Chamber and committees

Housing to 2040, Scotland’s first long-term housing strategy, was published in March 2021 following extensive consultation across the country. The Scottish Government is now working with our partners to develop the detailed plans necessary to deliver the vision set out in Housing to 2040. We have committed to setting up a governance process and a monitoring framework so that we and others can assess progress towards the vision and be held accountable. We will establish that process and framework later this year following discussions with key stakeholders .

Our overall vision is for everyone with rehabilitation needs to be able to access the care and support they need to live well, on their own terms. Work is underway to deliver the Framework for supporting people through Recovery and Rehabilitation during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic. This puts in place clear principles, priorities and objectives to support planning to meet increasing demand and to provide high quality person-centred rehabilitation in different settings.

In addition, as part of our Programme for Government stroke commitments to develop a programme to improve stroke pathways and services, recommendations are being developed to ensure that all those who experience communication disorders following a stroke are assessed by a speech and language therapist and; are provided with an individualised rehabilitation programme using a range of evidence based interventions.

This will be evaluated as part of the national stroke care audit and services within NHS Health and Social Care Partnerships will be reviewed on an annual basis by the Scottish Government Stroke Improvement Team.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that people who have had a stroke receive the best possible care as quickly as possible to enable them to live longer, healthier independent lives. As we progress with our NHS Recovery Plan, evidence-based caution is at the forefront of our decision-making. We will continue to work with Health Boards to remobilise the NHS in the safest possible way, including for those in need of rehabilitation following a stroke.

Our overall vision is for everyone with rehabilitation needs to be able to access the care and support they need to live well, on their own terms. Work is underway to deliver the Framework for supporting people through Recovery and Rehabilitation during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic. This puts in place clear principles, priorities and objectives to support planning to meet increasing demand and to provide high quality person-centred rehabilitation in different settings.

Work is also ongoing to deliver our Programme for Government commitments to improve stroke pathways and services. This will include recommendations for a progressive stroke rehabilitation service, both in hospital and in the community.

In response to the pandemic the Scottish Government brought in a number of emergency legislative changes including the pre-action requirements that private landlords must undertake before applying to the First-tier Tribunal (Housing and Property Chamber) to evict a tenant on the grounds of rent arrears. We recognise the value of maintaining this additional protection to ensure private landlords work with their tenants to do all they can to sustain the tenancy where rent arrears have arisen. That is why we committed in Housing to 2040 to set out as part of a new Rented Sector Strategy for the establishment of permanent pre-action protocols in the private rented sector, bringing this tenure in line with current social rented sector provisions.

We are taking steps to extend the current emergency provisions, including the pre-action requirements for rent arrears, through the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Bill 2021 which was introduced and published on 18 June. The Bill, now scrutinised and passed by this Parliament, once enacted will amend the expiry dates of Parts 1 of the Scottish coronavirus Acts to 31 March 2022, meaning the temporary measures in Part 1 of those Acts will be extended for up to six months. The Bill will also enable the Acts to be extended once more, should this be needed to respond further to the pandemic, subject to Parliament’s approval of the required regulations, to 30 September 2022.

In addition, we will consult on a permanence bill, seeking views on making the pre-action requirements permanent, to prevent any gap until that bill is superseded by any future housing bill. We are consulting on the bill over the summer and the Parliament will then scrutinise it after the summer recess.

The Scottish Government maintains up to date COVID-19 safety guidance for Early Learning and Childcare settings. This guidance is developed in consultation with public health experts on both the Advisory Sub-Group on Education and Children’s Issues, and in Public Health Scotland.

The Advisory Sub-Group for Education and Children’s Issues has now provided further advice, specifically on whether groups of parents should be permitted to attend ELC settings for outdoor events such as nursery graduations. Their advice is that groups of parents and carers should not attend end-of-year events in Early Learning and Childcare settings in this academic year, whether indoors or outdoors.

The guidance seeks to minimise the number of contacts that children and staff have, to keep them safe and to reduce the risk that children and staff need to self-isolate in the event of someone in the setting testing positive.

Our guidance is also in place to keep children in learning, and essential childcare settings open to support families now and over the summer. This has been a difficult decision that carefully weighed up the risks against the benefits.

I am grateful to settings that have found safe ways to allow children to celebrate with their friends and key workers and found creative ways to share this with parents and carers. I encourage other settings to find ways to ensure that parents can share in their child’s experience with, for example, videos and photos.

On 25 March 2021 the UK Government committed to ruling out COVID-19 appeals on non-domestic properties in England. It concurrently announced a new Business Rates relief fund of £1.5 billion for businesses affected by COVID-19 outside the retail, hospitality, and leisure sectors.

We anticipate that this will result in consequential funding for the Scottish Government, but at this point we are still waiting for confirmation of when this will be received. Once that confirmation is provided, we remain committed to passing on all business support consequentials through a tailored package of measures for Scottish business during the recovery period.

