Chamber and committees

The number of bikes distributed per pilot is as follows:

Our ambitious deposit return scheme will start on 16 August and I repeat my commitment to look at proposals from small producers including a grace period.

The Scottish Government has been following the agreed process for excluding the deposit return scheme regulations from the Internal Market Act.

We first raised the issue with the UK Government in 2021, and on 28 February 2023 we published correspondence and a timeline setting out the steps that have been undertaken to secure an exclusion. Internal Market Act: correspondence - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

On 6 March I met with Ministers and Senior Officials from each UK administration at the inter-ministerial group on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to ask for an urgent decision from the UK Government for securing an exclusion from the Internal Market Act.

I will keep Parliament updated on further developments.

Scottish Government officials have had regular engagement on progress throughout the implementation of the Safe Deposits Scotland (SDS) system upgrade and were made aware of some teething issues with system functions. SDS has since confirmed all priority bugs are now resolved and user journeys should be back to normal.

The role of the Scottish Government, since the three approved schemes began operating in July 2012, is to monitor each scheme for compliance with the Tenancy Deposit Schemes (Scotland) Regulations 2011 . This includes being satisfied that SDS and the other tenancy deposit schemes have clear and substantial processes in place that meet the requirements laid out in the regulations. As part of this monitoring, SDS quarterly performance reports were analysed and measured against the key performance indicators to ensure these were adhered to.

Officials will continue to liaise with SDS on the operation of their new system.

We continue to fund and support the Young Ambassadors for Inclusion and therefore confirm that the relevant action within the November 2022 Additional Support for Learning (ASL) Action Plan update is now considered complete.

In 2022-23 we provided increased funding of £30k to the Young Ambassadors for Inclusion to support the delivery of the actions to engage children and young people in policy development as part of the implementation of the ASL Action Plan. The Young Ambassadors for Inclusion collated a resource pack for Education, Learning & Support to help schools support meaningful participation of children and young people who access additional support. They also helped create a Language and Communication Guide for school staff on using the right language, provided practical guidance and activities to support practitioners. In addition, they produced two podcasts on the role of Pupil Support Staff and delivered webinars on meaningful participation for teachers and support staff.

There has been no recent discussions with Network Rail on this specific point. Rather discussions have focussed on futureproofing stations for potential dedicated express logistics services.

NHS patients are eligible to have a free dental check-up every six months if required. The time between check-ups can vary from 3 months to 2 years, depending on the oral health of the patient.

As part of the recovery of NHS dental services, on 1 February 2022 we introduced an enhanced examination fee for all patients, which included for the first time a fee for a child examination. The latest statistics from Public Health Scotland show that over 1.6 million NHS examination appointments were completed between April and October with an average of more than 300,000 courses of treatment per month, meaning we are on course for over 3.5 million contacts in the 2022-23 financial year.

This Government has already introduced free dental care for young people between 18 and 25 years of age. We have also made a commitment to abolish all NHS dental charges in the lifetime of this parliament.

We continue to support Health Boards to deliver NHS dental services and have put in place additional recruitment and retention incentives in rural and remote areas.

The Scottish Government has not allocated funding to local authorities specifically for school meal debt since 1 January 2022.

As referenced in the answer to question S6W-15314 on 6 March 2023, the management of debt is an issue for education authorities and their finance departments.

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

Information on the first Health and Wellbeing Census undertaken by local authorities in Scotland between October 2021 and June 2022 is available on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/publications/health-and-wellbeing-census-scotland-2021-22/. Pages 22 and 23 of the Key Findings document, contained in the Supporting documents link, set out the frequency of e-cigarette use by pupils.