Chamber and committees

The Scottish National Investment Bank sets out its approach to assessing its impact in its annual Impact Report.

The member may wish to note the Bank reports on the amount of capital it has committed against each of its missions and the impacts delivered across its portfolio.

The Bank’s Impact Report 2023 is available at: https://www.thebank.scot/impact-report .

If the member has further questions about the operational detail of the Bank’s approach to impact, he may wish to contact the Bank directly.

The Scottish Government’s target is to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2023, of which at least 70% will be available for social rent and 10% will be in our remote, rural and island communities. We do not have targets by local authority area.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21029 on 13 September 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 .

There are currently a number of Scottish Government working groups that fall under the remit of Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands (RALRI). The following non-exhaustive list includes currently active groups that would fall under RALRI portfolio and are managed by the Scottish Government.

Peatland Science and Technical Advisory Group (Peatland STAG)

• Soils Working Group

• Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan Advisory Group

• Scottish Forestry Customer Reps Group (CRG)

• Scottish Forestry CRG Tree on Farms sub group

• Scottish Forestry CRG Technical sub group

• Scottish Forestry National Stakeholder Group

• Scottish Forestry Phytopthora ramorum review working group

• The Land Reform Bill Oversight Group

• Academic Advisory Panel to Agriculture Reform Implementation Oversight Board

• Partnership for Action against Wildlife Crime in Scotland

• Scottish Government National Goose Forum

• Small Producers Pilot Fund Steering Group

• Scottish Agricultural Wages Board

• Rural Delivery Plan: Ministerial Working Group

• SRDP 2014 - 2020 Rural Development Operational Committee

• National Islands Plan Delivery Group

• Islands Strategic Group

• Farming opportunities for new entrants (FONE)

• Agriculture Reform Implementation Oversight Board

• Agriculture and Rural Development Stakeholder Group

• Crofting Bill Group

• Bovine EID Industry stakeholder working group

• Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) Advisory Group

• Bee Health Improvement Partnership (BHIP)

• Varroa Working Group

• Strategic Management Board (SMB)

• Pesticide Stakeholder Group (PSG)

• Horticultural Round Table

• Environment and Economy Leaders' Group (EELG)

The annual local government settlement will continue to be distributed in full using the needs based formula, which is discussed and agreed each year with COSLA on behalf of all their local authority members. The Scottish Government is always open to any suggestions on how to make the formula fairer, however any such requests must, in the first instance, come from COSLA.

The Scottish Government is deeply concerned about the impact that scams can have on individuals and our wider economy, particularly given the ongoing cost of living crisis.

As well as working closely with partners such as Police Scotland, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), and Fraud Centre Scotland, we support the publication of a regular CyberScotland Bulletin which provides information on the latest cyber threats, scams, and news.

We have also partnered with The Data Lab to create the Scottish AI Alliance who deliver a free online course, Living with AI (available at livingwithai.me ). This is designed to help people inform themselves about AI and how it is used in our daily lives.

Anybody who has fallen victim to a scam should contact Police Scotland in the first instance. However, they should also be aware of the Scottish Government funded services - Victim Support Scotland and consumeradvice.scot who can help by providing free, emotional and practical help.

In order to determine the number and distribution of the additional graduate posts across local authorities, datasets are used from the Care Inspectorate on the postcode location of Early Learning and Childcare settings, as well as the latest Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

The most disadvantaged areas are defined by the latest Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), which identifies the 20% most deprived postcode areas in Scotland. Funding for Equity and Excellence Leads has been allocated to local authorities based on their share of the nurseries located in the 20% most deprived postcode areas, according to Care Inspectorate data on the location of nurseries. To ensure that this commitment benefits as many children as possible local authorities have flexibility to draw on their local data to prioritise how they allocate their additional teachers or graduates across settings.

The 3 local authorities without a nursery in the 20% most deprived postcode areas (Orkney, Shetland, and Western Isles) each receive funding for 1 additional full-time equivalent (FTE) teacher or graduate.

In the Programme for Government, we committed to developing the local infrastructure and services needed to provide childcare to families with children from the age of nine months to the end of primary school in ‘early adopter communities’ in six local authority areas.

We are already delivering innovative school age childcare services to priority families through our early adopter work in four local authorities – Glasgow, Clackmannanshire, Dundee and Inverclyde . Over the next year we will expand delivery in those existing areas and add two additional areas – Fife and Shetland. We will also broaden the scope of the early adopter communities – to test innovative models of delivery to provide childcare for families with children from the age of nine months to the end of primary school. This builds on what we have already learned from the early delivery of funded school age childcare for priority families.

The investment announced will enable us to begin to create and test, for the first time, what an all-age childcare system will look like for Scotland. We are taking a person-centred and place-based approach to designing this system – that means involving children, parents and providers in co-designing services to meet their needs.

In the Programme for Government 2023-24 we committed to developing the local infrastructure and services needed to provide childcare to families with children from the age of nine months to the end of primary school in ‘early adopter communities’ in six local authority areas.
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We are already funding four early adopter communities - in Glasgow, Clackmannanshire, Dundee and Inverclyde - and have added two new early adopter communities in Fife and Shetland as noted in the Programme for Government.

The Scottish Government recognises that bycatch and entanglement in any type of fishing gear can pose a risk to our iconic marine life and we remain committed to continuing to tackle this issue in our waters through our various domestic and international obligations. Relying on observer monitoring programmes and mandatory reporting already underway to record bycatch and entanglement events across the fishing fleet, we will build on the proactive steps that industry has taken in this area to explore effective measures that can be taken to minimise such instances. The Future Catching Policy will review technical measures which are already in use through both regulation and voluntary good practice as well as any promising, innovative solutions to determine potential improvements.

Using our core stakeholder engagement group, FMAC and our dedicated Future Catching Policy Subgroup, we intend to host technical and spatial workshops to develop a suite of measures in step with Scotland's unique and diverse geographical and fishing challenges and on a fleet segment basis, to avoid blanket approaches to technical measures and ensure a more tailored and effective suite of measures which match the unique issues faced by each fleet segment. Once we have developed a suite of measures collaboratively with stakeholders we will then consult again before taking forward legislation to implement these measures.