Chamber and committees

We recognise that hospitality, alongside other sectors within the economy including construction and food and drink are hampered by difficulties in attracting, recruiting and retaining workers. This has been exacerbated by Brexit and the loss of people from the EU leaving Scotland, as well as the problems caused by the pandemic.

We funded the ‘do what you love’ advertising campaign last year, to encourage people to consider a career in our valued tourism and hospitality sector, which was developed in partnership with industry. We are looking at how we build on this, as well as continuing our work to improve conditions and promote fair work in the sector, to make it more attractive to potential employees. We continue to work closely with the sector, to address the challenges it faces.

However, the Scottish Government does not have all of the levers it requires to address these challenges, and we continue to call on the UK Government to commit to establishing a Joint Task Force on Labour Market Shortages with the Devolved Governments.

Under current constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom immigration, including the Afghan resettlement schemes, are reserved to the UK Government and handled by the Home Office.

The UK Government has published statistics on the number of people who have arrived in the UK under the Afghan resettlement schemes since 2021, and have committed to providing more detailed data in their quarterly immigration statistics. Afghan Resettlement Programme: operational data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The latest published data (25 August) shows that across the UK 9,667 people are in temporary accommodation and 7,385 people are in settled accommodation. This does not include people who have made their own accommodation arrangements.

The Scottish Government has not received any requests from the affordable housing supply sector for an early review of benchmarks in accordance with the scenarios envisaged in the Report on the work of the 2021 Affordable Housing Investment Benchmarks Working Group.

The evidence review of muirburn being carried out by SAC is currently going through NatureScot’s Quality Assurance Process and they will publish the final review shortly once this process has been completed.

Both the work on developing the Islands Bond, and undertaking the Islands Bond consultation process were led by the Scottish Government’s Islands Team as part of their overall work to support our islands.

Additional input was sought from other policy areas as needed.

We welcome the industry-led, UK-wide Hospitality Rising recruitment campaign as an important initiative to help attract more people into the sector.

The Scottish Government recognises the acute challenges for the sector posed by the current labour shortages which have been exacerbated by a combination of Brexit and the pandemic.

Hospitality is vital to Scotland's economy and people are key to its success. While there is no action planned to support this specific campaign, we are committed to working with the sector to find solutions.

To date this has included funding for a campaign to encourage more people to consider a career in tourism and hospitality branded ‘do what you love’, in partnership with industry in 2021. We are considering how to build on this initiative, alongside the continuation of longer-term work to improve conditions and promote fair work to make it more attractive to potential employees. We continue to work with the sector cooperatively, to address these challenges.

We are greatly concerned by reports of children and under-age young people obtaining vaping products.

There is an increase in reports from schools, stakeholders and the media of young people vaping. Initial findings from the Growing Up in Scotland study for 2019-20 when participants were 14 years old suggest that 21.5% had vaped, which is of concern.

The Scottish Government has a precautionary approach to vapes. Vapes and other nicotine products are part of a range of cessation tools available to existing smokers to help stop tobacco use. They should not be used by non-smokers, in particular by children and young people. They should not been used or promoted as a lifestyle accessory.

Our recent Vaping consultation, which closed at the end of April, sought views on tightening rules on advertising and promoting vaping products. The results of this consultation will be published soon and will inform our Tobacco Action Plan refresh.

We are working with a range of stakeholders to ensure that our Tobacco Action Plan discourages and reduces the use and visibility of vaping products by all non-smokers, including children and young people.

The Scottish Government does not hold the details of ScotRail expenditure broken down by the categories you have requested.

The Scottish Government budget for Rail Passenger Services, which covers both ScotRail and Caledonian Sleeper, has been published as :

2016  £266m

2017  £311m

2018  £183m

2019  £150m

2020  £239m

2021  £370m

2022  £407m

The retail handling fee is intended to ensure that the obligation to operate a return point is cost neutral for retailers. It is for Circularity Scotland Ltd (CSL) to manage this in a way that meets the needs of obligated businesses across Scotland.

Throughout the pandemic, a UK-wide approach to the procurement of therapeutics has been vital to allow the UK to have the buying power to secure significant numbers of therapeutics in a competitive global market. This approach has ensured patients across the UK have had equal access to safe and effective medicines.

Evusheld ® was developed and tested before the emergence of the Omicron variant, and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) conditional marketing authorisation outlined some remaining questions, including how effective Evusheld ® is against Omicron and the duration of its effect against current circulating variants. As a result, there is currently no established supply arrangement for Evusheld ® in the UK. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is carrying out further testing on the effectiveness of Evusheld ® against the Omicron variants which involve “live virus” tests taking place in the lab (“in vitro”). These tests are important because they provide certainty of the effectiveness of Evusheld ® against circulating variants and avoid the risk of introducing new variants through viral mutations.

The Scottish Government continues to closely monitor the outcome of further research to ensure that any decisions to make Evusheld ® available to patients in Scotland in the future are based on the best available evidence.