Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring everyone who is eligible to vote can do so and is working with partners to look at potential new ways to increase registration levels amongst under-represented groups including young people and foreign nationals.

The Scottish Government is considering responses to our recent consultation on electoral reform, including on how to improve registration levels, and I intend to meet with the Head of the Electoral Commission in Scotland to discuss the report and its recommendations in greater detail.

Turner and Townsend are supporting the work of Transport Scotland in this area to maintain continuity of services. We are considering a range of procurement options, but no final decision has been taken at this point. An update will be provided to Parliament once a decision has been made.

No Transport Scotland or Scottish Government payments to Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP have been identified for consultancy work on the (a) design and (b) tender of the (i) Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services (CHFS) 1 and (ii) CHFS2 contract.

Through the Scottish Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (SIETF), to date, we have allocated over £22 million to co-invest with a diverse range of Scottish manufacturers to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions through increased energy efficiency and deep decarbonisation projects.

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way.

In July 2022 the Scottish Drugs Deaths Taskforce ‘Changing Lives’ Report, was published. This report recommended that The Scottish Government should develop a workforce action plan. In response to this recommendation, Scottish Government’s Drugs and Alcohol Workforce Action Plan will shortly be published, setting out the steps we will take to address prevailing challenges.

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way. Many of the milestones are being delivered through the National Mission and others are being picked up as part of more recent Government commitments.

The Medication Assisted Treatment standards published on 31 May 2021 and are a set of standards aimed at providing a framework to ensure that MAT is sufficiently safe, effective, acceptable, accessible and person-centred to enable people to benefit from treatment for as long as they need it.

The standards are evidence based and were developed through extensive consultation with multiagency partners that deliver care, and, with the individuals, families and communities with experience of problematic drug use.

The Scottish Government has committed to full and sustained implementation of MAT standards 1-10 in community and justice settings by April 2026. To help local areas achieve this, the MAT Implementation Support Team (MIST), based within Public Health Scotland (PHS) is supporting the roll out of the standards ensuring local areas have systems, protocols and procedures in place to be able to continuously improve services based on evidence.

In order to demonstrate implementation of the MAT standards, local areas provide process, numerical and experiential evidence to MIST which helps to inform an annual National Benchmarking Report, published by PHS. Process evidence includes formularies, clinical guidelines, care pathways, standard operating procedures, policies and other supporting documentation.

The National Benchmarking Report for 2022/2023, published in July 2023 reported that the 29 ADP areas assessed against each of the 10 MAT standards, 66% (96/145) of MAT standards 1–5 were fully implemented and 88% (127/145) of MAT standard 6–10 were partially implemented.

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way. Many of the milestones are being delivered through the National Mission and others are being picked up as part of more recent Government commitments.

The Partnership Delivery Framework to Reduce the Use of and Harm from Alcohol and Drugs which was approved by COSLA Leaders and Scottish Ministers in 2019, sets out clear arrangements for quality assurance and quality improvement work to be undertaken at a local level.

The Drugs Death Taskforce recommended in their final report, Changing Lives , that; The Scottish Government should develop a National Specification outlining the key parts of the treatment and recovery system that should be available in every local area, ensuring it also delivers on the principles of quality, choice, access and parity of treatment with other health conditions.

We have made a commitment in our Cross Government Plan that we agree that a National Specification for services would help set these requirements out more clearly. This would also provide more accountability, particularly for those with lived and living experience and their families who will be able to see clearly what they can expect to be available in the treatment and recovery system.

We are working with partners to scope out the components of a Specification for further development and consultation. This process will need to involve a range of local and national partners and most important amongst those will be people with experience of using the services and their families.

The area of forest that has been felled in Scotland is not monitored on an annual basis. Scottish Forestry is the Scottish Government agency responsible for the regulation tree felling and monitors the area approved for felling each year. After approval for felling is issued, the landowner has flexibility to decide on the timing of felling.

Felling approvals are issued in a number of ways, including as standalone Felling Permissions, where felling is approved for a two year period, and Long-term Forest Plans, where felling is approved for a ten year period. Local Authorities may also approve felling as part of planning permission, but these figures are not collated. As approvals can be valid for over several years, the area of forest felled in a particular year is not available.

For the last seven years, including private sector approvals and forests managed by Forestry and Land Scotland, the areas approved for felling are as follows. Of this area, 96-98% is for conifer forest:

Rights, Respect and Recovery sets a clear expectation that all people accessing services with a substance use condition should receive holistic, person-centred care. MAT standard 9 builds upon this, stating that ‘all people with co-occurring drug use and mental health difficulties can receive mental health care at the point of MAT delivery.’ The government is taking forward a number of measures to ensure that people with co-occurring mental health and substance use conditions receive this joined-up care.

We have funded Healthcare Improvement Scotland to test new models of care in five health boards – Tayside, Grampian, Lanarkshire, Greater Glasgow & Clyde, and Lothian.

The government also published a rapid review into mental health and substance use services in November 2022. This included a literature review, a survey of practitioners in substance use services, and a set of recommendations.

Finally, the government has recently commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to produce an exemplar protocol which will set out how mental health and substance use services should work together. This will build on existing best practice and support local areas to implement the recommendations from the rapid review and the criteria of the MAT standards.

No One Left Behind is the Scottish Government’s approach to transforming employment support in Scotland. This strategy is tailored and responsive to the needs of people of all ages and backgrounds who want help and support on their journey towards and into work - particularly people with health conditions, people with disabilities and others who are disadvantaged in the labour market, including those with lived and living experience of alcohol and drug use.

In January of this year, the Scottish Government published our Cross-Government response to the Drug Deaths Taskforce, ‘Changing Lives’ final report. This response set out our commitment to progress Cross Government work to provide employment support through the No One Left Behind strategy.

Scottish Government’s forthcoming Drugs and Alcohol Workforce Action Plan will provide further information on work underway to support people with lived and living experience of drugs and alcohol use towards, and into work, including roles within the drugs and alcohol sector.