In the interim, we agree in principle with the UK Government that market-wide economic changes to rateable values, such as from COVID-19, should be only considered at revaluation to ensure fairness to all ratepayers; and that it is not appropriate to use the material change of circumstances provisions in the non-domestic rates legislation in relation to COVID-19, or COVID-19 restrictions.

The Scottish Government can therefore confirm its intention to also take measures to rule out COVID-19 appeals, whilst continuing to ensure that we best support the most affected businesses and sectors in the recovery period. We will set out our legislative plans after the summer.

Our Statement of Intent on Biodiversity was published in December 2020 and highlights the need to create new locally driven projects to improve ecological connectivity across Scotland. We have made an ambitious, voluntary commitment to protect 30% of Scotland’s land for nature by 2030, in advance of the new Global Biodiversity Framework. We are commissioning advice from NatureScot on how best to achieve this - and whether we can go even further, given that we have already achieved 37% protection of Scotland’s marine environment - including through identification of Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures. The 30x30 project will advance ecological restoration across the whole of Scotland, on a scale much greater than the existing National Park area in Scotland.

The Cairngorms National Park has a significant part of its area under ecological restoration (sometimes called rewilding). This includes the area of Cairngorms Connect, NTS Mar Lodge, and a number of other private estates. The area of the Cairngorms National Park which is currently under ecological restoration measures is approximately 20%, or around 100,000 hectares.

Within Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, 8.6% of land is a designated Site of Specific Scientific Interest. This figure does not include Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) or Special Protected Areas (SPAs), which would bring the total area of land under ecological restoration, and covered by a statutory designation, to around 12%. Including National Nature Reserves (NNRs) would increase this figure to around 21%.

The current Cairngorms National Park Partnership Plan and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Partnership Plan sets out the policy frameworks within the National Parks, which support and underpin the ecological restoration being undertaken.

Amending Regulations were made to the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 today.

These Regulations amend the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Regulations 2020.

The regulations adjust the physical distancing requirements at funerals so that family members may be involved in funerals by carrying the coffin or assisting to lower the coffin into a lair. The regulations also amend the physical distancing rules for the purpose of the 1888 Cup rugby event at Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh on 26 June 2021. The physical distancing requirements are reduced to 1.15 metres within Murrayfield Stadium for the purposes of that event.

The Regulations provide for extended opening hours for hospitality in the event that a match during the knockout stages of the UEFA EURO 2020 Championship which is being shown in hospitality premises runs over the currently permitted opening hours. This amendment was also set out in S6W-00988 on 23 June 2021. In the event of extended play, and limited only to match days and the games where this occurs, closing time for hospitality premises showing the game is extended up to 23:30 where a venue is showing a match live which runs over the current opening hours. This is not a blanket relaxation of the rules but a specific and pragmatic approach to facilitate safe viewing of full Euros matches.

The regulations also adjust the rules on face coverings at weddings and civil partnerships to remove the requirement for persons accompanying a party to be married or entering into a civil partnership to wear a face covering.

The Regulations have been published at The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No. 29) Regulations 2021 (legislation.gov.uk)

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 has been ready for some time to press ahead with the process to establish green ports. Despite our commitment to moving forward in partnership, the UK Government has failed to engage with us to publish a joint applicant prospectus. We have also yet to receive formal agreement from the UK Government about designating two green ports in Scotland, and that each will be able to access the same amount of seed capital funding as each freeport in England.

As a result, the Scottish Government is now inviting notes of interest from potential green port bidders in Scotland. This exercise will allow us to gauge interest for the development of green port policy in Scotland and will provide an indication of the geography and sectors likely to benefit. The notes of interest invited will be based on the content of the abridged draft applicant prospectus, published on the Scottish Government website in March, which also signposted the reserved offer available to all freeports in England. Further information on the call for notes of interest is available on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/policies/cities-regions/green-ports/

I have written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to set out the Scottish Government’s proposed next steps for delivering this policy and intend to hold a stakeholder engagement session on the 30 th of June.

This data is available on the Public Health Scotland Education Surveillance Dashboard which provides a three-weekly rolling average of hospital admissions for 2-17 years olds - settings/covid-19-education-surveillance-dashboard/"> COVID-19 Education Surveillance dashboard - Enhanced surveillance of COVID-19 in education settings - COVID-19 data and intelligence - COVID-19 - Our areas of work - Public Health Scotland

Equivalent weekly data for children under 2 years is not currently published however, data on Cumulative COVID-19 Hospital Admissions since the start of the pandemic is available and shows that as of 26 May 2021, 238 children between 0-4 years have been admitted to hospital with COVID-19 since March 2020. The full set of data can be found here - https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset/weekly-covid-19-statistical-data-in-scotland/resource/bd8a865f-10e6-47d2-a461-8633c61693fe .