Chamber and committees

Additional funding of £10.881 million has been provided to Edinburgh City Council for the remainder of the financial year 2021-22. These additional funds are to support: the standing up of interim care arrangements (£3.567 million); enhancing multi-disciplinary team working (£1.784 million) and expanding care at home capacity (£5.53 million).

As I have previously said, this issue deserves to be looked at properly. That is why I am very keen to hear from those with lived experience. I have already held several meetings with some of those affected and I hope to learn more through further engagement opportunities with people who are able to share their experiences.

The Scottish Government publishes as part of annual housing statistics publications information on the number of local authority housing tenancy changes made each year due to succession. The available Scotland level published information on this, covering the period 2001-02 to 2018-19 is available at Housing statistics: Management of local authority housing - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) , with a local authority level table available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 62926).

I will be continuing to engage with people who have direct experience of this practice.

Listening to the voices of those affected will help us to understand and inform what support and action is needed.

It is a matter for the Chief Constable of Police Scotland to agree and deliver any overseas training programme, with oversight by the Scottish Police Authority.

The Chief Constable of Police Scotland announced, at the Scottish Police Authority Board meeting on 24 November 2021, that Police Scotland has made the decision not to undertake any further work in Sri Lanka before their current contract expires in March 2022. Police Scotland has also advised the UK Government that they will not seek to renew their contract in support of the Sri Lanka Police Service.

Information on the numbers of women over the screening age who have self-referred into the breast screening programme can be found in the tables below.

Please note that in 2003, the age range for routine invitation to the breast screening programme was amended. Women aged 50 to 64 years old were invited for routine breast screening up to 2003, and from 2003, women aged 50 to 70 years old were routinely invited.

It is important to note that the data below is management information and has not been subject to the necessary quality checks carried out for an official publication. The breast screening year runs from 1st April to 31st March.

Table 1: Breast screening attendance by women aged 65 and over self-referring to the screening programme in Scotland, 1st April 1999 to 31st March 2003.

Local Authorities and Integration Joint Boards are responsible for allocating funding from their budgets towards revenue costs for services for supported living accommodation.

The following table sets out the number of supported accommodation capital projects for the period requested.

Scotland has led the way in the delivery of affordable housing across the UK with 103,650 affordable homes delivered since 2007, nearly 72,000 of which were for social rent, including 16,432 council homes. And we are committed to delivering a further 110,000 affordable homes by 2032 of which at least 70% will be available for social rent and 10% will be in our remote, rural and island communities.

Over the period 2007-08 to 2020-21, the City of Edinburgh Council has received more than half a billion (£558.7 million) in grant support from the Scottish Government which has contributed to the delivery of 13,341 affordable homes.

The City of Edinburgh Council will benefit from a further £233.8 million funding for good quality affordable housing across the capital over this parliament. This funding represents an increase of £32.4 million, a 16% increase on the previous five years.

In 2021-22, the City of Edinburgh has also been allocated over £3.33 million for preventing and responding to homelessness, £871,000 for Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans (RRTPS), as well at £563,000 for RRTPs through the Winter Fund for Social Protection. In addition, the Scottish Government is providing £101,850 to support the delivery of a Rapid Rehousing Welcome Centre in Edinburgh from 4 October 2021 to 2 May 2022.

The Scottish Government has not been involved in any discussions regarding the development of an Edinburgh specific rate of pay.

Employment law remains reserved to the UK Government therefore, the Scottish Government cannot currently legislate on this matter. We continue to promote payment of at least the real Living Wage and welcome the increase to £9.90 per hour for workers over 18 announced on 15 November.

I was pleased to note that City of Edinburgh Council has achieved Living Wage City recognition and is promoting payment of the real Living Wage in the region.

The Scottish Government routinely publishes official labour market statistics for disabled people and analysis of how their labour market barriers and outcomes are changing over time.

We know the disability employment gap - the difference between the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people - narrowed over the latest year to July 2020 – June 2021 by 1.5 percentage points in Scotland, to 32.0 percentage points. This was a larger narrowing of the disability employment gap than in the UK, where it narrowed by 0.6 percentage points. Scotland’s disability employment gap was also smaller than the disability employment gap in both Wales and Northern Ireland in the latest year.

We remain on course to reach our ambition to at least halve the disability employment gap in Scotland by 2038, however, we know there is much more work to do. For example, we continue to work closely with our partners in Disabled People’s Organisations to hear directly from disabled people themselves what changes they are experiencing in the labour market. This includes their representation on our Short Life Working Group for the refresh of our employment action plan, ensuring disabled people’s lived experiences are shaping this work.

Latest data and analysis are published at:

Labour market monthly briefing: November 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Fairer Scotland for disabled people - employment action plan: progress report - year 2 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)