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The Scottish Government is committed to keeping The Promise by 2030. It is recognised that the experience of growing up in care can impact you for all of your life. Providing the right support to people with care experience through our Whole Family Wellbeing approach and the range of work identified in the Promise Implementation Plan including trauma informed training, corporate parenting, education and employment.

The Implementation Plan sets out our commitment to ensure the voice of people with care experience is at the heart of the work we do to keep The Promise.

Where an offence has been committed the enforcement options remain the same for retailers based outside Scotland as they are for those in Scotland. These include:

• provision of advice and guidance;
• fixed monetary penalties (FMP);
• variable monetary penalties (VMP);
• report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) recommending prosecution.

SEPA’s enforcement response would reflect the nature of the offence and be designed to be the most effective way of restoring compliance. SEPA holds a number of investigatory powers which will support evidence gathering across the UK.

The Promise Bill will be introduced to Parliament before the end of this Parliamentary session to make any further legislative changes required to Keep The Promise.

The Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) Regulations require all retailers who sell in-scope products into Scotland, regardless of where they are based, to apply the 20p deposit. Therefore, retailers based in Scotland will not be disadvantaged by those based elsewhere.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-13244 on 17 January 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 total spend on administration of the Tenant Hardship Loan Fund is £433,886.88.

Admin costs 2020-21 = £240,217.20 inclusive of VAT

Admin costs 2021-22 = £162,210.30 inclusive of VAT

Admin costs 2022-23 (until October 2022) = £31,459.38 inclusive of VAT

This is the administration costs for loan fund awards with a total value of £733,894.

The Tenant Hardship Loan Fund was one part of a range of support and interventions put in place to help people who were struggling with rent because of changes to their finances caused by the Pandemic.

To enable the loan fund to be delivered quickly given the infra-structure and resource requirements, an existing contract with Energy Savings Trust for administration of the loan was extended.

Administration costs for the fund are based on a contractually agreed annual management fee, dependant on whether the scheme is open or closed, combined with a cost per application, regardless of whether the application resulted in a successful award or not.

The loan fund was demand led and affordability and ability to repay a loan was a key part of the assessment of all applications to protect applicants from unsustainable borrowing.

Alcohol duty is reserved to the UK Government. The Scottish Government would strongly recommend that the UK Government considers public health as part of any review to alcohol duty.

The Scottish Government believes that the stronger the beverage, the higher the duty should be, as it is the alcohol that causes the harms and stronger alcoholic drinks allow for faster consumption of alcohol. This is in line with the rationale behind our world leading minimum unit pricing policy which targets high strength, low-cost alcohol.

Our Alcohol Framework sets out our priorities for preventing alcohol-related harm. We take a whole population approach to tackling alcohol-related harms, in line with the World Health Organization’s focus on affordability, availability and attractiveness of alcohol.

The Scottish Government has not carried out recent assessment of the financial viability of independent, third sector Scottish Hospices.

As confirmed by the First Minister in the Chamber on 15 December 2022, the Scottish Government will meet with Hospice representatives to discuss the pressures they are facing, in common with other voluntary and statutory sectors, due to the impact of increased inflation and energy costs.

The investments made to date from the Recycling Improvement Fund have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 32,104 tonnes each year.

With support from Zero Waste Scotland, local authorities submit estimated greenhouse gas emission reduction figures, where available, for each project as part of the Fund’s assessment process. These figures are regularly reviewed during project implementation as part of the Fund’s monitoring processes, and as a result there may be variation in these figures as individual projects progress.

There are an estimated 930,000 people eligible for the Young Person’s Free Bus Travel Scheme. This refers to the number of people aged 5-21 who have become eligible for concessionary travel as a result of the Young Person’s Scheme.

(b) Transport Scotland does not hold application information. The Improvement Service are in charge of applications made through getyournec.scot and parentsportal.scot, and all other applications are managed by the individual local authorities.

(c) As of end of day 19th December 2022, there were 561,623 cardholders under the Young Persons’ Free Bus Travel Scheme.

This data is supplied by the National Entitlement Card Programme Office (NECPO). NECPO support the 32 local authorities by assisting with the integration of various national and local public services on the National Entitlement Card (NEC) and are the joint controller with local authorities of this data. The figure includes travel products collected from the Transport Scot Pass Collect mobile application.