The Scottish Government, through its partnership with Peatland ACTION, restored a total of 10,361 hectares in 2023-24. This is a record high delivery for the peatland restoration programme, and continues our progress towards the 2030 restoration target of 250,000 hectares.

To give effect to the principal recommendation of the Legal Aid Payment Advisory Panel, that independent research be commissioned to consider the financial landscape for legal aid providers, a working group was established in 2022.

Membership of the group included representatives of the Law Society of Scotland, the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association and the Scottish Legal Aid Board. The group met regularly and agreed a specification to tender for the required research.

Following two unsuccessful tendering processes, the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association indicated their withdrawal from the working group. The Scottish Government share these frustrations, but an offer to re-tender remains.

The Scottish Government has held productive discussions with both the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association on the purpose of the research and will continue to make the case for re-tendering. We do believe that there is much to gain by carrying out the research.

Following the implementation of a new payment service provider, Transport Scotland were notified by the ChargePlace Scotland (CPS) operator of a technical issue that was affecting less than 1% of CPS users. The issue caused the cards of those CPS members affected to be automatically ‘blocked’ by the system, leaving them unable to charge. Affected drivers were able to use other methods to charge, such as Webpay and contactless where available, and could also contact the CPS customer service team to start a charge remotely. The issue was fully resolved on 10 May. No compensation arrangements are in place, and to date CPS has not been contacted by any CPS users, including business users, seeking any.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring the provision of high quality child palliative care, regardless of location, supported by sustainable funding of at least £7m per year through CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland).

We are working with NHS National Services Scotland (NSS), Health Boards and CHAS to improve the sustainability and oversight of funding for CHAS and to develop a long term sustainable funding model.

The Palliative Care Strategy Steering Group’s Children and Young People’s Working Group is developing new actions to address equity and continuity of access to paediatric palliative care, including the staffing models required to deliver this.

The amount spent through the Bus Partnership Fund was £2.54 million in 2021-22, £9.93 million in 2022-23 and £8.03 million is expected to be spent in 2023-24 following the processing of final grant claims from Partnerships (consisting of local authorities, bus operators and other key stakeholders) in the coming months. This has delivered bus gates, enforcement cameras and traffic light equipment to help buses get through them more quickly in Aberdeen, North Ayrshire, Glasgow, Inverness, and Edinburgh. It has also made a number of temporary measures, such as bus lanes, permanent in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

We now live with COVID-19 as one of many respiratory infections. Good ventilation is beneficial to air quality and good hygiene. It is the statutory responsibility of Local Authorities to manage their school estate, and it would therefore be for them to determine if it would be appropriate to install HEPA filters, as a relatively costly technology, in their schools, based on local circumstances. However, in August 2021, funding of £10m was made available to local authorities in relation to improving ventilation in schools. Moreover, further funding of £4.8m was made available to local authorities in January 2022.

The Scottish Government will provide Health Boards with £149 million of capital funding in 2024-25 for investing in their estate and equipment. The installation of HEPA filters, or any other means of improving air quality is a matter for local decision making. Health Boards make decisions on what to invest in based on the risk profile of their buildings. Health Boards will consider what level of ventilation is needed across the different areas in their facilities and will invest accordingly.

Funding allocations for ventilation upgrades and maintenance for public buildings is at the discretion of each individual local authority or public body, on the basis of local needs and priorities whilst also fulfilling any statutory obligations where applicable.

We remain committed to sustained investment to strengthen provision of education in Scotland and we are offering local authorities £145.5m in this year’s budget to protect teacher numbers.

The commitment to increase the number of classroom assistants has already been exceeded, with 725 additional staff recruited in 2022-23 alone. In addition, since 2019 the number of teachers in Scottish schools has increased by 1,786 from 52,247 to 54,033.

We will continue to work with local authorities to deliver our shared education commitments, with the approach we are able to take being dependent on the resources we have available and ensuring we deliver value for money, during an era where budgets continue to be under pressure as a result of UK Government austerity measures.

The Scottish Government, recognising these exceptionally challenging times, has declared a national Housing Emergency and called on the UK Government to reverse the almost 9% cut to Scotland’s capital budget. We continue to work closely with partners to address levels of homelessness and improve the supply of social and affordable housing.

For the current financial year, the City of Edinburgh Council will benefit from £34.2 million for the provision of more social and affordable homes. We do not currently have confirmation of Affordable Housing Supply Programme budget levels beyond 2024-25 but we are working within agreed funding parameters to allow projects to continue to be approved with future year spend implications.

Our intention is to publish a refresh of the Infrastructure Investment Plan pipeline this year which will focus on maximising the impact of our capital investment towards spend that delivers on the outcomes of this government. In the meantime, efforts to boost affordable housing supply by acquiring properties to bring into use for affordable housing and help reduce homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation have been given an £80 million uplift over the next two years. Decisions on the allocation of the additional £40 million for 2024-25 will be made shortly.

Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) met it’s 900ha woodland creation target in 2023-24 by planting 454ha of new trees and delivering 447ha of trees through naturally seeded regeneration, principally around Loch Katrine.

While there is no specific, separate engagement with food delivery industry employers, the Scottish Government engages broadly with businesses and trade unions across the retail and hospitality sector on a range of issues, including fair work. Many of these businesses also operate food delivery services. There are also Industry Leadership groups for both sectors co-chaired by Scottish Government, which provide strategic oversight of key policy issues and development.

As there are currently no Standard Industrial Classification codes that specifically identify food delivery as an industry; and no Standard Occupational Classification codes that specifically identify food delivery as an occupation, it is not possible to robustly estimate the size of the sector in Scotland.

Our vision, shared with the Fair Work Convention, is for Scotland to be a leading Fair Work Nation by 2025, where fair work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity for individuals, businesses, organisations and society.

Control over employment and industrial relations legislation is currently reserved to the UK Parliament; while this remains the case, we will continue to use our Fair Work policy to drive up labour market standards for workers across the Scottish labour market.