Chamber and committees

In an assessment of ways to overcome the challenges of rurality, submitted by Alcohol and Drug Partnerships in several rural areas to Public Health Scotland, a number of collaborative and innovative actions were described.

These included:

• Increased use of non-statutory services, informal local networks and peers to engage and support people, thus freeing up capacity to deliver rapid access and ensuring that staff can work at highest level within their banding
• Utilising generic primary and secondary care staff and settings to deliver care for example when weather disrupts usual access
• Development of more generic pathways for all drugs and alcohol referrals (given in many places the same staff deal with these issues)
• Some areas now have formal arrangements with other Health Boards to utilise 82 guidelines (Shetland and NHS Grampian), and to share expertise (Western Isles and Borders)

National Records of Scotland publish annual accredited official statistics on drug-related deaths in Scotland. The latest release, covering 2023, is available at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/drug-related-deaths-in-scotland-in-2023/. The accompanying data file provides a more comprehensive breakdown of the statistics, including by both NHS board area and local authority area.

The Scottish Government publishes a quarterly report to provide an indication of current trends in suspected drug deaths in Scotland. The data in this report is operational information from Police Scotland who compile figures on the basis of reports from police officers attending scenes of death. This is management information and not subject to the same level of validation and quality assurance as Official Statistics. The latest release, covering July to September 2024, is available at https://www.gov.scot/publications/suspected-drug-deaths-scotland-july-september-2024/. The accompanying data file provides a more comprehensive breakdown of the figures, including by Police Division.

The Scottish Government remains fully committed to reducing drug deaths and harms. Through the National Mission we are seeing success across a wide range of actions designed to save lives and reduce harms. The total funding proposed for alcohol and drugs, including health board baseline funding, is over £150 million in 2025-26. This includes maintaining £112 million funding for Alcohol and Drug Partnerships, continuing to fund grassroots organisations through £13m via the Corra Foundation, and supporting a wide range of activity - including supporting residential rehabilitation.

Our Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Action Plan (2023) set out actions to support employers in ensuring that the needs of rural communities are met through national work to develop a Health and Social Care Rural Workforce Recruitment Strategy which will also take into account the mental health and wellbeing workforce.

As part of this national work and in collaboration with NHS Education for Scotland’s (NES) Centre for Workforce Supply and the National Centre for Remote and Rural Health and Care, we will develop a sustained model of direct support that will provide employers with the help they need to improve recruitment success.

The Scottish Government is using its legislation and policies to maximise the impact procurement can have for public bodies, local suppliers and the Scottish economy.

To promote local and sustainable produce public bodies have the flexibility to:

Design menus that include Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) Food;
Specify food produced according to recognised assurance schemes, e.g. Quality Meat Scotland, MSC, Red Tractor, RSPCA, or equivalent bespoke company systems;

While public bodies are responsible for their own procurement decisions, the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, which came into force on 18 April 2016, proposes a range of opportunities to increase the quality and provenance of food and drink procured. The key opportunity is in relation to the form and content for public bodies’ procurement strategies in which they must set out their policy on the procurement of food. Under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, a public body with an annual procurement spend of at least £5 million must report each year on how, its procurements improve the economic, social and environmental well-being of an area and facilitate access to procurement for SMEs, the third sector and supported businesses. Statutory Guidance published under the Act, sets out this requirement in more detail.

The Scottish Government is also providing Marine Fund Scotland funding towards Seafood Scotland’s “Market Development Project”, which involves work to ensure Scottish seafood’s profile grows in UK markets. This includes specific activity with various stakeholders throughout the supply chain to look at ways of increasing consumption of Scottish seafood in public procurement settings.

The Scottish Government has no access to information on quotas held by individual vessels, it is therefore not possible for the Scottish Government to provide any information on instances of EU or non-EU vessels landing fish in Scottish waters without sufficient quota coverage.

Individual state’s quota uptake is monitored, where fleets have fished beyond their quota limit, the excess is covered retrospectively through quota exchanges.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the age of active fishers. However, Seafish, a public body that collects and analyses data on the UK commercial fishing fleet, has published information on fishers employment by age. Their latest employment publication, 2021 employment in the UK fishing fleet contains information on the age of fishers in the Scottish fishing fleet on page 17. The term 'young fishers' is not defined specifically, but an age restriction, to those aged under 40, is applied to applications to the 'young fishers' part of Marine Fund Scotland 2024-25.

The Scottish Government has prioritised improving the collection and recycling of end-of-life fishing and aquaculture gear in our Marine Litter Strategy published in 2022 in order to protect our environment from plastic pollution and support the growth of our circular economy. Earlier research showed that end-of-life gear is in the most part stored or sent to landfill as it is extremely difficult to recycle due to its low-value, bulky, contaminated and degraded nature. There are very few recycling facilities currently, and we have no information on how much been recycled since 2021. It is therefore a focus to improve recycling opportunities for both the fishing and aquaculture sectors.

Officials engaged closely with colleagues in UK Government in the lead up to and throughout the negotiations, to discuss the scientific advice and negotiating approaches. Scotland continued to play an active role in the UK delegation throughout negotiations, striving to be a constructive partner, and seeking balanced agreements to protect Scottish interests.

In preparation for all negotiating forums, including those with the EU, Scottish Government officials prepare mandates for ministerial approval which outlines the approach and boundaries within which negotiators can work as part of the UK delegation. These mandates are treated highly confidentially and would not be appropriate for external publication to avoid undermining Scotland’s negotiating positions and protect Scottish fishing interests.

The potential cumulative impacts of the ScotWind leasing round are currently being assessed through the sectoral marine planning process. The ScotWind sites, together with the sites leased by Crown Estate Scotland through the Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas Decarbonisation (INTOG) leasing round will form the spatial basis for the updated Sectoral Marine Plan for Offshore Wind Energy. The planning process includes undertaking a plan-level social and economic impact assessment which will provide an estimate of the potential impacts that offshore wind developments may have on other marine sectors and activities. This assessment will be made available for public consultation, alongside the draft updated Plan, later this year.

Many applications do not proceed to assessment due to them either being withdrawn by the applicant or because they are identified as ineligible. No data is held on the numbers or types of these applications.

Of those eligible applications which are fully assessed the breakdown is in the following tables;

a) Successful applications