The Scottish Government recognises that a number of Scotland’s communities have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, and are committed to engaging effectively with communities to ensure they are supported following the pandemic.

The Covid Recovery Strategy focusses on addressing systemic inequalities that were exacerbated during the pandemic. The strategy was informed by a series of engagement sessions with a range of partners, including the Scottish Refugee Council and Expert Reference Group on COVID-19 and Ethnicity.

The Scottish Government continues to engage with minority ethnic communities as part of our ongoing work on race equality and developing anti-racist infrastructure. Furthermore, the Scottish Government funds 14 race equality organisations, who undertake engagement and consultation with communities as part of their work.

We will also continue to engage with refugee and asylum seeking communities as part of our work to support integration from day one. We have committed to work with our partners to develop the next New Scots refugee integration strategy, and will identify opportunities to enable refugees and people seeking asylum to engage in that process and inform the next strategy.

A faith and belief representatives group now meets on a monthly basis to identify areas of common interest and consider input to policy development on a wide range of topics. A new Faith and Belief Engagement Strategy is currently being developed to foster deeper understanding between government and faith and belief communities, which will empower faith and belief communities to be active partners in Covid recovery.

The Scottish Government has approved an emergency authorisation for the use Asulox for bracken control in 2022 in limited and controlled circumstances.

The Scottish Government will continue to work closely with stakeholders to explore options for long-term sustainable bracken control. Officials have been instructed to begin talks with the other UK administrations and the Health and Safety Executive, to further engage stakeholders and those working on alternative solutions, to ensure we have more sustainable forms of bracken control going forward.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as the independent regulator for pesticides receive and assess Emergency Authorisation requests. HSE then provide the Scottish Government with a full assessment and scientific advice. Where necessary they will provide additional information as requested by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government budget and outturn for the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber) in each year since 2016 is in the following table:

The Scottish Government expects all employers to take a fair and flexible approach that supports workers to attend all necessary medical appointments. For this reason, we do not engage with employers specifically around policies relating to cervical screening attendance. However, through our own direct marketing campaigns and support for third sector organisations, we continually work to ensure that the benefits of cervical screening are communicated to and understood by a wide range of audiences across Scotland.

We also remain committed to continuing to understand the barriers that discourage individuals from taking up their screening invitations, and to taking targeted action to overcome them.

The Scottish Government encourages all eligible individuals between the ages of 25 and 64 to take up their cervical screening invitations.

A key priority for the Scottish Government is to reduce inequalities in access to and uptake of screening programmes, taking into account the available evidence of screening inequalities based on age as well as deprivation, ethnicity and gender.

That is why the Scottish Government is investing over £2m over 2021-22 and 2022-23 to build a programme of evidence-based, sustainable and scalable projects that tackle inequalities in a systemic way. It also recognises that the pandemic is likely to have exacerbated screening inequalities.

The Scottish Government has also awarded £456,000 to Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust in support of cervical awareness campaign work which is being used to tackle key issues around access and uptake. This work has included the Cervical Screening Awareness Week which ran in June, and for a longer-term Cervical Cancer Screening and Prevention Awareness project. The project will raise awareness of cervical cancer screening and prevention in Scotland for the period 2022-2024 through Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust expanding operations in Scotland to develop and share best practice in raising awareness of cervical cancer screening and prevention.

Work to understand and tackle barriers to cervical screening is on-going. Public Health Scotland (PHS) has published Cervical Screening Toolkit (healthscotland.scot) , which aims to address falling attendance rates and increase understanding of cervical cancer and the benefits of cervical screening. The information aims to help professionals to better understand the barriers to attendance (especially with vulnerable groups) and to use tried and tested methods to increase attendance.

Scottish Government officials continue to engage with key stakeholders, including PHS and the National Screening Oversight (NSO) on the most effective method of implementing interventions. The £2 million screening inequalities funding that we are investing over 2021-22 and 2022-23 is supporting that wide ranging work nationally, including through a dedicated screening inequalities resource within NSO, and local funding across all Health Boards.

Additionally, we are funding Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust with £456,000 for cervical campaign work across Scotland to raise cervical screening awareness, and that includes targeted engagement with groups where attendance has been found to be lower. That follows on from a report we commissioned from Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust which looked at barriers to cervical screening: https://www.jostrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/report_on_scottish_cervical_screening_survey_-_final.pdf.

The recent independent review of the role of incineration found that while there may be a temporary under-capacity of residual waste treatment in Scotland in 2025, when the ban on landfilling biodegradable municipal waste comes into force, there is a risk of long-term overcapacity beginning from 2026 or 2027, if all or most of the incineration capacity in the pipeline is built.

We are working closely with local authorities to support those that do not currently have solutions to the forthcoming ban on landfilling biodegradable municipal waste in 2025. The support includes facilitating collaborative procurement and providing technical, procurement and legal support for local authorities.

As part of the national conversation about our National Parks, we are considering the roles and functions National Park Authorities should have to help them continue delivering the aims set out in the 2000 Act, but also to play a key role in addressing the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. We will consider consultation responses carefully, including any which propose changes to primary legislation.

The Scottish Government has engaged with a wide range of drinks businesses throughout the policy development and implementation stages for our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), including through two stages of consultation (running from 25 June 2018 – 25 September 2018 and 10 September 2019 – 10 December 2019) which any business could participate in. We have not carried out any engagement relating to DRS specifically directed at retailers selling hampers, parcels, or gift sets, but many such retailers would have been captured by this wider engagement.