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The Scottish Government is providing local authorities with funding to make free school lunches available, during school term-time, to all children in primaries 1 to 5 and in special schools. This policy has given 280,723 children access to nutritionally balanced school lunches, as well as eligible pupils in primary 6 to secondary 6, saving families approximately £400 per child, per year.

On 15 December 2022, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery announced the next phase of our free school meals expansion programme which will see them being made available for children in primaries 6 and 7 whose families are in receipt of the Scottish Child Payment.

Also announced was £21.75 million for local authorities to provide assistance with the cost of buying food during the 2023-24 school holidays to all families who are eligible for free school meals on the basis of low income.

The Scottish Government contributes funding to national activity to support Meal Makers and Eat Well Age Well (EWAW), which are projects provided by Food Train .

Meal Makers connects older people locally with volunteers who are happy to deliver and share extra portions of a home cooked meal. It is designed to enhance an older person’s existing food intake with fresh nutritious home cooked meals, provide them with regular social contact and help reduce their risk of malnutrition and associated health impacts. EWAW is a national, five-year project of Food Train to support the prevention of malnutrition and dehydration among older people in the community. It began in early 2018, and quickly became the country’s leading project addressing and improving the prevention, detection and treatment of malnutrition among older people.

We have provided £2.4m funding in 2022/23 to support people struggling over this winter. We know the costs crisis is impacting those on the lowest incomes the hardest, with food price inflation at 16.4% and food bank demand in Scotland up 34% compared to this time last year. This funding is providing vital support, including helping people access emergency cash in their local communities so they can buy the food they need. The funding has the potential to directly reach 7,500 people, and many more will benefit than this, as the Corra Foundation and Fareshare will between them distribute it further to an estimated 900 organisations.

This is in addition to the almost £3bn we have allocated in this financial year that will be helping households face the increased cost of living, including £1bn for services and financial support not available elsewhere in the UK. We are investing £41m in the Scottish Welfare Fund each year to provide a vital safety net for those facing an emergency or crisis.

The Women’s Health Plan focusses on a specific set of priorities including enhancing care and support for those with endometriosis. Whilst chronic urinary tract infections (UTIs) are not specifically mentioned in the priorities for this iteration of the Plan, we recognise that many women are significantly affected by the condition.

In addition, we have commissioned the Health and Social Care Alliance to take forward a programme of work on lived experience in order to put the voices of women at the heart of the Plan.

We recognise that research is essential if we are to increase our understanding of endometriosis and develop new and effective approaches to the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of this debilitating condition. That is why we are jointly funding a £250,000 research project with Wellbeing of Women, which aims to develop improvements into treatment and management options for the condition.

We will raise awareness and support the implementation of the new Endometriosis Referral Pathway for NHS Scotland developed by the Modernising Patient Pathways Programme. The Pathway aims to ensure those with endometriosis receive individualised treatment in relation to their symptoms by improving earlier intervention and support within primary care, streamline referrals to secondary and tertiary care where required.

Our Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan, backed by £70m investment, was published on 30 November 2021 and focusses on key areas such as Balancing Demand and Capacity; Workforce Training and Development; and Infrastructure Innovation and Redesign. This will be achieved through the implementation of key actions that are focused on reducing the waiting times back to the 6-week target during the life time of this Parliament.

In addition, in July last year, we introduced ambitious targets for NHS Scotland to address the backlog of planned care, undoubtedly exacerbated by the pandemic. We are working intensively with NHS Boards to maximise capacity and to clear remaining waits as soon as possible, with a specific focus on specialities and areas where there are larger amounts of people waiting, including Urology.

The Scottish Government drew on data from Wood Mackenzie and other organisations in developing the draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan.

As we committed to in the Bute House Agreement, the Scottish Government is undertaking in-depth analysis work to better understand Scotland’s energy requirements as we transition to net zero, ensuring an approach that supports and protects our energy security and our highly skilled workforce whilst meeting our climate obligations.

This work has already provided evidence which was used to underpin elements of the draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan relating to the oil and gas sector, together with other commercially available data.

The independent report on the analytical work we have commissioned will be published in full, once it is complete and following independent panel review. We expect publication during the consultation period for the draft ESJTP.

As part of the Scottish Diabetes Group, there are several sub-groups working on delivering commitments specific to Type 1 Diabetes. These include commitments to improving education and self-management and also inpatient care. Closed Loop Systems are also being considered for potential inclusion in the new Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) pathway co-odinated by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery. Projects centred on access to technologies will have a particular focus on increasing access for those living in the most deprived areas of Scotland, using SIMD data.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The following table sets out the number of Architecture and Design Scotland staff, broken down by pay banding, permanent staff, fixed term appointments (FTA) and full time equivalent (FTE).

Since the Best Use of Timber Awards were established in 2012, Scottish Forestry has allocated £6,000 each year towards the delivery of the awards, with the exception of 2020 when the awards did not take place due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Architecture and Design Scotland does not allocate funding for the project other than staff resource.

Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA) is a process through which authorities can identify, research, analyse and record the anticipated impact of any proposed measure – including new schools - on children’s human rights and wellbeing.

The CRWIA provides a template to help assess the impact of the measure on the Articles of the UNCRC, and consider how implementation of it can help progress the realisation of children’s rights, and support and promote the wellbeing of children and young people in Scotland.

The Learning Estate Strategy 2019 which underpins the Learning Estate Investment Programme incorporates a requirement to consult in its guiding principles. The subsequent CRWIA guidance Nov 2021 states that the CRWIA template “is a tool that can help inform and meet these duties”. The Learning Estate Investment Programme will signpost the CRWIA guidance and templates as part of the shared learning event programme.

Since joining the Scotland + Venice project in 2016, Architecture and Design Scotland has supported the commissioning and work of external curatorial teams on behalf of the Scotland + Venice partners, (Scottish Government, Creative Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, the British Council (Scotland), the V&A Dundee, and Architecture and Design Scotland).

Funding allocated directly by Architecture and Design Scotland towards the Scotland + Venice project in the years 2016-17 to 2022-23 is provided in the following table.

We know that deprivation is a significant driver of excess mortality and reduced life expectancy. Reducing poverty and inequality therefore sits at the heart of our investment across all portfolios and remains the best way of improving life expectancy.

Increasing life expectancy across Scotland remains a clear ambition for this Government and we are using all the powers and resources available to us to create a fairer Scotland. We are doing that by ensuring health services are accessible to all, committing £19bn to public services over the next year; committing £4 billion in social security and welfare payments over the next financial year; and extending the Scottish Child Payment to families with eligible under 16s – by increasing it to £25 per week per child.

Furthermore, our Care and Wellbeing Portfolio, as the principle strategic reform vehicle in Health and Social Care, is being designed to promote a ‘health in all policies’ approach in order to strengthen cross-government collaboration on key and critical issues that contribute to the goal of reducing inequalities and increasing life expectancy.