Scotland Food & Drink Partnership has been awarded £10 million to support its national strategy. It sets out short- to long-term objectives developed in partnership with food and drink producers throughout Scotland, including those in the Highlands and Islands.

Spend is not disaggregated on a regional basis.

Scottish Government officials continue to engage and contribute to the Microchipping Devolved Administration Working Group and on 11 October I wrote to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE, MP expressing the Scottish Government’s support for the work being done by the Working Group towards a single point of search portal for all animals microchipped.

The Scottish Government, in partnership with UK Government, agreed to deliver two Green Freeports in Scotland, and we are focussed on supporting the two selected Green Freeports to deliver maximum impact as soon as possible. There are no current plans to create additional Green Freeports in Scotland.

The eCommerce Shared Service provides a joined up suite of procurement tools to drive excellence, consistency and best practice within public procurement. The tools include the Public Contracts Scotland advertising portal (PCS mandated for all public bodies in advertising procurements £50k and over), PCS-Tender, PECOS P2P, PECOS Content management (PCM), eInvoicing. All or elements of the Service are used by all Scottish public bodies to enable and support their end to end procurement processes.

The eCommerce Shared Service is promoted via established stakeholder groups and at various events to represent and endorse the Service to public bodies. Appendix 1 shows the number of public bodies that currently use the Service.

Spending decisions on IT Systems and Consultancies is a matter for public bodies, however the eCommerce Shared Service works with public bodies to promote and drive uptake of these systems.

Appendix 1

Section 40 of the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 introduces an offence of significant environmental harm and sets maximum penalties for convictions for this offence. As set out in the Scottish Government’s draft Annual Report on the Scottish Government's commitment to align with the European Union where appropriate that was laid on 31 October 2024, we are considering Directive (EU) 2024/1203 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 on the protection of the environment through criminal law. As a part of our consideration of this Directive, we are assessing the provisions for qualified offences for conduct that causes widespread and substantial environmental damage to particular features of the environment, and comparing this with existing provisions in Scots law to protect the environment.

The Scottish Government expects all women receiving maternity care to be treated with dignity and respect and is developing a Delivery Framework for Miscarriage Care, which includes the provision of separate private spaces in hospitals with maternity wards for women experiencing miscarriage or baby loss. Officials are currently working with stakeholders to finalise the content and we expect to publish the Framework by the end of 2024 or early in 2025.

The Scottish Government funded National Bereavement Care Pathways for pregnancy and baby loss and accompanying bereavement care standards are clear that women and families experiencing pregnancy or baby loss should be treated sensitively and compassionately and difficult news should be delivered in a quiet private space. All 14 NHS Boards are signed up to the pathways and at different stages of implementation.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) will provide updates on HIV statistics as part of the HIV in Scotland annual surveillance report. The latest report was published in September 2024 and the next release will be in Autumn 2025.

The HIV Transmission Elimination Delivery Plan was launched in March 2024. PHS is developing a monitoring and evaluation plan to assess progress against this plan and the Scottish Government will update Parliament on this in due course.

Between 1 October 2023 and end June 2024 we have supported the delivery of 6,774 affordable homes across Scotland of which 933 have been in rural and island areas. 26 of these homes were delivered through the Rural and Islands Housing Fund. We remain committed to delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032 of which at least 10% will be in rural and island areas.

Figures relating to homes delivered in rural and island areas are based on provisional programme management information to end June 2024.

We do not yet have a timescale for publishing the Fisheries Climate Change Action Plan. Further work is required, in partnership with stakeholders, to develop a clear plan of actions which will support fisheries in the drive to net zero.

Many of the actions that are required will need to be developed and initiated by the fishing industry and others in the private sector (for example vessel designers). Regulators and policy makers will also need to identify and remove barriers where this is possible.

The Scottish Government have no plans to request this.

Scottish Water has a programme of installing blue top up taps in communities across Scotland, with over 120 installed and providing fresh drinking water for bottle refills. However they are not in a position to support the refurbishing/reuse of existing architecture and historic fountains and wells. These older pieces of equipment present a number of issues around health and safety risks, use of historic materials, location, the bespoke nature of every site and ultimately the inability to guarantee water quality. The taps provided by Scottish Water are Water Regulation Approval Scheme (WRAS) approved, which provides an enhanced level of water quality protection. This level of assurance would be very difficult and costly to achieve via pre-existing historic structures – and in some cases it may not be possible.