Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all people living with kidney disease in Scotland are able to access the best possible care and support, and benefit from healthcare services that are safe, effective and put people at the centre of their care.

We expect all NHS Boards in Scotland to adhere to current guidelines and follow best practice when providing psychosocial care for people with kidney disease.

Our Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy published in 2023, sets out a long-term vision, and a set of outcomes, for the mental health and wellbeing of the population.

In September 2023, we published the National Specification for Psychological Therapies and Interventions , and Mental Health Core Standards to ensure effective, equitable, efficient and high-quality person-centred care is delivered consistently across Scotland. The Specification and Standards set out what we expect in terms of care in Psychological Therapies and Adult Secondary Services, including appropriate staffing.

The Scottish Government remains firmly committed to protecting and effectively managing 30% of Scotland’s land and seas for nature by 2030, halting the loss of biodiversity by 2030 and restoring and regenerating it by 2045, and we continue to pursue a wide range of actions to deliver this commitment.

The Scottish Government’s future legislative programme will be set out as part of the upcoming Programme for Government in due course.

There are a number of complexities around UK benefits and student systems and these can impact negatively on each other. With the Scottish Government Paramedic, Nursing and Midwifery Student Bursary, maintenance elements of the Bursary are considered as income for Universal Credit and other means-tested reserved benefits.

If a Universal Credit award is removed due to ‘excess income’ such as the bursary, students would also lose entitlement to Scottish Government benefits such as Scottish Child Payment. This includes the non-means tested bursary, the Spouse or Cohabiting Partner Allowance, the Child Dependent Allowance and the Lone Parents' Grant.

The Scottish Government have introduced a Special Support Loan for 2024-25 academic year and have obtained agreement from the Department for Work and Pensions that this element of student income will be disregarded when assessing Universal Credit entitlement.

The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice wrote to Viscount Younger of Leckie , Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions, on 17 April 2024 asking for Student Maintenance Loans to also be disregarded as income for the purposes of calculating Universal Credit entitlement, particularly as they are a loan which must be repaid, but no reply has been received to date.

It should also be noted that due to the receipt of the non-repayable Paramedic, Nursing and Midwifery Bursary, students are not eligible for student loans. The Scottish Government has committed to carrying out a review of student finance for paramedic, nursing and midwifery students.

Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) manage the reimbursement of clinical placement expenses for student paramedics, nurses and midwives on behalf of the Scottish Government and has a 12 day service level agreement in place. Since the start of the 2024-25 academic year the average turnaround time is 7.2 days and as of 21 June, SAAS were working on claims received on 20 June.

All placement expenses are routed to SAAS via Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) who assess students’ claims in the first instance before sending them to SAAS for reimbursement. The Scottish Government, SAAS and HEIs have met regularly to improve the process of these reimbursements and to create more flexibility within the rules for students. Revised guidance will go live on 1 July 2024 and a key element of these improvements has been to ensure that students are aware that they can claim expenses in advance.

The Scottish Government welcomes the Student Midwives Finance Report, published by the Royal College of Midwives and thanks them for holding the roundtable event in the Scottish Parliament on 30 May 2024.

The event was attended by the Chief Midwifery Officer Justine Craig who heard powerful accounts from the students who clearly articulated their experiences.

A similar event was held by the Royal College of Nursing in September last year and following that the Scottish Government created a short-life working group comprising representatives from the Scottish Government, Student Awards Agency Scotland and higher education institutes to review the placement expenses guidance.

This group recently concluded its review and revised guidance will go live on the 1 of July. Their work will ensure students are refunded as promptly as possible and has provided students with greater flexibility on issues such as claiming advance payments. A national FAQs has also been developed to ensure greater consistency in the application of the guidance by HEIs across the country.

The Scottish Government has also committed to carrying out a review of student financial support more widely.

The Scottish Government is developing a Market Framework to set out a clear long-term policy ambition and coherent policy framework to support our vision for the development of Natural Capital markets in Scotland. It will be published later in the year, following the current extended engagement phase with a wide variety of stakeholders.

The Natural Capital Market Framework will seek to strengthen Scotland’s interim principles for ‘Responsible Investment in Natural Capital’. If passed by Scottish Parliament, the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill will also help to realise many of these Interim Principles, especially those relevant to land use, community engagement and community benefit.

For example, the Bill includes provisions that would place legal responsibilities on the owners of large landholdings to set out how they use their land and how that contributes to key public policy priorities, like addressing climate change and protecting and restoring nature. The Bill will also ensure the owners of large landholdings will have to engage with local communities about how they use the land, and it will prohibit certain sales of over 1000 hectares, until Ministers can consider the impact on the local community.

Engagement on the Natural Capital Market Framework is taking place from March to September and is following Scottish Government’s approach to service design, using the expertise and insight from a diverse range of stakeholders to inform the development of the framework. This engagement has included UK Government officials leading their work on natural capital markets but there has been no direct engagement with UK Government Ministers. We have also engaged with a wide range of private businesses representing agricultural, land management, contractor and investment interests.

The Scottish Government continues to provide £16 million per year to ensure that all secondary schools have access to school counselling services.

Local authorities have confirmed that all secondary schools in Scotland have access to counselling services. All school pupils aged 10 and above have access to the service.

It is up to local authorities to decide how to deliver the service in their area to best suit the needs of their children and young people.

School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools and authorities have in place to support the mental health of children and young people.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-28136 on 26 June 2024. 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 .