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The Early Interventions for Children and Young People working group are currently developing recommendations of what good quality early intervention support services should be available across Scotland for young people with emerging problematic drug and alcohol use.

In Spring 2023, the working group began engaging with young people, using a co-design approach, to gather their views of what good support should look like. These findings, along with existing international evidence of good practice will be used by the working group to develop standards of support for children and young people.

The co-design work will conclude in January 2024.

The working group will then outline the minimum principles of support that is required by local areas to meet the needs of children and young people, providing early intervention support in a way young people want.

In January 2023, the Scottish Government agreed to produce a retrospective report in relation to the allocation of fish quota to vessels fishing by means associated with a lower environmental impact.

The report will review how quota was allocated to help incentivise selective fishing gear and low impact techniques, and other relevant factors such as the level of uptake of quota, where it was landed across the Scottish coast, and number of vessels involved. We plan to publish this report in the first half of 2024.

I would also take this opportunity to highlight that the Scottish Government recently published a consultation on how we allocate a portion of our fishing quota. This consultation seeks views on how the Additional Quota Scotland receives following the implementation of the Trade and Co-operation Agreement with the European Union and the UK becoming an independent Coastal State are distributed throughout Scotland.

The consultation is available at: https://consult.gov.scot/marine-scotland/fish-stocks-allocation-of-additional-quota/ . It closes on 11 January 2024.

I refer the member to the answer to S6W-22257 on 3 November 2023.

The National Innovation Strategy addresses the challenges and actions we need to take to ensure we deliver across the entire range of innovation activity in Scotland, and how we can best utilise innovation as a driver to grow our economy, create jobs and deliver priority outcomes for all of Scotland's citizens. The Strategy sets out ambitious and transformational programmes on cluster building, investment, productivity, and commercialisation.

The National Innovation Strategy will take a cluster approach to our innovation priorities, and this approach will be a national, regional and local approach. We will work with industry, academia and the public sector to evaluate individual needs to address barriers and opportunities, and providing phased tailored packages of support in each priority area to further stimulate growth and innovation.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The rise in the prison population is driven by a complex set of factors, including the court backlog caused by reduced court capacity over the pandemic. Progress has been made in reducing this backlog through the justice recovery fund. This has allowed an increase in court business resulting in the fall of the number of outstanding scheduled trials by a third since last January. Other factors include the increase in average sentences imposed for certain offences and growth in the number of serious sexual offence and domestic abuse cases prosecuted in the courts. While both arrivals and departures increased over the first 8 months of the year, arrivals outpaced departures, resulting in a rising population. As the outlook for the population remains highly uncertain the Scottish Government continues to monitor it.

Scottish Government provide direct funding to Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs. The objectives for delivery during 2022-23 through this funding are as follows:

The licensing regime for growing hemp is a reserved matter controlled by the UK Home Office, however we recognise the potential benefit for hemp production in Scotland as a sustainable crop with multiple uses.

The Scottish Government has not engaged in any discussions on this issue with the UK Government. Currently, industrial hemp is not a major crop in Scotland; although there are a small number of independent growers who grow hemp for a variety of reasons and we are keen to speak with those interested in growing hemp to find out more about this crop.

The Scottish Government is interested in understanding the evidence behind the benefits of hemp. As such, as part of the Strategic Research Programme, we have funded several projects via the Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutes (SEFARI) Gateway Fellowship programme. These include a study entitled “Potential Market Opportunities for Hempseed and Fibre in Scotland” published in October 2022 in partnership with the University of Aberdeen and the Scottish Hemp Association. More about this study can be found at the following link: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/16425/ .

The objectives of the grant funding provided to SUSE throughout 2022 were to:

1. Provide the governance and project management function for the PSP.

2. Progress Apt through the PSP stages, which include:

• Designing and developing pilot projects for delivery throughout the grant period;
• Ensuring that those projects are evaluated;
• Refining and finalising pilot projects before outlining procurement options for the public sector.

3. Ensure that the PSP has a public corporate identity, including by:

• Creating and maintaining a website hosting such information that is deemed necessary by the steering group.

4. Appointment of PSP Development Manager to:

• Effectively support employers with "complex" needs;
• Engage an additional 40 employers to the PSP Workstreams;
• Capture baseline data on employers.

5. Ensure that the Apt continues to deliver interventions for employers:

• Continue delivery of pilot projects;
• Further development of a strong evidence base to support each pilot project;
• Production of a design blueprint which describes the range of tools, products and services offered by the PSP across their journey

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-22375 on 3 November 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The report will set out various facts in relation to quota allocated to incentivise selective fishing gear and low impact techniques such as: the number of vessels involved; tonnages of various species caught; area of landing and proportion for each quota stock in relation to the entire allocation for said stock.

Alcohol Focus Scotland’s objectives as set out in their grant letter for 2022-23 were:

• Advocate for the continuation and optimisation of minimum unit pricing in Scotland
• Build community capacity to engage in the licensing process
• Improve the accessibility and effectiveness of the licensing process
• Encourage strategic action to reduce the availability of alcohol
• Build support for controls on alcohol marketing as recommended by the Expert Network.
• Engage with communities of interest to explore and publicise experiences of alcohol marketing
• Expand the evidence base and our policy advocacy work to protect children and young people from the impact of alcohol
• Increase awareness of the impact of alcohol on children and young people
• Build capacity of practitioners to identify and work with children and young people
• Improve knowledge of alcohol and understanding of risks
• Build capacity of practitioners to identify and work with children and young people
• Support the routinisation of Alcohol Death Reviews, and the sharing of knowledge from them, across Scotland
• Support interventions to reduce alcohol-related deaths