Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-19474 on 18 July 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

Now that the Bank is fully established, and has a growing portfolio of investments, work is underway to create the advisory group. The advisory group will provide advice to Scottish Ministers on the Bank’s objects, conduct and performance.

The Scottish Government is considering options for remit and membership.

Since April 2019, a range of Scottish Government funding has been made available to Local Government partners as the scope of delivery under No One Left Behind expands over time. This includes funding for the initial phase of No One Left Behind (April 2019), the Parental Employability Support Fund (February 2020) and the Young Person's Guarantee (November 2020).

The Scottish Government publishes summary information on Scotland's devolved employability services covering both Fair Start Scotland and No One Left Behind on a quarterly basis. Data for No One Left Behind is presented in its totality and not broken down by funding type. The most recent statistics published on 22 February 2023 covering the reporting period April 2020 to September 2022 show that 5,944 parents have started receiving support through No One Left Behind, 1,006 (17%) of whom are under the age of 25.

More information can be found at: Scotland's Devolved Employment Services: statistical summary February 2023 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

As the answer of 20 June set out, the Scottish Government is committed to promoting positive outcomes for workers and their rights. The Scottish Government engages regularly with the UK Government at a variety of levels in order to advocate for these outcomes, and to raise concerns where we see workers’ rights being threatened. For example, I wrote to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade recently to raise concerns that elements of the UK Government’s proposed approach to retained EU legislation could undermine workers’ rights. Scottish Government ministers have also repeatedly raised objections to the Strikes (Minimum Services Level) Bill.

While labour market enforcement is a reserved matter, the Scottish Government will not hesitate to raise concerns with the UK Government where necessary.

The Reaching 100% (R100) programme is ensuring that all homes and businesses can access superfast broadband. This is being delivered through three strands of activity – the £600 million R100 contracts (North, Central and South), our R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (R100 SBVS) and commercial coverage.

Both the R100 North and Central contracts will deliver connections across Perth and Kinross - with final connections due to be delivered through the contracts by March 2028. The R100 contracts are now solely delivering full fibre, gigabit capable connectivity, over 30 times faster than our superfast commitment.

For those properties beyond the reach of the R100 contracts or commercial coverage plans, the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme – offering vouchers worth up to £5,000 – remains available to help secure a superfast broadband connection.

However, as the R100 SBVS is a demand-led scheme, it is not possible to provide dates by which people might be connected.

Likewise, for properties within the plans of commercial broadband suppliers, we do not hold data on when those connections will be delivered.

We welcome the start of Hainan’s direct service between Edinburgh Airport and Beijing which we have promoted through our social media channels in China, with over 500,000 impressions to date. We wish Edinburgh Airport and Hainan every success with this service. The Scottish Government’s engagement with China continues to support political, economic, cultural, education, and social relationships with the people of China in keeping with the values of Scotland.

Circularity Scotland Limited is a private not for profit company set up by industry. As an independent private company, it is not required to report to the Scottish Government. Therefore the Scottish Government does not hold any information on expenditure incurred by Circularity Scotland during the financial year 2022-2023. Circularity Scotland is currently in administration. More information on this can be found at: Interpath Administrators appointed to Circularity Scotland Ltd (interpathadvisory.com) .

The Scottish Government was first informed that Circularity Scotland was likely to go into administration late on 19 June 2023 and was formally told that they were appointing administrators on 20 June 2023. The administrators confirmed they had been appointed on their website on 21 June 2023.

We had told the UK Government that Circularity Scotland were likely to go into administration should they not provide a full exclusion to the Internal Market Act for the Deposit Return Scheme in Scotland to allow it to go ahead as planned on 1 March 2024.

As part of the 2023-24 budget we have provided SCTS with £4.7m in additional capital funding, on top of their £8m baseline capital allocation. The additional £4.7m was identified within the Justice portfolio budget to support a number of priority SCTS capital projects, including towards the costs in 2023-24 of the replacement of the Office of the Public Guardian IT system, as part of wider modernisation and improvement in the work of the OPG. Work on the new OPG IT system is progressing as planned.

The information to be contained in an application for scheme administrator approval is set out in Schedule 2 of the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020 as passed by the Scottish Parliament. The design and operational detail of the scheme is a matter for the scheme administrator. Following the March 2023 gateway review, scoping work was commenced to finalise a Target Operating Model. This work has been paused due to the UK Government’s 11th hour intervention which undermined Scotland’s deposit return scheme.