Chamber and committees

During this initial phase of policy development on Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs), in 2022, the Scottish Government met with a range of stakeholders including -

• British Trout Association (BTA) – 17 March
• Coastal Communities Network (CCN) – 22 March
• Community of Arran Seabed Trust (COAST) - 23 November
• Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) – 24 March
• Crown Estate Scotland (CES)–28 March
• Oceana – 13 May
• Royal Yachting Association (RYA) – 5 May
• Salmon Scotland – 17 March and 6 April
• Scottish Environment LINK–18 March, 14 July and 2 December
• Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) – 8 March
• Scottish Renewables – 13 May
• Scottish Sea Farms Ltd–23 May
• Scottish Seaweed Industry Association (SSIA) – 25 April
  

During this initial phase of policy development the Scottish Government met with representatives of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar on 17 February 2023, representatives of Highland Council on 20 February 2023, and representatives of Orkney Islands Council on 17 February, 22 February and 4 April 2023.

As the First Minister recently announced, the Fuel Insecurity Fund’s budget for 2023/24 has increased from £20 million to £30 million. The Fund has been allocated as follows:

• £9 million to enable Advice Direct Scotland to administer Home Heating Support Fund grants to those struggling with the rapid increase in gas, electricity and oil prices;
• £8.5 million for the Fuel Bank Foundation to rapidly support more than 85,000 households, including those with prepayment meters and at risk of imminent self-disconnection;
• £7.25 million to enable the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations to provide more than 55,000 households across Scotland with advice, support with bills and energy-saving items;
• £5 million for one-to-one mentoring for households to be provided by a new funding partner, The Wise Group, as part of a longer-term approach to tackling poverty and its causes;£250,000 for Energy Action Scotland to support both an uplift to their core staff costs and opportunity for expanded roles to aid our longer-term approach to tackling fuel poverty.

As at April, the median waiting time from listing to procedure is 81 days and the longest waiting time is 341 days. The service reports that it is now in a position to offer a surgery date that is within 12 weeks of the patient’s decision to go ahead with surgery.

Reform of the employee contribution structure in the NHS Pension Scheme (Scotland) was postponed from 1 April 2023 because of ongoing concerns about the cost of living pressures affecting NHS staff. We will shortly publish a revised consultation on proposals to reform the contribution structure with effect from 1 October 2023.

The mental health and wellbeing of children and young people is an absolute priority for the Scottish Government and we continue to prioritise support for mental health and wellbeing in schools.

We support our local authority partners with £16 million in funding to ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services to support delivery of the commitment. We also published a Whole School Approach Framework and a professional learning resource to assist school staff in supporting children and young people’s mental health in schools.

To help raise awareness of mental health and wellbeing, we currently support NUS Think Positive which sign-posts help for students, where colleges and universities can share good practice and where, through Student Mental Health Agreements, students’ associations and institutions collaborate on institutional mental health practices.

We will also be producing a Student Mental Health Plan which, by linking to our Suicide Prevention Strategy and the forthcoming Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, which will assist in bringing all aspects of mental health to the fore.

The Scottish Government continues to invest in a range of mental health and wellbeing training and education materials to support all staff working with children and young people.

This includes the NHS Education Scotland (NES) Children and Young People's Mental Health and Wellbeing Knowledge and Skills Framework , published in 2021 and available to the entire children and families workforce through the Turas learn platform. The knowledge and skills framework is accompanied by a Digital Learning Map, which has been available since December 2022. This enables staff to access high quality training resources and plan their learning journeys; whilst assisting leaders in the development of learning and development pathways for staff groups.

Through the Scottish Government/COSLA Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Joint Delivery Board, NES worked with a range of stakeholder groups to identify ways to encourage wider use of the Knowledge and Skills Framework and Digital Learning Map. This work led to the development of new resources and improvements such as a training checklist, a ‘One Good Adult’ job description and an evaluation toolkit to make it easier for all professionals to make best use of the Framework and Learning Map.

In addition, in June 2021, Scottish Government launched a new professional learning resource available to all school staff as part of our Mental Health and Wellbeing: Whole School Approach Framework. This new resource, developed by the Mental Health in Schools Working Group, will help to ensure all school staff can recognise the range of mental health and wellbeing concerns that young people may experience and work effectively to support them.

The requested information is shown in the following table:

Table 1: Total number of paid items for morphine from calendar year 1999 to 2022.

We will publish the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy in June. A programme of stakeholder engagement will take place over the summer on the accompanying Delivery Plan, with the intention of publishing it alongside the Workforce Action Plan in the autumn.

The £25 million which has been allocated to the Scottish National Investment Bank for 2023-24, is part of the ten year, £500 million Just Transition Fund. It will be invested on a commercial basis in line with the Bank's Investment Strategy.

Officials and the former Minister for Just Transition engaged with a range of stakeholders from the region, including Enterprise Agencies, to inform the decision to allocate funding to the Bank.