Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government’s Marketing team met with health and social care partnerships Communications leads in November 2022 to discuss the upcoming Adult Social Care National Recruitment Campaign, which launches on 25 January 2023.

As part of this, a stakeholder toolkit and campaign materials are being developed and will be shared with the HSCPs to be used at a local level and support their own local recruitment activity.

Alongside the marketing for the campaign, Scottish Government have worked with HSCPs and provider representative organisations to deliver webinars for social care employers, offering advice and support for when delivering their local recruitment campaigns.

Since 2019, the Scottish Government have led an Adult Social Care Campaign Advisory Group. This group ensures that representatives from across the sector, including HSCP representatives, have the opportunity to collaboratively work together, share good practice and provide support across different localities.

Impact assessments published in relation to the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill cover the full range of current services proposed to be transferred to the National Care Service, including both health and social care services. These can be accessed at: www.gov.scot/collections/national-care-service/ .

Further impact assessments will be carried out as the detailed design of the National Care Service is developed and will be provided alongside the necessary secondary legislation. This includes any proposals to include specialist mental health services within the scope of the National Care Service.

The Scottish Government is engaging with stakeholders, the output of this engagement, alongside lessons from the current health and social care arrangements (which will be succeeded by the National Care Service) and further evidence gained during the co-design process, will be used to refine our proposals for the scope of mental health services. Collectively this evidence will inform the development of more detailed impact assessments as part of that process. A summary of the Scottish Government’s engagement on this matter will be published later this year.

The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) launched a new system for Continuous Professional Learning (CPL), in October 2020. The change allows for a more flexible approach to recording learning, doing so in a way which works best for registered workers and gives employers more of a role in reviewing registrants’ learning.

Through SSSC social services workers have access to free learning resources, interactive webinars that support CPL and career development and new information on nationally recognised learning resources endorsed by SSSC all of which will support CPL.

My officials are currently considering additional island based, non-conflicted potential members with infrastructure investment experience and have asked local authority partners to put forward names for consideration by 18 January.

Regardless of weather conditions, Winter Heating Payment will provide a stable, reliable payment of £50 to around 415,000 eligible people on low-incomes and provide a valuable contribution towards their heating expenses during the winter months. Recognising the difficulties being faced by many due to the increased cost of living, we have made the decision to increase the payment value for 2023-24 by 10.1% to £55.05.

Separately, in response to the energy crisis we have doubled the Fuel Insecurity Fund to £20 million to ensure additional support continues to be available to people affected by the rising energy costs and struggling with their bills this winter. A further £20 million has been committed for the Fuel Insecurity Fund in 2023-24. We have also delivered Child Winter Heating Assistance, a benefit only available in Scotland, which is intended to help mitigate the additional heating costs that the households of the most severely disabled children and young people face in the winter months. For 2022-23, we have increased Child Winter Heating Assistance by 6%, to £214.10, and will further increase the payment for 2023-24 by 10.1%, to £235.70.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-13225 on‎ 13 January 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

Pay for staff in the Senior Civil Service is reserved and operates within the UK Cabinet Office pay and performance management framework.

As at 30 November 2022, a total of 41 staff earning over £100,000 per annum were employed in Core Scottish Government at a total salary cost of £4,552,993. This represents 0.45% of the total number of staff employed in Core Scottish Government. The following table provides a breakdown by Directorate General area.

During 2022 and in line with Schedule 17 of the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement, ScotRail undertook a review and consultation of ticket office opening hours and I am currently awaiting advice from my officials at Transport Scotland on this matter.

The public consultation on developing a Scottish tax to replace the UK Aggregates Levy opened on 26 September 2022 and closed on 5 December 2022. Over this 10 week period a total of 25 responses were received which are now being analysed, and a formal consultation analysis will be published in due course. Further stakeholder engagement, including with industry representative bodies and producers will also take place.

Industry representative organisations proposed that the consultation period be significantly extended and a working group established. Officials have met with representatives of these organisations in order to discuss their concerns, and I am carefully considering the position.

As of 31 December 2021, all homes and business in Scotland had the ability to access a superfast broadband connection either through the R100 contracts, the demand-led R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) or commercial coverage. Our interim voucher meant that anyone whose property was in an R100 contract build plan beyond the end of 2021 had the ability to access a temporary superfast solution. We extended the availability of the interim voucher until 31 March 2022 to ensure that anyone who wanted to, could access a superfast connection through this scheme.

As of 1 December 2022, the R100 contracts had built connections to over 15,000 properties across Scotland with a further 3,800 connected as a result of contractual overspill. Over 2,700 connections had also been delivered through the R100 SBVS. This is, of course, in addition to those premises which are already connected commercially or via our legacy programme, DSSB.