Chamber and committees

The Islands Connectivity Plan (ICP) will replace the Ferries Plan and will consider island connectivity more broadly, including having regard to connecting and onward travel. The ICP will develop objectives based on supporting delivery of the National Transport Strategy 2 and the National Islands Plan, and develop proposals to meet those objectives which represent public value.

The ICP will also include a long-term investment programme for new ferries and development at ports, that will aim to improve resilience, reliability, capacity and accessibility, while increasing standardisation, cutting emissions and meeting the needs of island communities whilst providing value for money.

In addition, the ICP will explore pathways to zero/low emission ferry transport and undertake a ferry fares policy review.

The Scottish Budget allocated £1 million to develop the Community Bus Fund in 2022-23 to support Local Transport Authorities to improve public transport in their areas, and to explore the full range of options in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019. We are currently working on the design and scope of the fund and this involves discussions with CoSLA and ATCO on how the £1 million may be best spent in 2022-23.

The four-nations arts councils and agencies are working alongside each other to share information and collaborate on more activity and projects, including international work.

This includes Arts Infopoint UK, led by Wales Arts International in collaboration with Arts Council England, Creative Scotland and Arts Council Northern Ireland, which is a pilot initiative aiming to provide clear information and support to artists seeking to travel to the UK.

The pilot Four Nations International Fund, led by Creative Scotland, was launched in October 2021, with 38 projects across many art forms receiving funding. Each project requires a partner in at least one other of the four nations of the UK, in addition to an international partner. Projects include partnerships between Scotland and Wales based organisations.

Other activity undertaken together with Northern Ireland, England and Wales includes conversations around bilateral funds such as the Cultural Bridge Pilot Programme with German partners Fonds SozioKultur and looking towards further collaboration on FLUXUS, a Franco-British programme for contemporary art run by the Institut Français. Creative Scotland’s Cultural Bridge programme supports organisations in the UK and Germany to both deliver programmes of activity in partnership with an organisation in at least one other country, and to develop partnerships as a network across the five countries involved, with the organisations and their communities.

Clinical nurse specialists make a valued contribution to delivering services and supporting patients and families who require specialist care. The Scottish Government has invested £2.5 million annually in the Specialist Nursing and Care Fund since 2015.

The National Cancer Recovery Group (NCRG) recently carried out a short survey in November to identify workforce requirements to inform wider workforce planning. This looked at roles specifically related to cancer, including Cancer Nurse Specialists. Scottish Government Officials and the National Cancer Recovery Group are working collaboratively in the development of the National Workforce Strategy and work will be conducted around the cancer workforce over the coming year.

Information on the numbers of blood cancer specialist nurses is not held centrally.

The Improvement Service (IS), who manage the application process, do not have the statistics on applications started available. Some online applications were submitted in advance of the 10 January 2022 application open date. At close of business on 1 March 2022, there had been a total of 201,306 online applications submitted.

The IS are able to report on the online rejection numbers only. At close of business on 1 March 2022, 47,251 applications had been rejected. Among the most common reasons for rejection were:

? Abbreviated birth certificate supplied which contains insufficient information necessary to prove that a parent is authorised to act on behalf of a child.

? Documents supplied cannot be read

? Parental ID not supplied

? Mismatch on address

? Data mismatch

? Non-compliant photo

? Documents do not pass security features checks

? Wrong date of birth

? Duplicate application

? Failed ID verification checks

Up to 930,000 young people aged between 5 and 21 will be eligible for the Young Persons' Free Bus Travel Scheme. This is in addition to almost 60,000 young people in this age group who already hold National Entitlement Cards providing access to the existing Free Bus Travel Scheme for Older and Disabled Persons. The following table provides population estimates calculated by Transport Scotland on the basis of data published by National Records of Scotland.

The Scottish Government has provided the Violence Reduction Unit with the following funding:

 *includes a one off payment for additional funding to VRU

The 2018 advice from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), our statutory advisers, was that over the next decade government policies should only support biomass use where this

a) provides cost-effective abatement whilst avoiding ‘lock-in’ to sub-optimal uses, and/or

b) develops key technologies and sustainable supply chains.

They recommend that we limit support for bioenergy use in buildings to biomethane produced from anaerobic digestion and other niche uses (as part of hybrid heat pumps systems in hard to treat off-gas homes, local combined heat and power systems and small-scale district heat networks) - whilst minimising air quality impacts.

Overall, the Scottish Government’s aim is to see bioenergy used where it has the greatest value in reducing emissions. We are currently working to understand the most appropriate and sustainable use of bioresources across the whole energy system in Scotland and intend to publish a Bioenergy Action Plan in 2023.

Biomass in a low-carbon economy - Climate Change Committee (theccc.org.uk)

We know that the pandemic has been exceptionally difficult for the mental health and wellbeing of many children, young people and their families, and that there has been increased pressure on mental health services as a result of this.

As part of our £120 million Mental Health Recovery and Renewal Fund, we have made an additional £40 million available this year to improve CAMHS and to clear waiting list backlogs by March 2023. Long waits are unacceptable and we remain committed to meet the standard that 90% of patients start treatment within 18 weeks of referral. We are directing support to those Boards with the longest waiting lists to clear backlogs by March 2023 and are monitoring progress closely.

Additionally, in our NHS Recovery Plan we have committed to provide sufficient funding for around 320 additional staff in CAMHS over the next 5 years. This will have the potential to increase capacity for CAMHS cases by over 10,000.

We have also provided an additional £15 million to local authorities this year to deliver locally based mental health and wellbeing support for 5-24 year olds in their communities, providing alternative treatment options and pathways to CAMHS and ensured access to counselling support services in all secondary schools.

The Scottish Government is currently developing its consultation exercise, to seek views on future legislative change to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. This follows the report of the former Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee in the last session of the Parliament, on post-legislative scrutiny of the Act. We will announce further information about the consultation as soon as we are in a position to do so.