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We welcome the report by Shelter Scotland. The Scottish Government is committed to including ongoing consideration of what more can be done to improve outcomes for BAME people within social housing.

Our Housing to 2040 strategy continues to provide the frame for our work to advance equality of outcomes in housing, with our vision for what we want homes and communities to look and feel like for the people of Scotland. In this we have recognised and committed to address the housing challenges faced by minority ethnic communities and highlighted that we must act on what we already know, as well as taking steps to improve our evidence base.

The Tax Advisory Group has been set up to look across a broad spectrum of views to ensure we continue to offer a fair and progressive but sustainable system. Tax policy for 2024-25 will be set out at the Budget later this year.

The group will be a long-term feature of how we engage on tax, and I will chair a quarterly meeting of the group. The minutes of their meetings will be posted on the Scottish Government website.

Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) “Achievement of a Level” (ACEL) data shows that attainment at CfE Third Level or better by S3 pupils has been over 85 per cent for both literacy and numeracy since 2016-17. In 2021-22, 86 per cent of S3 pupils achieved this level in literacy, with 89 per cent in numeracy which is slightly less than in 2018-19, demonstrating the ongoing recovery from the pandemic.

ACEL data is one of a range of measures captured in the National Improvement Framework. It is important to be able to measure the impact of the education system as a whole, rather than looking at individual measures. That is why the National Improvement Framework includes the ACEL data for P1, P4, P7 and S3 as part of a broader basket of key measures of attainment. This avoids, as far as possible, a situation where looking at a single measure generates perverse behaviours by becoming the single focus of activity in schools.

Local education authorities have the statutory responsibility to provide school education. To support continuous improvement in literacy and numeracy nationally in our schools, the Scottish Government is:

• Focusing on literacy and numeracy within the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) which has allocated over £550m in Pupil Equity Funding directly to primary schools up until 2022-23 and is investing a total of £1bn over this parliamentary term, including direct funding for all 32 local authorities.
• Has agreed clear stretch aims within each local authority as part of the SAC which, if achieved, would narrow the poverty related attainment gap by over 7 percentage points in both primary school literacy and numeracy by 2022-23 compared to 2020-21.
• Rejoining the “PIRLS” and “TIMSS” surveys, thereby further improving the evidence base on literacy and numeracy performance.
• Taking forward the National Response to Improving Literacy (NRIL) and the National Response to Improving Mathematics (NRIM) alongside Education Scotland and ADES, drawing on the available evidence to develop focused, “teacher-relevant” packages of professional learning, guidance and support.
• Ensuring that Education Scotland provides a tailored local and school-level support offer via attainment advisers and Regional Improvement Collaboratives.
• Funding and promoting Maths Week Scotland every year since 2017, transforming public attitudes to maths and promoting the value of maths as an essential skill for every career.
• Funding additional national programmes which support high quality learning and teaching, including “Read Write Count with the First Minister”, Reading Schools and the School Library Improvement Fund.

Guidance relating to digital communications infrastructure is currently being developed to replace Planning Advice Note 62. We intend to publish this updated guidance before the end of 2023.

Statistics on school attendance and absences can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-attendance-and-absence-statistics/

The most recent sector-wide Landlord Registration data shows that in August 2023 there had been no decline in the number of registered properties for rent. While it is an administrative rather than a statistical source, the data shows that there were 342,542 private rented properties registered in Scotland, slightly more than the 339,632 properties registered in August 2022, before the introduction of the emergency Act. It is important to note however that there is likely to be a time lag on this data, particularly in relation to how frequently information from landlords is updated on the system.

The emergency Act is giving important support to tenants, providing them with much-needed stability in their housing costs. It has gone further than anywhere else in the UK in helping protect tenants across the rental sector.

As part of our ongoing duty to keep the provisions of the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022 under review, a series of reports have been published setting out the evidence as to why the Scottish Government believes the Act remains necessary and proportionate. You may wish to note that the most recent report was laid in Parliament on 1 June.

We will continue to monitor the data to identify emerging impacts on the availability of properties for private rent.

Through the Block Grant, the Scottish Government's policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow them the financial freedom to operate independently. It is their responsibility to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on youth work, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

I have portfolio responsibility for hospital arranged post mortem examinations. These are undertaken for deaths in hospitals to establish the medical cause of death and require consent from the individual or the family.

Separately, post mortems can be carried out under the direction of the Lord Advocate as part of an investigation into a death. These are a matter for the Lord Advocate and the Scottish Government does not comment on or get involved in these.

The present state of the pandemic has been transformed by science, moving away from population level restrictions to strong programmes of vaccination and therapeutics.

As part of our enhanced surveillance systems, we continue to monitor, assess and be ready to respond to COVID-19 and other health threats. Any response including change to guidance on use of face coverings or face masks will be driven by the data and evidence gathered as well as expert advice as illustrated in the answer to question S6W-18103 on 31 May 2023 from Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour.

A risk-based approach to face coverings and face masks is in place across all settings with respect for those who may be unable to or wish to wear a face covering.

There are currently no general Covid-19 restrictions in place but the advice remains the same – please take up the offer of vaccination when invited, and try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people if you have symptoms of a respiratory infection. If you have symptoms but do need to go out, wear a well-fitting face covering if possible.

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

Scottish Government is in regular communications with Ferguson Marine and CMAL around the delivery of MV Glen Sannox and MV Glen Rosa.

The CEO of FMPG provided his latest formal update to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee on 22 August 2023 with a commitment to provide a detailed follow up by the end of September 2023 following completion of a detailed review of costs and delivery timescales.