Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is giving consideration to how best to ensure a consistent, effective and high quality approach to social prescribing and meets the Scottish Social Prescribing Network regularly to inform its plans.

Scotland’s Population 2021: the Registrar General’s Annual Review of Demographic Trends will be published at 09:30 on 31 August 2022. The Report contains information about births, deaths and marriages during the year, together with other demographic information. A copy of the report is available on the Registrar General’s website at www.nrscotland.gov.uk .

1,806 devices have been distributed by the Council in East Lothian using the £25m digital inclusion funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020/21.

In addition, information we have from councils indicates that almost 280,000 devices have been, or are in the process of being, rolled out to learners across Scotland. This includes 72,000 provided as a result of Scottish Government funding.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring every school aged child in Scotland has access to a device by the end of this parliament, in 2026.

This is a complex and ambitious commitment, and we are currently undertaking preparatory work, including looking at the available infrastructure in schools. We are taking work forward in partnership with local government colleagues and have convened a joint partnership board with COSLA to oversee the work.

The Scottish Government continues to work closely with COSLA to find a way forward on the introduction of a Scottish Recommended Allowance for foster and kinship carers.

The Scottish Government expects NHS Boards to provide the best possible care for those who have experienced a stroke, including thrombolysis where considered clinically appropriate.

The Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme (SSIP) report, published on 28 June and available at: https://www.strokeaudit.scot.nhs.uk/index.html , notes a clear effect of the waves of COVID-19 on hospitals.

Stroke admission numbers often fell during the early waves of the pandemic, with patients possibly avoiding seeking medical attention due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and this may help explain the increase in stroke admissions between 2020 and 2021. The trend of increased stroke admissions between 2020 and 2021 is not unique to NHS Lothian and was observed across Scotland.

The proportion of patients who received thrombolysis in NHS Lothian in 2021 (8.9%) was broadly in line with the proportion of stroke patients who received thrombolysis across Scotland (9.1%).

The generation, transportation and supply of electricity is reserved to the UK Government with regulatory functions carried out by the independent energy regulator for GB, Ofgem.

My officials are engaging closely with network companies and Ofgem to gather further information on the detail of the determinations which are draft at this stage.

We are dedicated to ensuring value for money for consumers which is a key objective. Our consultation response will consider the risks and impact the Draft Determinations have on achieving net-zero targets.

The Draft Determinations are subject to an eight-week consultation with networks and wider stakeholders and will close on the 25 th of August, after which Ofgem will consider all provided evidence. Ofgem’s Final Determinations are expected to be finalised in December 2022.

The developing Scottish Seabird Conservation Strategy will play an important role in identifying effective actions to help optimise the conservation prospects of seabirds in Scotland from existing and emerging threats, including disease threats, such as avian influenza. We aim to consult on the strategy in 2022, and to implement in 2023.

INTOG is aligned to the Scottish Government’s commitment to delivering plan-led opportunities for offshore wind and marine renewables in Scottish waters. INTOG has been designed to facilitate both targeted oil and gas decarbonisation opportunities and provide a plan led approach to allowing smaller innovation type projects to access seabed. Something that is currently unavailable.

Whilst decoupling IN and TOG processes may allow one category of applications to proceed faster, the potential for cumulative impact and the need for plan-level assessments, to ensure negative impacts are appropriately managed, would not be removed and in fact may delay and complicate the assessments unnecessarily. As such, both components of INTOG will remain combined.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. The particular circumstances and needs in terms of social work input of each Cystic Fibrosis patient and their family can be highly variable. The Scottish Government therefore expects NHS Boards and Local Authority partners delivering care to work together to support Cystic Fibrosis patients according to individual need.

Housing to 2040 sets out the Scottish Government’s strategy to ensure that housing in 2040 will support people to live in affordable homes that meet their accessibility needs as well as net zero targets. This is a long term strategy for new and existing homes, underpinned by the new tenure-neutral Housing Standard for Scotland which is currently under development and which will include elements relating to retrofit. There will be extensive consultation and engagement with stakeholders to ensure that accessibility needs are appropriately considered and that the new standard aligns with Heat in Buildings ambitions for meeting net zero targets.