Chamber and committees

Applications for warrants of entry are dealt with by the courts. The information requested is not held centrally. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service have established a working group to review the process for dealing with utility warrants, including the data recorded, with a view to improving the information currently available.

We welcome the 2023 Lancet Series on breastfeeding and will consider its recommendations in due course.

Scottish Government is committed to supporting breastfeeding as the normal nutrition for babies. We have invested over £7m of additional funding over the past four years to NHS Boards and partners, to improve breastfeeding experiences.

Globally, it is recognised that breastmilk and breastfeeding provide clear health benefits to both mother and baby, over infant milk formula.

We believe that every child should get the best nutritional start in life, and that families should be able to make fully informed choices on how they feed their baby.

The statistical release on Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme expressions of interest data reconciliation exercise was published by the Scottish Government on 17 February 2023: https://www.gov.scot/publications/ukraine-sponsorship-scheme-in-scotland-expressions-of-interest-data-reconciliation-exercise-february-2023/ . This is a one-time ad-hoc release of management information and does not constitute an Official Statistics or National Statistics release.

The Cost of Living National Performance indicator is disaggregated by disability on the National Performance Framework Data Explorer. It was last updated on 3 Feb 2023 with the 2018-21 data, showing that disabled people spent 34% of their income on housing, fuel and food compared to 23% of income among non-disabled people. As this data precedes the cost of living crisis, Scottish Government published an analytical report on the available cost of living evidence on 2 November 2022. The report includes a summary of available evidence on disabled people’s costs. We know that disabled people often incur additional living costs and are disproportionally affected by the cost crisis, with evidence of higher prices for energy bills, food, and fuel costs. The Scottish Government provides a range of disability benefits to help disabled people and those with long-term conditions. Disability benefits are designed to provide financial support to disabled people to mitigate the additional costs of living with a disability or health condition. The Scottish Government is uprating disability assistance by 10.1% in April 2023, in line with the September CPI inflation rate. We are currently working with Disabled People’s Organisations and their members to develop a new Disability Equality Strategy in 2023. The cost crisis and disability poverty have been identified as key areas of focus in this strategy.

Analysis has been undertaken to estimate how many guests on MS Ambition will likely be matched into longer term accommodation based on the availability of hosted and Responsible Social Landlord properties in Glasgow and the surrounding areas. Analysis into the availability of accommodation for guests disembarking MS Ambition remains ongoing and is being revised as new data becomes available via the monitoring of the disembarkation process.

Since November 2022, Scottish Government officials and Glasgow City Council engage regularly to undertake a Joint Assurance Review to ensure exit planning for the exit of the MS Ambition remains on track.

Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council have been meeting with guests to help them make an informed decision about their next accommodation and where possible, we are seeking to move a displaced people according to their needs. The lack of suitable properties in Glasgow however means that it is unlikely that everyone on board MS Ambition will be able to be accommodated in Glasgow.

Should guests be unable to secure alternative accommodation or not accept an offer of accommodation from the Scottish Government matching team or Glasgow City Council, they will be allocated alternative welcome accommodation before 31 March 2023.

Currently 1 building on the core Scottish Government estate has a heat pump installed (Tweedbank)

Feasibility studied will be carried out in the first quarter of 2023/24 financial year to look at a range of renewable technologies for the estate, including air source heat pumps.

Timescale for installing air source heat pumps to suitable buildings:-

• 2023-24 – (1st quarter) - Feasibility studies will be carried out with business cases and funding applications submitted for suitable projects.
• 2023-24 – (2nd quarter) - Apply, design and install power cable upgrades if required or – if the incoming power needs to be increased from the supplier.
• 2023-24 – (3rd/4th quarter quarter) - Design, tender, appoint a contractor, planning permissions
• 2024-25 – Installation of ASHP, radiators, pipework.

Scotland’s deposit return scheme is being delivered and funded by industry, led by the scheme administrator, Circularity Scotland. This model is in line with standard practice in other schemes across Europe. The Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020 set out the obligations of a scheme administrator including that they must provide any information requested by the Scottish Ministers or SEPA for the purposes of monitoring compliance with the requirements in regulations. Scottish Ministers and Scottish Government officials continue to work with Circularity Scotland ahead of the launch in August.

As part of the Scottish Diabetes Group, we have established work streams to identify efficiencies and opportunities within the Scottish Ambulance Service. This work is still in very early stages, however there is an established process in NHS Fife and NHS Grampian that links Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) data from the patient report form with SCI-Diabetes. This system ensures local diabetes teams have information about patients presenting to SAS with hypoglycaemic episode, in order to provide rapid, informed and appropriate follow up care. We are working closely with SAS and NHS Boards to further increase this connection across Scotland.

The Scottish Diabetes Group will take forward actions to improve services provided by NHS24 for people living with diabetes in the next year.

Scottish Government officials and Glasgow City Council have been engaging regularly since November 2022 to undertake a Joint Assurance Review to ensure exit planning for the disembarkation of the MS Ambition remains on track.

The Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council have been meeting with guests to help them make an informed decision about their next accommodation and where possible, we are seeking to move a displaced people according to their needs. This has been supplemented by ongoing and regular discussions between the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council, regional local authorities, and CoSLA, where host and accommodation matches for MS Ambition-based Ukrainians are identified as efficiently and effectively as possible.