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The Scottish Government is fully committed to helping the Scottish hydrogen sector develop.

The Hydrogen Action Plan, published in December 2022, confirmed that the Scottish Government will support the emerging hydrogen sector through a programme of capital funding, designed to accelerate and maximise the production of renewable hydrogen in Scotland.

The first tranche of our hydrogen investment programme, the Hydrogen Innovation Scheme was launched in 2022 to support research and innovation in hydrogen production, storage, and distribution. In May, the First Minister announced that over £7m in grants had been offered to 32 projects. Details of these projects are published on the Scottish Government website: Emerging Energy Technologies Fund - Hydrogen Innovation Scheme: successful projects - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . All grants are paid in arrears, and will be awarded on successful completion of key project milestones.

The next tranche of the hydrogen investment programme, the up to £90m Green Hydrogen Fund, will launch later in 2023. This fund will focus on supporting renewable hydrogen production from Scotland’s abundant renewable energy resources, seeking to give Scotland first-mover advantage.

Our investment is aimed at driving Scotland’s hydrogen production capability to meet an ambition of at least 5GW of renewable and low carbon hydrogen by 2030 and 25GW by 2045.

The response to question S6W-21286, answered on 13 September 2023, notes that as a result of the devolved settlement and the Scottish Government’s powers, along with the interaction with reserved tax and benefits, it is not possible to deliver the Parental Transition Fund as originally envisaged.

As set out in the Medium-Term Financial Strategy, the current financial situation facing the Scottish Government is amongst the most challenging since devolution. Tough and decisive action must be taken to ensure the sustainability of public finance, whilst also strengthening the immediate support available for households impacted by the cost of living crisis. On this basis, the £5 million made available for the Parental Transition Fund in 2023-24 has been reallocated to help meet the previously announced increased investment in the Fuel Insecurity Fund to address the need for immediate help with fuel costs and to support the Scottish Government’s path to balance.

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way. Many of the milestones are being delivered through the National Mission and others are being picked up as part of more recent Government commitments.

The Prison to Rehab pathway was established in the summer of 2020 to support individuals into residential rehabilitation services during the unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We conducted an internal review of the pathway in 2021-2022 which was complimented by an evaluation from one of our commissioned third sector organisations, the Scottish Recovery Consortium. The published evaluation can be viewed here . The review and the evaluation informed a new version of the Prison to Rehab protocol to ensure it continued to be fit for purpose. This was published in March 2023 and can be viewed here here .

There are 41 active working groups that fall under the remit of the Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy portfolio.

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way. Many of the milestones are being delivered through the National Mission and others are being picked up as part of more recent Government commitments.

Quality improvement methodology is being embedded across Scotland through the implementation of the Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) standards.

The MAT Standards Implementation Support Team (MIST), based within Public Health Scotland, was set up to support local areas to build improvement-based capacity and capability so that they will be able to implement and sustain the MAT standards locally.

MIST helps local areas with quality improvement work which has focused on establishing that local areas have written procedures in place, have numerical information and data available and have a means in place to gather experiential data. All of which are required to help drive improvement.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) is also supporting local areas and works closely with MIST in providing practical quality improvement assistance and advice to local areas.

HIS will shortly begin delivery of its full quality improvement assistance to local areas to build on the first phase of quality improvement work MIST has undertaken. HIS also provides close links between its other relevant workstreams on residential rehabilitation, prison healthcare and mental health and addictions services.

The total quantity of discards below Minimum Conservation Reference Size from Scottish vessels is not currently estimated. The Marine Directorate of the Scottish Government estimates the total weight of bycatch (catch that was not considered suitable for commercial sales) below Minimum Conservation Reference Size for demersal trawlers and seine netters for each year, using data collected by scientific observers on-board fishing vessels. Fishing trips by vessels using other gears are not surveyed. The estimates for 2022 are given in the table below. These estimates are for fishing trips by UK vessels landing into Scotland and Scottish vessels landing abroad, however the estimates for solely Scottish vessels are likely to be of similar magnitude.

Estimates of the total weight of bycatch (kg) below Minimum Conservation Reference Size, rounded to the nearest tonne, caught in 2022 in ICES subarea 4 and division 6a by UK vessels landing into Scotland and Scottish vessels landing abroad, fishing with demersal trawls or seines.

I refer the Member to the answer to question S6W-21286 on 13 September 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

In line with the National Standard for providers of funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC), it is a requirement that “children have daily access to outdoor play and they regularly experience outdoor play in a natural environment as part of their funded ELC offer ” .

Tackling poverty and protecting people from harm is one of three critical and interdependent missions for the government – alongside our focus on the economy and strengthening public services. We recognise that families with a child under the age of one are more likely to live in poverty and, as set out in Best Start, Bright Futures, our second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, are taking forward a range of action to help.

We have already significantly strengthened support through devolved social security. The Scottish Child Payment is worth £25 per eligible child per week with 316,000 children benefiting as of 30 June 2023. Programme for Government 2023-24 commits to further increasing the value of the Scottish Child Payment in line with inflation next year and to introducing regulations that remove income thresholds from Best Start Foods from February 2024, supporting an additional 20,000 people.

In addition we have delivered over a quarter of a million Baby Boxes to expectant parents – providing them with more than £400 worth of essential items for their newborn – and are committed to investing £500 million in Whole Family Wellbeing to improve holistic family support so that families get the right support, in the right way and at the right time.

Over 11,000 families have benefited from the Family Nurse Partnership since it began in 2010 and we have committed to further expansion over the next two years to reach more young mothers and fathers.

We have also implemented the Universal Health Visitor Pathway across Scotland, to ensure that all families get a minimum of 11 home visits – eight in the first year of life and three child health reviews up to age 5 – and we are supporting health visitors to have more meaningful conversations around financial inclusion through piloting dedicated training to increase their skills and confidence in discussing money worries and provide related guidance.

Between 2019 and 2023, we have invested £26 million in the development of perinatal and infant mental health services across Scotland.

Additionally, we have led work in Scotland to raise awareness of the unique nutritional needs of infants, and engaged a wide range of stakeholders to take action to develop Emergency pathways on Infant Food Insecurity, integrated into wider, locally directed and holistic income maximisation and food insecurity supports.

As set out in our Programme for Government, we will continue to invest in primary prevention from pre-birth through the earliest years and have set out ambitious plans to expand access to funded childcare for 13,000 more children and families by the end of this Parliament

It is estimated that 90,000 fewer children will live in relative and absolute poverty this year as a result of this Government’s policies, with poverty levels 9% points lower that they would have otherwise been. This includes lifting an estimated 50,000 children out of relative poverty through our Scottish Child Payment.

The Scottish Government will continue to do everything within the scope of our powers and budget in order to tackle and reduce child poverty, including for families with a child under the age of one.

Transport Scotland are working with support from external specialist commercial and technical advisors Turner and Townsend, to progress development of the next CHFS contract. Work is underway to the develop the next CHFS3 contract including stakeholder engagement to support this process.