Chamber and committees

The Future Catching Policy (FCP) is being developed to deliver increased selectivity and sustainability across Scotland’s diverse and varied fishing fleet. Once implemented, the FCP will support increased confidence in, and an increased accountability of, Scotland’s fishing fleets. The consultation on the FCP closed last year and analysis of responses is now complete with a full report, and government response, to be published this year.

While NHS Boards hold the direct responsibility for staffing, we are providing direct investment to assist boards, including those in the South Scotland region, in growing and retaining their workforce. This has included funding to support the recruitment of up to 750 nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals from overseas before April 2023.

In addition, our National Workforce Strategy sets out the actions we will take in partnership with Boards to plan, attract, train, employ and nurture the health and social care workforce.

We plan to publish a new cancer strategy in Spring 2023.

In 2018, the Scottish Government undertook a public consultation to explore options for establishing a deposit return scheme in Scotland, to which 16 recycling and waste management organisations submitted representations. An analysis of these consultation responses is available on the Scottish Government website here . The Scottish Government receives and responds to ongoing correspondence from stakeholders regarding DRS and is happy to consider any request for further information, in line with its obligations under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.

The vast majority of funding to local authorities from the Scottish Government is provided via a block grant and we do not stipulate how local authorities should utilise their individual allocations.

It is the responsibility of each local authority to manage their own budget and to allocate the financial resources available to them on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities. The Scottish Government has no plans to establish a national pothole fund.

The overall funding package for local authorities of almost £12.7bn for 2022/23 represents a rise of £1.06bn or 9.2% in cash terms, or 6.3% in real terms compared with 2021/22.

Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs) are being developed by the Scottish Government in line with the Fisheries Act 2020, and will be published by the end of 2024, as set out in the Joint Fisheries Statement. The 21 Scottish-led FMPs will reflect the urgency of climate mitigation by outlining the policies the Scottish Government is developing to ensure sustainable fisheries. These policies include measures to reduce bycatch and entanglement, such as the Future Catching Policy.

FMPs will also be an important tool for climate adaptation, because FMPs will state the maximum sustainable yield for a stock, where this is available, and include an overview of the health and location of a stock over time. FMPs will be revisited at least every six years, which will support management of our fish stocks as the marine environment changes.

The development of the FMPs will include discussions with our core stakeholder Fisheries Management and Conservation (FMAC) Group. We will also be addressing climate change from a fisheries perspective through the FMAC Climate Change Subgroup and we aim to develop a work programme in partnership with concrete actions for the industry, the Scottish Government, academia and others to take in order to mitigate the impacts fishing has on climate change .

Information regarding employment in the creative industries is publicly available on the Scottish Government’s website and can be found at Growth Sector Statistics Database . The relevant data is included in Table 2.5.

The employment data in the Growth Sector Statistics Database does not provide coverage of businesses and self-employed workers operating under the VAT threshold, which are of particular significance to creative and cultural employment, given that many work freelance or in small businesses. As part of ongoing work to develop our approach to measuring the size and performance of the sector within the National Performance Framework, we are currently undertaking work to improve our estimates of employment in the sector to include additional cultural, heritage and creative activities and to allow for better coverage of freelancers.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on future employment growth in this area.

Evusheld ® was developed and tested before the emergence of the Omicron variant. The RAPID C-19 group and the COVID-19 UK expert panel have considered a full range of evidence, including clinical trial data, in vitro (in the lab) analysis and observational studies, and have advised that there is insufficient evidence available to support procurement and deployment of Evusheld ®. As a result, there is currently no established NHS supply arrangement for Evusheld ® in the UK.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC, as part of Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS)) have agreed to maintain the collaboration that started through RAPID C-19 by collaborating on a single health technology appraisal (STA) of Evusheld ® for the prevention of COVID-19. NICE and the SMC will produce separate guidance and advice documents, but the recommendations will be aligned. Draft guidance was published on 16 February 2023, and does not recommend its use. Final guidance on the STA is expected to be published in June 2023.

The Scottish Government monitors a range of data sources on job vacancies in Scotland, as part of wider analysis of labour market trends. These include official and experimental statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and data from external partners.

In November to January 2023, Scotland’s employment rate was 76.5 per cent and it was the second highest since the series began in 1992. The unemployment rate was 3.1 per cent, down 0.6 percentage points since December 2019 to February 2020 (pre-pandemic) and the inactivity rate was 21.0 per cent, down 0.6 percentage points since pre-pandemic.

ONS produce experimental job advert indices at Scotland level, using online job postings from Adzuna. This source indicates that online job postings in Scotland in the week to 3rd March 2023 47.1% higher than February 2020. This data source is available at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/datasets/onlinejobadvertestimates

ONS also produce experimental estimates of labour demand volumes in Scotland by profession and local authority, based on analysis of Textkernel data on online job adverts. The most recent data suggested that there were 78,925 online job vacancies in Scotland in December 2022. Of these, 13 per cent were classified as Healthcare job postings, while 9.4 per cent were classified as Information & Communication Technology postings. This data source is available at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/labourdemandvolumesbyprofessionandlocalauthorityukjanuary2017todecember2022

The Scottish Government also monitors labour demand through the RBS Report on Jobs, which provides an overview of changes in recruitment demand by sector in Scotland as reported by recruitment consultancies. In February 2022, permanent staff demand growth was strongest in the monitored sectors of Nursing/Medical/Care and IT & Computing. For temporary staff demand growth remained strongest in IT & Computing. This data source is available at:

Royal Bank of Scotland Report on Jobs – February 2023 | NatWest Group

Programme for Government 2021/22 committed an additional £20 million investment, over the life of this Parliament, for the Detect Cancer Earlier (DCE) Programme to improve early detection rates. So far investment has been made into the development of a new behaviour change campaign to reduce fear of cancer, launched 6 March 2023.

Through the Programme, there’s a firm focus on lung cancer which remains a national priority. This funding has included supporting implementation of Scotland’s optimal lung cancer diagnostic pathway (published December 2022); exploring the role of artificial intelligence in expediting those identified as higher risk; continuation of the University of Edinburgh’s LUNGSCOT study; and establishing a National Bronchoscopy & EBUS Training Programme for NHS Scotland.

A new earlier diagnosis vision is expected to launch in Spring 2023, as part of Scotland’s new cancer strategy – this will be supported by a 3 year action plan, the delivery of which will be supported by this Detect Cancer Earlier (DCE) Programme investment.