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The latest guidance and advice on PPE designed to protect NHS and local authority staff is published by Health Protection Scotland: https://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/guidance/

This includes guidance on the use of PPE in various settings https://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/a-to-z-of-topics/covid-19/infection-prevention-and-control-ipc-guidance-in-healthcare-settings/ and technical specifications for different types of PPE, which guides NSS procurement and also the production of PPE by Scottish and UK firms:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads
/attachment_data/file/913041/essential-technical-specifications-ppe-and-medical-devices.pdf

We are closely monitoring the emerging evidence about the longer-term physical and mental health impacts of COVID-19 and recognise that rehabilitation, clinical input and research are all critical to understanding and supporting recovery.

That is why on 5 October the Chief Scientist Office launched a further call for Scottish-led research into this important issue. This is in addition to the £5m we recently awarded to 15 Scottish research institutions to better understand the effects of COVID-19 and inform treatment and management of the virus. We have published a Framework for supporting people through Recovery and Rehabilitation during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic, which puts in place clear principles, priorities and objectives to support planning to meet increasing demand and to provide high quality person-centred rehabilitation in different settings.

Our NHS is following best practice for treatment options to support the management of COVID-19, which suggests using the knowledge and expertise already within our NHS to deliver care tailored to individual need across a wide range of specialisms.

The Scottish Government provides assistance to food banks in a number of ways, including through the provision of funding and wider advice and support. The Scottish Government takes a cash-first approach to tackling food insecurity. Our investment helps to get both cash and food to those who need it.

A number of funding streams – described below - have supported food banks and other community food providers in 2020-21 and a detailed copy of individual allocations has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 61860).

2020-2021

The Investing in Communities Fund

The Investing in Communities Fund (ICF) enables more holistic community-led responses to tackling inequality, disadvantage and poverty in all of its forms, with 276 projects being supported since the fund’s launch in 2019/20.

This includes helping communities across Scotland to address food insecurity based on local circumstances, priorities and needs; with ICF having committed grant funding of £3.8 million to support 71 local foodbanks, community cafés and community pantries in 2020/21 alone.

In addition, ICF has also been working as flexibly as possible with all of the other projects that it is currently supporting to help communities to address the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is enabling community organisations to respond quickly, effectively and efficiently, working with their local partner organisations, to provide co-ordinated local services and support, including the preparation and delivery of food parcels for those in most need as part of their emergency support work.

Food Fund

The Scottish Government has so far invested over £120 million in tackling food insecurity as a result of the pandemic. £57.6 of this has been provided to local authorities to work with local partners in supporting people to access food and other essentials. In consultation with COSLA and in recognition of the exceptional circumstances that COVID presents, this funding was providing with considerable flexibility to enable local authorities to adapt delivery to best suit local needs. Some local authorities have allocated part of their grant to food bank assistance, a detailed breakdown of this is not held by the Scottish Government. The allocation provided to each local authority is available through our Community Funding Mapping dashboard: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/9caef01c2c7a46479a76c7730d0410fb

The Scottish Government also provided assistance through investing £2.1 million in FareShare to purchase and distribute food to food banks, other organisations responding to food insecurity and local hubs. 3,973 tonnes of food have been distributed by FareShare at the time of writing, equivalent to 9,459,822 meals. The purchased food has been distributed across all 32 local authority areas using the same allocation methodology as the funding to local authorities above.

This forms part of the £10m Immediate Priorities Fund allocated specifically to supporting critical community and third sector efforts to support people to access food. Other significant investments from this element include £500,000 to Cash for Kids, £734,500 to Social Bite and £272,000 to Food Train. The total figure allocated for food related activities currently stands at £4,980,891.60.

Wellbeing Fund

Two bid-in rounds of the Wellbeing Fund awarded a total of £3,403,972 to 167 projects where the activity focus was the provision of food.

Supporting Communities Fund

The Supporting Communities Fund was launched with an initial £20 million pounds to support the work of community groups and third sector organisations as they responded to the needs of their neighbourhoods and communities caused by the pandemic. The funding was delivered using a targeted approach and through community anchor organisations. Awards totalling over £17 million have been made to 374 community anchor organisations providing essential support and services over 90% of the awards made include supporting needs related to food such as food delivery, hot meals, emergency provisions/vouchers and support to food banks as part of their response.

Third Sector Resilience Fund

The Third Sector Resilience Fund, administered by Firstport, Social Investment Scotland and the Corra Foundation, supports organisations that already deliver services and products but find themselves in financial difficulties directly as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The primary intention of the fund is to help third sector organisations to stabilise and manage cash flows over this difficult period. There have been grants made to date totalling over £22 million and this investment has helped save organisations that have a collective annual turnover of approximately £0.51 billion, safeguarding over 14,000 jobs.

The TSRF used economic sectors, as opposed to social impact, for classification which means a definitive figure cannot be provided for food banks alone. However, conservative projections indicate that 30 organisations secured funding of around £575k.

Fair Food Fund

Our £2.5m Fair Food Fund enables dignified responses to food insecurity. It is evolving the response from charitable food provision towards rights-based access to nutritious food and support to tackle the root causes of poverty. We have adopted the dignity principles developed by the Independent Short Life Working Group on Food Poverty (June 2016) to inform how we direct funding under our Fair Food Fund.

We are working closely with groups in the community food sector to develop innovative ways to end hunger in Scotland. We have invested £534k in supporting 5 community food organisations, each with distinct delivery models, so far in 20/21.

