to enquire about what alternative forms of assistance might be available to them.

Families can also access Money Talk Team, a free service provided by Citizen’s Advice on behalf of the Scottish Government that helps to ensure that families are receiving all available benefits and are not paying more than is required for services. More information about this service can be found online at https://moneytalkteam.org.uk/ or by calling their free phone helpline on 0800 085 7145.

For the year 2022 to date the average day rate is £505.03 (inclusive of VAT).

(a) there have been a total of 4 contract workers in the past 12 months.

(b) see the following table

The Nature Restoration Fund is subdivided into two main strands, each of which is further sub-divided, as follows:

1. The competitive strand, which is subdivided into:

• Projects less than £250k lasting 1-2 years;
• Projects greater than £250k lasting 2-4 years.

2. The Edinburgh Process strand:

• Direct allocations to Local Authorities and the National Parks;
• A competitive top-up fund open to Local Authorities only.

Due to the voluminous nature of the data, a spreadsheet containing the requested information has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. Number: 63496). Applications for the second part of the Edinburgh Process strand are currently being assessed.

Circularity Scotland Ltd as Scheme Administrator meets frequently with Zero Waste Scotland as part of their ongoing work to implement our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), including through the DRS System-Wide Assurance Group which is responsible for assessing system-wide readiness, as well as the monitoring and addressing of risks to delivery for Scotland’s DRS.

Since July 2021 we have met representatives of small brewers on the following occasions: 5 August 2021, 7 September 2021, and 28 October 2021. This is in addition to small brewers’ representatives participating in wider Scottish Government engagement such as the DRS System-Wide Assurance Group.

25 of the 29 buildings we have contacted are from the 80 block 2021 Expressions of Interest group. Once we ascertain consent and key details, we will move to the contracting process.

We have begun the SBA delivery process for 15 buildings using our grant based approach, with an additional 29 contacted to offer directly commissioned assessments.