Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government welcomes the Promise Scotland’s Oversight Board report and the continued focus and momentum across all stakeholders to Keep The Promise.

The Scottish Government remains committed to Keeping The Promise by 2030, working in partnership with Local Authorities, The Promise Scotland, third sector, health boards and importantly the care community.

The Scottish Government Keeping The Promise Implementation Plan published on 30 March 2022 sets out a wide range of actions over a range of areas including education, health, justice and child poverty and how we will continue to work with The Promise Scotland, COSLA, Local Authorities. This includes actions on data gathering and monitoring.

The setting up of the Promise Collective as a strategic forum to ensure alignment of all Scottish Government funded delivery and improvement initiatives that are working to Keep The Promise. The group will be co-Chaired with COSLA, Scottish Government and The Promise Scotland.

The Scottish Government has committed £500m over the course of this Parliamentary term, beginning with £50m in 2022-23, to preventative spend through the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding. We will evaluate the impact of this funding on supporting transformational change and this will inform future policy, planning and development.

Working with The Promise Scotland to build an evidence base to understand the best governance, financial arrangements and models of care to assess how we can best Keep The Promise. This will explore the options for the future of children’s services from an evidence based position and enable us to assess the best way to Keep The Promise.

We are developing an Outcomes Framework for Children, Young People and Families which will provide a holistic understanding of what we mean by wellbeing, based on what children and families have told us matters, and rooted in GIRFEC and children’s rights.

Energy pricing and retail market regulation are reserved to the UK Government so it is not within the powers of the Scottish Government to require windfarm developers to provide cheaper electricity to local communities.

However, we do encourage them to provide benefits to communities to help address the needs and priorities of local residents. The Scottish Government published updated Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments on May 2019, setting out national standards for the provision of community benefit which we encourage renewable energy businesses and communities alike to utilise.

Local Energy Scotland who deliver the Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) maintain a Community Benefit Register on our behalf. According to the Register, as at May end 2022, over £22.8 million had been paid out to local communities over the past twelve months.

Consideration of opportunities to decarbonise waste incineration has not been removed from the review of the role of incineration in the waste hierarchy (the Review).

As independent Chair of the Review, Dr Colin Church determined the detailed scope of the Review, taking account of parameters set by Ministers. The Review prioritised an assessment of the capacity required to manage residual waste in Scotland. It also considered the options for managing residual waste in Scotland; the economic, environmental and social trade-offs of these options; the location of waste management capacity; and options to improve carbon and societal impact of residual waste treatment facilities.

In his Call for Evidence for the Review (published 20 December 2021), Dr Church noted that he intended to commission separate work to review potential options to decarbonise the existing incineration infrastructure in Scotland and that this may extend beyond the initial Review’s timeframe.

We published Dr Church’s main report on 10 May 2022. In this report Dr Church confirmed that the further work on decarbonisation options was expected to last for a further six to nine months. In the meantime, Dr Church has made two provisional recommendations relating to decarbonisation, alongside the 12 full recommendations, in his main report.

At the request of Ministers, Dr Church has agreed to extend his role to provide independent oversight of this additional work.

The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 is a complex piece of legislation. The Scottish Government raised significant concerns about the likely impacts during the passage of the Bill, and the Scottish Parliament voted to withhold consent on two clauses. The Act will affect people living in Scotland, but the full extent of this will depend on how it is implemented by the Home Office.

(a) In relation to whether the Scottish Government plans to review strategies in light of the Act:

(i) The New Scots refugee integration strategy has been developed and is led in partnership by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council. The current strategy was published in 2018. We have committed to refreshing the strategy with our partners in 2023 and to ensuring that it is shaped by refugees and people seeking asylum, as well as those with expertise supporting them. The impact of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 will be considered in the development of the new strategy.

(ii) The first statutory review of the Trafficking and Exploitation Strategy was published in May 2020 and was clear that the strategy remained fit for purpose in the short term. However, we remain committed to the development of a refreshed strategy which will take into account a range of developments since publication of the review, including the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.

(iii) The Ending Destitution Together strategy was published in March 2021, in partnership with COSLA, and focuses on improving and strengthening support provision and service access for people subject to No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) living in Scotland. This strategy is the first of its kind and is being delivered in partnership with the third sector, public services and local authorities over the next two years. Ending Destitution Together clearly sets out our inclusive approach, while recognising that there are limits on action that can be taken because immigration and nationality, including NRPF policy, are reserved to the UK Parliament. As the strategy is implemented, we will consider all developments since the publication of the strategy, including the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.