Third Sector and Communities Recovery Programme

As announced in Programme for Government, funding from the £350 million package will now be re-focussed on recovery supported by £25 million Third Sector and Communities Recovery Programme. The programme opened to applications on 21 September and will provide support to community and third sector organisations as they make the shift from lockdown to recovery, including organisations delivering activities related to food including food banks. The programme provides a range of support including adapting business/financial models and support to re-start existing services/activities or develop new services identified as a priority due to covid.

2021-2022

The Scottish Government will present its spending plans to parliament when it publishes its Draft Budget. We remain committed to tackling food insecurity and this will be considered as part of our budget proposals.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S5W-32195 on 20 October 2020. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx 

The portfolios shown in the following table released budget for reprioritisation in the Autumn Budget Revision This budget was transferred to central resources where it was added to the Barnett consequentials and deployed to COVID-19 priority areas as detailed in the Autumn Budget Revision.

The Scottish Government engages with the Independent Food Aid Network on a regular basis, including through a fortnightly meeting of delivery stakeholders. Questions of risk and pressure are discussed across the network and a collaborative approach taken to problem solving.

The Independent Food Aid Network has not formally sought any Scottish Government funding, has not raised any unresolved pressures and has assured officials that at present it has an adequate supply of food and volunteers.

The Independent Food Aid Network has a policy of not accepting government funding, preferring to see investment directed to cash-first approaches: www.foodaidnetwork.org.uk/ifan-in-scotland

Members of the Independent Food Aid Network may want to note that the Community and Third Sector Recovery Programme has recently opened: https://scvo.org.uk/support/coronavirus/funding/scottish-government

We are committed to providing a mixed economy of provision to meet the needs of those seeking to move towards and into work across Scotland. Details of our existing employability programmes are as follows:

1. No One Left Behind, delivered in partnership with Local Government, provides all-age support to those further from the labour market. 3,460 people were supported through No One Left Behind, 643 of which secured employment, in the period April 2019 to March 2020. Please note that these figures are provided from management information at this time. We are considering how best to publish routine updates.

2. Fair Start Scotland , delivered by a range of contracted providers , is Scotland's first fully devolved employment support service and supports people who are at risk of long-term unemployment and unemployed disabled people. Official Statistics on Fair Start Scotland are published quarterly as part of the Scotland's Devolved Employment Services Statistical Summary Release. Delivery and performance data can be accessed www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-devolved-employment-services-statistical-summary-7/

3. Parental Employability Support Fund , delivered in partnership with Local Government targets priority families, who are evidenced to be at a higher risk of poverty. Parental Employment Support Fund data is currently being collated centrally and we are considering how best to publish routine updates.

4. Community Jobs Scotland , delivered by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, supports young people aged 16 to 29 by creating job opportunities for unemployed young people across the voluntary sector. Further information on the performance of Community Jobs Scotland has previously been provided to Parliament and can be found in answer S5W-31875 on 30 September 2020.

5. Discovering Your Potential , delivered by the Young People’s Consortium, supports care experienced young people to achieve positive destinations such as further education, training and employment. Barnardo's, the lead partner with the Young People's Consortium who deliver the Discovering Your Potential Programme, publish data in their annual Impact Reports. They will soon be working on the 2019-2020 data with a view to publishing the report in mid-November. Their report is not published on the website and we are therefore unable to provide a relevant ink. In 2018-2019, 331 Young individuals were supported through the programme with 76 of these securing employment.

6. Our Future Now, delivered by Inspiring Scotland, supports young people to thrive economically, socially, and culturally. Data on the delivery and performance of Our Future Now can be accessed at https://www.inspiringscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/OFN-Year-1-Report.pdf

7. Skills Development Scotland provide a range of support to people seeking employability and skills support, as set out in their ministerial guidance letter each year. This includes Foundation, Graduate and Modern Apprenticeships, Careers Information, Advice and Guidance, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment, and Employability Fund . Skills Development Scotland publish quarterly statistics on the delivery and performance of its programmes and can be accessed at https://www.skillsdevelopmentscotland.co.uk/media/46933/employability-fund-statistics-quarter-1-2020-21.pdf

The Scottish Government publishes details of its budget, with the programmes above funded from the Employability Services Budget, the Employability Fair Start Budget and the Education and Skills Budget lines. Details of these budgets can be accessed at https://www.gov.scot/publications/ .

For ease of reference budget for the last 3 years is summarised below.

The Scottish Government has allocated an additional £100 million of funding for existing employment support programmes this financial year. This includes a further £25 million for National Transitional Funding, £10 million to recruit and retrain apprenticeships and £5 million for PACE.

Additionally the Scottish Government has invested £60 million in the development of a Young Person’s Guarantee. This will include:

• £30 million through local authorities to support local partnerships to deliver employability support
• £10 million directly to colleges
• £10 million additional funding for Developing the Young Workforce, the Scottish Government’s Youth Employment Strategy
• £10 million to support pre-apprenticeship activity

We are working with partners including local authorities, Scottish Funding Council, Skills Development Scotland to finalise plans that will set out how the additional investment will be used to increase the number and range of opportunities available to young people. Through Young Scot, we are also ensuring young people have the opportunity to shape the Guarantee.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-32029 on 5 October 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

This change was announced suddenly by the UK Government and, despite the obvious and substantial implications for the Scottish retail and tourism sectors, without prior engagement with Scottish Government officials. Accordingly, we have had no opportunity to carry out analysis of our own and none has been shared by the UK Government.

Since this announcement, the Scottish Government has received representations from a number of stakeholder organisations expressing concerns about the impact on trade and the wider economy. We share their concerns and do not believe that this is an appropriate juncture at which to make such an abrupt and significant change.