Chamber and committees

Provision, maintenance and servicing of bikes comes from our budget to support Active Travel in 2021-2022, that amounted to £115.5m in total, and in 2022-2023 that amounted to £150m.

Specifically we have three programmes which focus on the provision, service and repair of a bike. They are the Free Bikes Commitment, Access Bikes run by Cycling UK and Scotland’s Cycle Repair Scheme (SCRS) run by Cycling UK. Their financials since May 2021 are below:

• Free Bikes Commitment - £4,495,106.72
• Access Bikes - £594,583
• SCRS - £3,215,123

The cost of responding to these types of incidents or spills are a matter for the public bodies, the relevant authorities, or agencies. The information requested is not held centrally and therefore the information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

There is ongoing work related to identifying and monitoring risks from PFAS.

The environmental regulator SEPA has been working with partners in recent years to understand the sources, environmental concentrations, and risks of perflourinated compounds in the environment.

A 2019 SEPA study looked at the potential for organic contaminants to be present in materials spread to land, and carried out a basic risk assessment using monitoring data for prioritised substances. This study included measurement of 1 PFA substance (PFOA) levels in sludges from two waste water treatment plants, and did not identify a risk for reasonable worst-case spreading scenarios. In 2018, SEPA carried out a limited monitoring exercise looking at several PFAS in a number of rivers across Scotland, though monitoring locations were not directly targeted to potential sources of these chemicals. 65% of the 550 datapoints reported were below limits of detection.

A Scottish Government commissioned report by the James Hutton Institute on the impact of sewage sludge spreading on human health was published in 2021 and indicated that risks to human health from the polyfluorinated compounds PFOS and PFOA in sewage sludge spread to land in Scotland are likely to be low.

However, scientific understanding of risks posed by PFAS in the environment continues to develop. For example :

• SEPA is reviewing its approach to evidence gathering to better characterise the current distribution of PFAS in Scotland’s environment. It is working with partner organisations to develop this understanding, and working across the regulatory landscape to support revisions to legislation, regulatory approaches, and support site operators or users of PFAS based substances to meet their legal obligations. This includes engagement with large research programmes such as ECORISC (Ecotoxicological Risk Assessment Towards Sustainable Chemical Use).
• UK environmental regulators have been engaged in the UK Water Industry Research Chemical Investigations Programme (CIP UK). Through this programme SEPA has been working in partnership with Scottish Water on various workstreams for a number of years, and this investigation has included evaluation of PFAS in waste water treatment works effluent and sludge, risks to the environment and effectiveness of treatment processes.

I understand the importance of school age childcare and the benefits it brings for the whole family. That is why the Scottish Government is committed to design an all-year-round system of school age childcare, which will be funded for those families on the lowest incomes by the end of the Parliamentary Term.

We will soon publish a School Age Childcare Delivery Framework which will set out the approach and principles we will apply to designing and building a school age childcare system.

We have supported and listened to private providers and other key stakeholders throughout our policy development. We will continue to do this, using a place based and people centred approach to design, recognising that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to providing school age childcare within communities.

Across 2020-22 we invested £3 million in 15 Access to Childcare Fund projects, some delivered by private providers. The projects explored new models of school age childcare including holiday provision, flexible delivery and specialist services for children with additional support needs. This year, we also provided £10 million to the Summer 2022 programme. This helped Local Authorities and a range of delivery partners, including private providers, to offer free summer holiday and food provision to families from the six priority groups outlined in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-26 .

Building on our learning from these projects, in this year’s Programme for Government we will continue to invest and involve a range of providers and communities to help us design an all-year round school age childcare system.

We are also progressing the actions set out in the Financial Sustainability Health Check , published in August 2021, including funding pilot programmes for targeted Business Gateway support for childcare services. In early spring we will conduct a second Financial Sustainability Health Check to gather further evidence on the sustainability of the sector, helping us to tailor future policy.

I would also refer the member to the answer to question S6W-13101 on 9 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

The latest Scottish Government Private Sector Rent Statistics, Scotland, 2010 to 2022 was published on 29 th November 2022, which presents average private rents by property size and Broad Rental Market Areas between 2010 and 2022 (years to end September), based predominantly on advertised rent data. This is the lowest level of granularity available for the Scottish Government Private Rent Statistics. The figures cannot be disaggregated to local authority level as the data collection method used has not been designed for this purpose. and therefore the Scottish Government does not produce or publish rental data at local authority level. In addition, data is not held for the years prior to 2010.

In terms of average rents in the social rented sector, the Scottish Government Housing Revenue Account (HRA) Statistics publication contains a time series by local authority area (Table 8) of the average weekly rent on local authority HRA properties from 1997-98 onwards. These figures are also included alongside corresponding figures for housing association average rents by local authority area in an archived Scottish Government Housing Statistics publication table , although this table covers the period 2005-06 to 2012-13 only. More recent data on average rents in the social rented sector for local authority and housing association properties, including by property size, is published as part of Scottish Housing Regulator Charter Data outputs for the years 2013-14 onwards, available in the Scottish Housing Regulator Statistical Information webpages . The Charter Data figures are available at a social landlord level only, and so housing association figures are presented as landlord level averages rather than by the local authority location of their housing stock. However separate Scottish Housing Regulator stock data for the latest year 2021-22, available in the same Statistical Information webpages, includes information for on average rents split by both social landlord and local authority area for the year 2021-22.

The Scottish Government accepts that this statistic needs revising and we have already committed to undertake further work to quantify Scotland’s offshore wind potential. In response to the issues raised in the UK Statistics Authority’s letter, dated 7 December 2022, the Scottish Government has engaged directly with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) setting out the steps that have been taken to ensure the statistic is not used further, and provided an update on the analytical work that is underway to produce a replacement statistic.

Scottish Government allocates sustainability payments on a per patient basis. Practices with higher list sizes will receive a proportionally larger sum than smaller practices.

The Scottish Government has no plans to reduce the allocated £10m in sustainability payments to general practices.

We launched the Interim Principles in Parliament on March 31 2022. They set out in more detail our ambition for a high integrity, values-led market for responsible investment in natural capital including our commitment that communities are engaged in, and benefit from, this market. We aim to strengthen and finalise the Interim principles during the course of this Parliament. For example, the Scottish Forestry Strategy Implementation Plan published in June 2022 includes a commitment to demonstrating the Interim Principles in the delivery of woodland creation. Also, the Investment Ready Nature Scotland grant fund launched in August 2022, and referred to in the preceding question, includes a requirement for projects to comply with the Interim Principles. We will also seek to strengthen the Principles through our policy programme such as our work on the Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement.

The Scottish Government published the Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery - Implementation Plan in July 2022.

Extensive engagement of people with lived experience was carried out at all stages to develop the Framework including members of the Cross Party Group on Chronic Pain. This includes through representation on the National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain (NACCP) and a national survey of people with chronic pain and their carers. We also sought input from other stakeholder groups during the development of the Framework including NHS staff, service planners and third-sector partners. This included work to bring together the diverse clinical disciplines involved in pain management in order to inform and support activities to improve chronic pain services.

All members of the NACCP had the opportunity to freely share their views on the priorities for improving pain management support which were used to inform the development of the draft Framework. Committee members were provided with an advanced copy of the Framework and were encouraged to share their feedback on its content via a public consultation which had a high level of responses from people with chronic pain and other stakeholders. We are grateful for the views and ideas shared through the consultation which have been used to inform the Aims and Actions we have set out in the Plan. This includes actions to address issues raised by the Cross Party Group on Chronic Pain to drive delivery of sustainable services and support for people with chronic pain across Scotland.