Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government’s position is that VAT should not be applied to deposits charged under Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) and we have made official and ministerial representations on this issue. It is important that where we can we promote rather than hinder progress towards a circular economy.

As VAT is a reserved matter, the final decision will rest with the UK Government and will be for them to confirm.

The Scottish Government provides various grant funding each year to support and expand allotments and community growing groups in Scotland.

Scottish Government community funds, including Climate Challenge Fund, Climate Challenge Asset Fund and Investing in Communities Fund more broadly support a wide range of community growing and community garden projects.

The Scottish Government provided funding through the Community Growing Fund which was a grant scheme for the years 2019-2020 and 2020-21, providing a total of £80,000 to local community growing groups public bodies and third sector organisations.

The Scottish Government has made more than £9 million available to Health Boards this year for diagnostic imaging and is currently supporting additional X-ray appointments during evenings and at weekends. This service is being delivered while maintaining patient safety and flow through departments, as well as preserving infection prevention control measures at all times.

Moving forward we have recently published the NHS Recovery Plan, which is backed by more than £1 billion of investment and aims to improve service delivery and increase capacity, in order to tackle the regrettable backlogs that have emerged as a result of the pandemic.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government and would require to be obtained directly from Health Boards.

We continue to closely monitor all emerging evidence on new treatments related to the long-term effects of COVID-19 (long Covid) and their clinical effectiveness.

The current Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) clinical guideline , developed in collaboration with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), provides evidence based information for clinicians on the identification and management of people affected by long-term effects of COVID-19.

The clinical guideline which is being actively reviewed and updated in line with the evidence base on the treatment of long COVID as it continues to develop.

Following concerns raised about prescribing practice in 2016, a range of independent reviews were conducted and regular discussion was had with the board of NHS Tayside. In July 2021, following matters raised by a patient group in the media, SG officials reached out to NHS Tayside leaders who committed to investigating the matters raised.

On 30 September 2021 we launched the NHS Scotland COVID Status app which was developed for vaccination information initially. We have developed our app to meet the EU requirements so we expect this to be compatible with the IATA Travel Pass. We have and continue to engage with international stakeholders and UK Government to ensure the app is compatible with the other countries requirements of entry.

The Scottish Government provided Scotland’s local authorities with an additional £1.2 billion in direct support during 2020-21 through the local government finance settlement – over and above their regular grant payments to combat COVID-19. Taken together with the additional £259 million confirmed for this year, this brings the value of the overall COVID-19 support package for councils up to over £1.5 billion.

£10 million of funding was announced on 3 August to enable local authorities to undertake CO2 monitoring to assess the ventilation levels in all learning, teaching and play spaces by the October break.

Further to initial recommendations from the Short Life Working Group on Ventilation, funding of up to £25million to support businesses with ventilation was announced on 28 September. Due to be open for applications in November, further details will be available in due course.

Published information on home purchases and spend across the First Home Fund, Help to Buy, Open Market Shared Equity and New Supply Shared Equity schemes can be found on the Scottish Government website at the following links:

Help to Buy (Scotland)

https://www.gov.scot/policies/homeowners/help-to-buy/

Open Market Shared Equity and New Supply Shared Equity

https://www.gov.scot/policies/more-homes/affordable-housing-supply/

First Home Fund

https://www.gov.scot/publications/first-home-fund-spend-and-units-monitoring-information-report-december-2019-to-march-2021/

The Evaluation of Scottish Government Shared Equity Schemes, which includes the Help to Buy (Scotland), Open Market Shared Equity and the New Supply Shared Equity schemes, was published in June 2020, and includes some information on the profile of buyers using the Scottish Government’s 6-fold urban/rural classification. The attached link provides further information

Shared equity schemes: evaluation reports - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The First Home Fund Evaluation includes information on uptake based on the 4-fold Rural & Environmental Science & Analytical Services classification

First Home Fund evaluation: quantitative analysis - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The detailed breakdown by 6-fold Urban Rural Classification is not readily available in the format requested. We will investigate whether it is feasible to provide a full breakdown, given issues such as lags in new postcodes relating to new housing being allocated to the 6-fold urban-rural classification. I will write to the member with the outcome of this work as soon as the exercise has been completed. A copy will be placed in the Parliament’s Reference Centre, Bib number 62811.

The Scottish Government has stopped collecting statistical information on section 11 notifications.

The decision to cease the collection of this information was implemented in 2013, in agreement with the Homelessness Statistics User Group . The last national statistics publication which held data on Section 11 notifications was “Operation of the Homeless Persons legislation in Scotland: 2012-13” which can be found in our archived web page here .

Collection of this information was ceased due to data quality concerns. These included issues such as double reporting and inconsistencies in how information was reported across local authorities and amongst lenders.

The on-going homelessness data review is considering the strength of demand for, and feasibility of collecting, data related to homelessness and homelessness prevention. Data related to section 11 notifications will be considered as part of this review.