Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not have access to specific information on the growth of microbreweries in Scotland due to the structure of the Standard Industrial Classification.

For statistical purposes, data is collected for businesses where their main activity is in the manufacture of beer. The following tables set out the number of enterprises and number of employees within the category of Manufacture of Beer Enterprises by employee size band in Scotland for the period March 2011-2016. This data is sourced from the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). The IDBR, maintained by the Office for National Statistics, is a database of all enterprises registered for VAT and/or PAYE. Those excluded are small businesses with no employees and an annual turnover below the VAT threshold (£82,000 as at March 2016).

Number of 'Manufacture of Beer' enterprises by employee sizeband*, Scotland March2011-2016

Employment in 'Manufacture of Beer' enterprises by employee sizeband*, Scotland March2011 - 2016

Note: Totals may not equal the sum of the consitiuent parts due to rounding.

^ Not available due to confidentiality constraints

* Sizeband is based on the number of employees that the enterprise employs across the UK

The Scottish Government's Fairer Scotland Action Plan (FSAP), published in October 2016, sets out a number of commitments to ensure that older people can enjoy a thriving "third age". This means supporting people who want to keep on working, and ensuring that older people have access to high quality advice on maximising their incomes and reducing costs where possible.

It is, however, important that people in the general population are aware of the importance of saving for the future. That is why the Scottish Government is committed to improving levels of financial knowledge and capability across the generations. In Scotland, opportunities to develop financial education are available to our young people in the senior phase of school based learning. The FSAP sets out our commitments to financial inclusion for all, including ensuring that advice services provide accessible and high quality advice to those who need it, and introducing a Financial Health Check Service for pensioners and those on low incomes, to be rolled out in 2018.

The Scottish Widows Retirement Report 2017 sets out a range of interesting findings about attitudes and behaviours around saving for retirement; a vital issue for current and future generations. The recommendations of the report relate, in large part, to improvements which could be made to auto-enrolment in pension schemes, and the public's level of knowledge about the pensions system.

State Pension policy is currently reserved to the UK Government and administered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). As such, Scottish Ministers do not have any power to affect State Pension legislation. However, the Scottish Government is committed to improving the levels of financial knowledge and capability in the general population. In Scotland, opportunities to develop financial education are available to our young people in the senior phase of learning, and the Scottish Government's Fairer Scotland Action Plan sets out our commitments to financial inclusion for all, including ensuring that advice services provide accessible and high quality advice to those who need it, and introducing a Financial Health Check Service for pensioners and those on low incomes, which will be rolled out in 2018.

I wrote to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on 27 June to request an urgent meeting of the Scottish, Welsh and UK Governments to discuss this issue. That request was declined, but the Chief Secretary had separate telephone discussions on 6 July with me and with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government in the Welsh Government.

I believe this deal is a clear breach of the Statement of Funding Policy and has resulted in the Scottish Government losing out on almost £3bn of additional funding over the next 5 years. The Chief Secretary currently takes a different view. If we are unable to reach a satisfactory resolution which results in a fair and reasonable funding allocation across Scotland, Wales and the rest of the UK, I will look to the formal dispute resolution mechanism.

The Scottish Government's vision is for a circular economy in which materials are kept in high value use for as long as possible, though reuse and recycling.

While biodegradable packaging can help to reduce litter through the gradual degradation of littered items, the Scottish Government’s focus is on reducing the amount of packaging used where practical, and ensuring that any material that does arise is recycled and contains as much recycled content as possible. Mechanisms such as the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012 make stipulations about the separate presentation and collection of recyclables, influencing the producer responsibility system for packaging to keep recycling targets as high as possible. The Scottish Government also supports the Courtauld Commitment with grocery retailers, industry and the hospitality sector to reduce the environmental impact of their activity.

The Scottish Government also has a range of work to tackle the issue of littering. This focuses on preventing littering in the first place, through actions such as increasing the penalties for litter and flytipping; introducing the single use carrier bag charge; and the introduction of a National Litter Strategy (http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0045/00452542.pdf).

Through our partner agencies - Creative Scotland, Scottish Funding Council, Skills Development Scotland and the enterprise agencies - we have supported a range of actions through grant funding, including developing leadership and business skills through the Skills Investment Plan; innovation support from Scottish Funding Council and a broad range of activity delivered through the Creative Scotland Creative Industries Strategy. The latter has included workshops on investment, business training programmes for emerging creative graduates, supporting the development of affordable studio provision, and encouraging innovation within creative business activity. In recent years, we have seen employment in the sector grow to 73,600 which is a 2.5% increase on 2014 and a 15% increase since 2011.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) have requested information from Principals and Chairs of Scotland’s college buildings and from the Scottish Association of University Directors of Estates (SAUDE) about the use of Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding systems used in all Scottish colleges and universities including student accommodation.

SFC have requested the information to be provided by 13 July and will liaise with Universities Scotland, SAUDE and College Principals to determine whether specific action is required.

