Chamber and committees

We received around 3000 responses to the consultation on restricting alcohol advertising and promotion.

I have written to the Equality and Human Rights Commission to highlight that the Scottish Government should be fully consulted on any proposed material changes to the Equality Act 2010, including on the current definition of ‘sex’, if there would be any impact on devolved matters. Any proposed changes to the 2010 Act must be fully consulted on with the public and stakeholders before being legislated on.

Neither the Scottish Government nor Health Boards hold data on privately paid prescriptions provided by independent healthcare providers.

We are currently reflecting on the wide-ranging feedback we received from stakeholders during the recent stakeholder roundtables and are working with an independent contractor to analyse the public consultation responses to understand the views and perspectives of those that responded.

We will publish both the roundtable notes and the consultation findings later this year, which will inform the potential content and scope of any policy proposals and our consideration of appropriate next steps for this work.

We remain determined to reduce alcohol-related harms and take a proportionate, whole population approach to address them. For example, we are reviewing our world-leading Minimum Unit Pricing as well as Alcohol Brief Intervention Programme.

We are also working collaboratively with Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) across Scotland to understand and help resolve local issues and support them in identifying ways to improve services, such as monitoring waiting times. Last year, £106.8 million was made available to ADPs, and nationally there is ongoing work, including the upcoming UK Alcohol Treatment Guidelines and development of alcohol treatment targets for April 2024.

£250 million has been put in place over five-year National Mission to tackle drug-related harm and a substantial part of it offers help to those impacted by alcohol. This includes £100 million investment in residential rehabilitation, where the majority of patients are being treated for issues related either solely to alcohol or a combination of alcohol and drugs.

The Ministerial-led working group last convened on 26 th October 2022 and the minutes of this meeting will be published within the coming weeks. The working group was formed to consider short, medium and long term actions to address anti-abortion activities which take place outside of healthcare facilities providing abortion services.

A significant proportion of the group’s work was to consider the use of Local Authority bye-laws to potentially deliver the zones. The Scottish Government was committed to supporting councils to use bye-laws to implement safe access zones, but Local Authorities concluded that national legislation would be a more appropriate route, and the work to consider bye-laws has now concluded.

We are now clear that delivering national legislation is the best and most secure route to ensure buffer zones are delivered and sustained. We are therefore fully focused on supporting the drafting and development of Gillian Mackay MSP’s national Abortion Service Safe Access Zones (Scotland) Bill. We will continue to take forward discussions with stakeholders to ensure that robust and effective legislation is introduced as soon as possible.

Although there are no plans for a final report of the working group’s findings to be published, the group agreed that the Scottish Government should commission research into the impact of protests and vigils in Scotland. This research is ongoing, and a final report on this will be published following its completion.

The Scottish Government has no plans to establish an independent review of governance of its portfolio of strategic commercial assets.

The Scottish Government is working in partnership with Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Ltd to review the Framework Document, which sets out governance arrangements between the parties.

As the Bank is a non-departmental public body, ministers meet with the Chair and senior officials on a regular basis. These meetings address the Bank’s progress against its strategic aims and how its investment activity across its three missions can support government priorities.

The First Minister met Chair Willie Watt and new CEO Al Denholm on 2 May This was an introductory meeting.

A full list of all ministerial engagements and when they have met the Bank can be found here: Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Last year the Scottish Government announced the £60 million Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund that aims to draw commercial investment in the public charging network across all parts of Scotland. Transport Scotland has already provided funding to Scotland’s local authorities to help them to work together to establish electric vehicle charging strategies and infrastructure expansion plans. These plans are identifying local and regional charge point needs and locations, the investment requirements, as well as the best approaches to delivering collaborative investments with commercial charge point operators. Opportunities to consider the installation of lamppost charge points, or other appropriate solutions, as part of their approach, will fall to local authorities.

As is standard practice, any planned changes to Scottish Income Tax will be announced during the regular annual Budget process. Our approach to taxation will continue to be guided by the strategic objectives and principles set out in our Framework for Tax, which underpins our fair and progressive approach.

We are committed to engaging with the public to explore how best we can use our existing powers to continue to deliver the most progressive taxation system in the UK, and achieve the Government’s three key missions of equality, opportunity and community.