Chamber and committees

We have regular dialogue with our colleagues in the UK Government, particularly the Department for Business and Trade regarding promoting Scotland’s overseas trade links. However, we were not made aware of the Secretary of State for Scotland’s visit to Vietnam.

Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child includes the right to adequate nutritious food. Universal school breakfast provision does have the potential to give further and fuller effect to this right.

The Concluding Observations from the UK’s recent state party scrutiny by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child includes a recommendation that the UK administrations strengthen measures to address child malnutrition, food insecurity and growing trends in overweight and obesity, by expanding the free school meals programme to all children in disadvantaged situations. It is not specific about how provision could be strengthened in Scotland.

The Blueprint for Good Governance in NHS Scotland has been adopted by all NHS Boards. The second edition, published in December 2022, places more emphasis on the delivery mechanisms and the need to apply a continuous improvement approach to reviewing governance arrangements. Support for innovation and the role of NHS Boards in delivering this is a key component of the Blueprint.

To provide assurance on implementation of the Blueprint, all NHS Boards will complete an annual self-assessment, the outcome of which will be used to create Board Governance Development Plans. Plans will be used by NHS Boards to refine and improve their governance processes and the Scottish Government will look at key themes and national lessons to support further development of our approach to governance.

It remains an unwelcome reality that our communities experience health, quality of life and even life expectancy differently across our society. Increasing healthy life expectancy and reducing health inequalities across Scotland remains a clear ambition for the Scottish Government.

We know that deprivation is a significant driver of excess mortality and so reducing poverty and inequality sits at the heart of our investment across all portfolios, and remains the best way of improving life expectancy. In 2022-23, we invested £3bn across a range of programmes targeted at low income households, with £1.25bn directly benefitting children. We increased the Scottish Child Payment to £25 per eligible child per week – an increase of 150% in less than a year - and expanded the payment to all eligible children under the age of 16.

We have Community Link Workers and Welfare Rights Advisers embedded into 180 GP practices within our rural, island and deprived communities; who offer advice to patients regarding social security eligibility, debt resolution, housing and employability issues. We are also progressing a range of action to reduce population level health harming activities across tobacco control, preventing and treating alcohol related harm, improving the food environment to enable healthy weight, and improving physical activity.

We will continue to work with our partners to understand what is needed at a national and regional level to support local, preventative action to drive improvements in health, and embed health considerations within wider policy making.

The Scottish Government will shorty publish the Delivery Plan and Workforce Development Plan which accompany the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy we published in the summer. Thereafter we will set out further actions in support of students.

The Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022 ("the Act") requires Scottish Ministers, local authorities, and health boards to publish Good Food Nation Plans. Local authorities will be encouraged to share their views on the national Plan during the forthcoming consultation. Following the consultation process, the proposed national Plan will be laid before the Scottish Parliament. Local authority and health board Plans will be published after the national Plan, as they must have regard to the content of the national Plan in the preparation of their own Plans. The Scottish Government recognises the importance of engaging with local authorities during the development and delivery of the Good Food Nation Plans. Officials have regular meetings with COSLA to provide progress updates on the national Plan and to discuss the duties on local government arising from the Act. The Scottish Government will continue to engage with local authorities and COSLA throughout the Good Food Nation work.

The current Action Plan ends in December 2023. Future plans will be informed by the review mentioned in my answer to question S6W-22193 on 26 October 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Draft Scottish Biodiversity Strategy includes commitments to continue effective species recovery, reintroduction and reinforcement programmes and to introduce an agricultural future support framework which delivers for nature restoration and biodiversity.

The Scottish Government and NatureScot have agreed to undertake a review of the Sea Eagle Management Scheme and White-tailed Eagle Action Plan. Terms of reference for this work have been drafted and will be shared with the Sea Eagle National Stakeholder Panel shortly.

The review will assess progress on delivering the aims of the Sea Eagle Management Scheme to support farmers and crofters to manage their livestock alongside a growing sea eagle population.

NatureScot, through the Sea Eagle Management Scheme, delivers a range of measures to support farmers and crofters to manage sheep flocks to mitigate the impacts of sea eagle predation.

These include:

• Provision of one-to-one advice from experienced contractors to land managers experiencing sea eagle impacts
• Co-ordination of recording/logging of sea eagle activity and flock management information at a farm/croft level
• Loan of scaring equipment
• Payments to land managers who undertake management measures which mitigate sea eagle impacts as part of their livestock management, through Management Agreements.

Payments can be made for flock management (including supplementary feeding, tick and fluke treatments), enhanced management (including additional shepherding and away wintering of sheep) and capital measures (including purchase of scaring devices, creation of hill parks and support for indoor lambing).

More details are available on the NatureScot website at https://www.nature.scot/professional-advice/land-and-sea-management/managing-wildlife/sea-eagle-management-scheme