Engagement with stakeholders about the strategy’s scope and purpose is currently underway and will inform our approach to broader public engagement over the coming months. Our stated approach to the development of a culture strategy for Scotland is both a collaborative and an iterative one which will draw on the knowledge, expertise and energy of the culture sector/s so that the strategy is shaped by those who best understand the many ways culture contributes to society and one which responds to feedback received throughout the process. Although led by the Scottish Government, the strategy is to be developed by and for all of Scotland and it would not be helpful, therefore, to impose a fixed deadline for publication at this early stage.

The ONS measures of persistent poverty look at whether people are at risk of poverty over a number of years. The most recent data shows that 14.6% of people in the UK had been at risk of poverty in only one of the years between 2012 and 2015, a further 7% had been at risk for 2 years; 4% for 3 years and, 4% had been at risk of poverty in all four years between 2012 and 2015.

These levels of poverty are completely unacceptable and are set to rise higher. The Institute of Fiscal Studies’ most recent report estimates that an additional 1.2 million children will be in relative poverty in the UK in the year 2021-22 when compared to 2014-15.

Our Fairer Scotland Action Plan sets out 50 concrete actions that we will take in this Parliamentary term. These include a £29 million programme for communities and the third sector to tackle poverty; the introduction of the Child Poverty (Scotland) Bill, setting out ambitious 2030 targets; the establishment of a Poverty and Inequality Commission to provide independent advice and scrutiny; and the forthcoming consultation on a socio-economic duty, which will ensure that public bodies take full consideration of socio-economic disadvantage when making key decisions. We are already making progress on many of these actions and a full update will be published in October this year.

These and many other positive measures are happening against a backdrop of challenging welfare cuts and austerity measures from the UK government. Scottish Government has already invested over £350 million since 2013-14 to protect those on the lowest incomes from the worst of these cuts - resources that would be better invested in direct measures to reduce poverty.

The Scottish Government has maintained a priority focus on dementia since 2007. We have had two national strategies so far, and I am pleased to confirm that we are today publishing the third Scottish Dementia Strategy, for 2017-2020. The strategy can be accessed at the following link: www.gov.scot/dementiastrategy

During the last three years we have focused on making sure that people with dementia get the care, treatment and support they are entitled to in all care settings, at all ages and at all stages of their illness. There has been significant progress in many aspects of dementia care in that time, including improved diagnosis rates, the introduction of the human-rights based Standards of Care for Dementia in Scotland and a national dementia workforce training and education framework, Promoting Excellence.

During the next phase of our national work and the third dementia strategy we will build on the progress which has already been made in transforming services and outcomes for people with dementia and their carers.

We will continue our focus on diagnosis and post-diagnostic support. The optimum model of post-diagnostic support is one where the person with dementia is diagnosed early enough that they can take as active a part as possible, and have as much control and choice as they want in the process. To make that happen, we want to make more progress in getting more people diagnosed earlier.

For that reason, we are testing the re-location of post-diagnostic services into modern primary care settings, with the aim that this will make post-diagnostic dementia services more accessible, thereby encouraging more people to come forward earlier for a dementia diagnosis or for a memory assessment, in a setting where the appropriate post-diagnostic support services are on hand to respond to the individual’s needs.

Our national priorities on dementia are informed by continuing to listen to people with dementia, their family carers and the professionals working with them. Their stories have helped us to clearly identify our key priorities on post-diagnostic support, care coordination, care and support in all settings, and how to make Scotland a more Dementia friendly country.

We legislated to integrate health and social care in 2014. Integrated home care is essential in order to enable people with more advanced symptoms of dementia to live, not only safely, but with a good quality of life in their own home for as long as possible – and with families and carers who feel supported in their key caring role. Our approach to integration is focused on person-centred planning and delivery - bringing together services and professionals to ensure that an integrated, holistic, person-centred experience will improve the whole system, the whole pathway of care, and the wellbeing of the whole person.

Improving the care of people with dementia in acute general hospitals and in specialist NHS dementia settings also remains a key part of national dementia policy.

We also have a significantly enhanced focus on palliative and end of life care for people with dementia, with the overall aim that by 2021 everyone with dementia has access to high-quality palliative and end of life care, based on the principles of early planning and services working holistically with people with dementia and their loved ones, to reflect their wishes in the care provided.

More than 500 people took part in a series of National Dementia Dialogue Engagement Events between 2015 and 2016, to help inform the development of this new strategy. We have worked with experts from a range of organisations including Alzheimer Scotland, CoSLA, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, the Alliance, Scottish Care, the Scottish Social Services Council, NHS Education for Scotland, the Care Inspectorate, Integrated Joint Boards, academics and people with dementia and their carers to develop the new dementia strategy to ensure that people get the right care, in the right place, at the right time. I would like to thank them for their considered and constructive contribution to the development of this third dementia strategy.