(iv) The Mental Health Strategy was published in 2017 and set out 40 actions to improve mental health care. This was followed by a Mental Health Transition and Recovery Plan in 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The 2021-22 Programme for Government committed to “review and refresh” the Mental Health Strategy at its halfway point in 2022 and work is already underway to do this. The scope of the refreshed strategy will be wider than before, with an increasing focus on wellbeing and prevention. We will also consider how the strategy can take account of social factors and inequalities that may impact a person’s mental health and wellbeing. We have already undertaken extensive engagement with our stakeholders to help us shape the strategy. We will be launching a public consultation later this month and will take forward further engagement activity over the summer months to inform this important work.

(b) Following on from the work and recommendations of the First Minister’s Advisory Group, and the National Taskforce for Human Rights Leadership, a new Human Rights Bill will be introduced to Parliament during this parliamentary session.

Our commitment to bringing forward a Human Rights Bill this Parliament, as far as we can within devolved competence, remains and we are proceeding on that basis.

The Scottish Government is not currently working to build a sovereign wealth fund. Under the current constitutional arrangements, the Scottish Government does not have the power to set up a sovereign wealth fund, similar to that of Norway, which is currently worth $1.2 trillion. We will set out our proposed approach to the economy of an independent Scotland in the forthcoming independence prospectus papers.

This information is provided in Scottish Water’s Annual Report and Accounts which is published on Scottish Water’s website and laid before Parliament each year. The accounting provision Scottish Water has made for household bad debt in each of previous 10 financial years is set out in the following table.

In 2020, the Scottish Government set up the Scottish Energy Task Force to focus on near-term, collaborative actions, which can stimulate investment in Scotland’s energy sector to support delivery of net-zero.

The Energy Task Force consists of 12 organisations, including renewable energy companies, who have helped to develop the Joint Business Plan for Unlocking Investment in Scotland’s Energy Sector which was published in May this year.

The Plan outlines actions which can be taken to make near-term progress on working towards net-zero. The Task Force will continue to work collaboratively to deliver these actions which support net-zero.

The Final Determination explained that the Commission would expect that its charge caps would allow Scottish Water’s annual revenue in the final year of the current regulatory control period to be no less than £1,392m. This level of revenue was based on assuming an average charge cap of 1.5% a year above inflation over the regulatory control period 2021-27. Based on the level of charges to date, and using the same assumptions made in the Final Determination, charges would need to rise by 1.8% above the rate of consumer price index inflation in order to achieve this same level of revenue.

Land and property is one of five key pillars of the Community Wealth Building (CWB) approach to economic development. Initially, actions taken will centre on how public sector partners such as local authorities and health boards might use the land and assets that they own to drive creation of fair work opportunities and higher levels of community ownership.

Through encouraging local and regional partnership working between public and private sectors, we will support advancement of the principles underpinning the CWB approach as they relate to land and assets, and the promotion of higher levels of community ownership.

We have committed to introducing legislation on Community Wealth Building during this Parliamentary session. This will involve consideration of a wide range of views and proposals and we will ensure close alignment with the provisions set out in the forthcoming Land Reform Bill.

As set out in response to S6W-08423 on 19 May 2022 , we remain firmly focused on supporting the six priority family types identified within our first Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan and will continue to engage with our partners, including gender representative stakeholders and women with experience of poverty, to ensure an intersectional and gendered approach is embedded in the development, implementation and monitoring of the actions set out in the plan.

‘ Best Start, Bright Futures ’ , our second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for the period 2022-26, recognises that to tackle poverty effectively we must deliver holistic, person-centred services and support that meets the needs of families - whilst also driving forward the transformation in our wider economy, necessary to tackle inequalities in our labour market.

The Plan is underpinned by robust data and evaluation, this includes our recently updated Child Poverty Measurement Framework as well as policy level evaluations and overall Child Poverty Evaluation Strategy . We also produce focus reports on the various child poverty family groups that explore progress achieved over time. This includes experiences of lone parents (who tend to be women) and mothers aged under 25.

Whilst quantitative data will enable us to track progress towards our outcomes, families will often fall into more than one priority group and in reality many face a combination of barriers and discrimination. We will ensure we use lived experience and a deeper understanding of the impact of intersection of characteristics in the design, implementation and monitoring of our actions and policies to ensure delivery approaches which are increasingly tailored and, ultimately, more effective.

To support our focus on implementation we have strengthened our approach to governance, including establishing a new Child Poverty Programme Board bringing together leaders, decision-makers, delivery partners and those who champion change across Scotland. The Programme Board will complement the statutory functions of the Poverty and Inequality Commission to ensure we hold ourselves to account on our performance against the plan, challenge our ambition, maintain a focus on our priority families and implement learning from the new approaches we are taking and testing.

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