Chamber and committees

The Mental Health in Schools Working Group have sought to establish a comprehensive approach to supporting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing through schools. The publication of the whole-school approach framework provides guidance on setting mental health and wellbeing at the heart of the ethos and culture of schools.

This approach is also reflected within the new professional learning resource, which has been specifically developed for use by school staff, as part of a strategic approach to enhancing understanding of supporting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing in schools. The new professional learning resource is available online and can be used by any member of school staff.

We will publish the conclusions and recommendations of the City Centre Recovery Task Force this autumn.

We recognise that long waits are unacceptable and we remain committed to meet the standard that 90% of patients start treatment within 18 weeks of referral.

We have asked all Boards to set out their plans and trajectories for meeting the waiting times standards and clearing backlogs by the end of March 2023. To support this, we have already allocated £9.25m from the Mental Health Recovery and Renewal Fund, for the first year of clearing waiting list backlogs in CAMHS and Psychological Therapies. This is part of a wider investment supported by a £120m Recovery and Renewal fund to transform services, with a renewed focus on prevention and early intervention.

Scottish Government and Dumfries and Galloway Council officials engage regularly on how to progress this commitment and a further meeting is planned in October, which will also involve South of Scotland Enterprise.

The Scottish Government supports the development of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) as an industrial scale decarbonisation system which has the potential to make a big impact on achieving Scotland’s emissions targets. The advice from the Climate Change Committee describes CCUS as a “necessity, not an option” to achieve net zero emissions.

The Scottish Government is supportive of the Acorn project at St Fergus, Aberdeenshire, considered the UK’s most advanced CCS project; we have worked closely with the Acorn project team from inception and provided policy support and funding through its feasibility and development phases. We believe that the Acorn CCS project is uniquely placed to be the least-cost and most deliverable opportunity to deploy a full chain CCS project in the UK, providing opportunities to repurpose existing legacy oil and gas pipeline infrastructure, and close access to vast offshore CO2 storage sites.

Acorn is leading the Scottish bid into UK Government’s cluster sequencing process to allow CCS to be deployed by the mid-2020s, and we are supportive of this bid. It is critical that the UK Government’s cluster sequencing process recognises Acorn CCS as one of the first two projects to commercialise in the 2020s.

The August 2021 agreement between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Green Party recognises that CCUS technologies will play a part in a just transition , and that ( t)he Scottish Government remains supportive of these technologies as part of the energy transition and in particular it remains committed to supporting the delivery of the Acorn project.

The options selection work will be concluded by Transport Scotland, Network Rail and ScotRail by summer 2022. In accordance with the Rail Enhancements Capital Investment Strategy each of the options will be appraised to identify which offer the most benefits and also represent value for money.

Network Rail recently confirmed that positive progress is being made on the project with ground investigation works starting in October 2021.

Transport Scotland expect Network Rail to produce the final programme for delivering the project during autumn 2022.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03041 on 1 October 2021. 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

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03192 on‎ 4 October 2021. 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 Scottish Government will publish the final Heat and Building Strategy in due course, which will set out next steps in its delivery following the recent consultation; this included our intention to publish a public engagement strategy which is essential to supporting the delivery of this Government’s decarbonisation agenda.

An independent review of the go-live date for Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme was conducted in June this year. We are considering its findings and I will provide an update to Parliament and businesses shortly.