Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government keeps all its policies and programmes under review to support delivery of the outcomes in the National Performance Framework.

On 1 February £4m of additional funding was announced to boost in-person Easter study support provision in schools and colleges. This funding should allow schools and colleges – or local authorities through authority-wide initiatives – to offer targeted sessions for learners over the Easter break, particularly for those from the most deprived backgrounds. Where an existing Easter study offer already exists, this funding could allow schools or colleges to broaden their existing offer for targeted learners or, through promotion, encourage those learners to attend existing sessions.

In addition, the National e-Learning offer continues to deliver a strong package of resources for learners, teachers and practitioners. This includes a supported study programme with real time webinars and nearly 3,000 on-demand recorded lessons for the senior phase during the academic year and an online Easter study support programme offering over 60 courses. Senior phase learners from all 32 local authorities are accessing these opportunities.

The amount of funding allocated to, and paid to successful applicants to the Forestry Grant Scheme in each year from 2016 to 2021 is shown in Table 1.

Claimed grant is normally lower than the total grant award as a result of contracts that were not delivered on time due to a range of circumstances including weather conditions during the planting season, succession of land ownership during the contract delivery period and requests for contract variation to subsequent years.

There is a range of action supported by the Scottish Government to deal with insidious behaviour amounting to online bullying and harassment.

Ensuring the criminal law can deal effectively with conduct amounting to threatening or abusive behaviour led to the Scottish Government introducing the offence at section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010. Such behaviour can often arise online and amount to bullying or harassing type behaviour. This offence is capable of dealing with this type of conduct depending on the specific facts and circumstances.

Where bullying and harassment occurs online affecting children and young people, this can be especially harmful. The Scottish Government's 'Respect for All - national approach to anti-bullying' was published in 2017 and is focused on building capacity, resilience and skills in children and young people to prevent and deal with bullying including online.

Regulation of the internet is a reserved area. The UK Government on 17 March 2022 introduced their Online Safety Bill into the UK Parliament. The Scottish Government is committed to work with the UK Government where devolved areas arise relevant to the policy of the Bill.

In January 2021, the First Minister announced an additional investment of £250 million to tackle drug deaths, £100 million of which was allocated to develop residential rehabilitation services and associated aftercare over the next five years. Alongside this, the Scottish Government provided Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) with a £13.5 million uplift per year, over the next five years, £5 million of which has been allocated to support additional residential rehabilitation capacity across Scotland. However, this uplift did not start until the 2021-2022 financial year.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) has published an interim monitoring report on statutory funded residential rehabilitation placements between 1 April 2021 to 30 September 2021. The figures for the Highlands and Islands region are as follows:

Argyll and Bute 9 placements (total cost £78,111),

Highland 48 placements (£222,797),

Shetland number of placements unavailable due to data suppression (£29,450).

Orkney and the Western Isles submitted nil returns.

Public Health Scotland are due to release a further monitoring report on statutory funded placement figures in April 2022, which will cover the period of October to December 2021.

We estimate that 4,100 businesses will qualify as producers for the purposes of Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS).

We have extensively consulted the drinks producer sector during the development and implementation of our DRS. Our Implementation Advisory Group included a range of representatives of the sector, and drinks producers, like any stakeholder, were consulted through the two consultations on DRS that ran from June-September 2018 and September-December 2019.

Applications for development and capital funding are open. More information can be found on the Local Energy Scotland website here www.localenergyscot.org . Loan and grant capital funding is currently available to communities developing renewable energy, heat decarbonisation, and local energy system projects through the Scottish Government’s Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES).

Funding is dependent on project needs and type. The CARES team work with projects from inception to completion and continue to offer a flexible package of support to a wide range of renewable energy projects and will also soon offer support through a framework of specialised technical consultants to make it quicker and easier for communities to explore options. More information on this will be published shortly on the Local Energy Scotland website.

From April 2022 CARES will also give greater focus to the decarbonisation of heat in buildings in line with the ambitions set out in our Heat in Buildings Strategy.

There are no costs or benefits associated with the wholesale sector in the economic model underpinning the final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment.

After intensive engagement with the wholesale sector we concluded that industry has options to minimise any costs of DRS for the supply chain.

There is currently no publicly available data regarding how patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE) are managed following an initial episode.

This process is currently underway. Health Boards have been asked to submit 22/23 plans linked to activity trajectories and requests for funding, which will be used to allocate resources to address orthopaedic surgery waiting lists.