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The Scottish Government is committed to the benefits of our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS). However, following the UK Government's decision not to provide a full exclusion to the Internal Market Act I have announced in Parliament that we will be pushing the launch of the DRs back to October 2023.

A set of impact assessments including an Equalities Impact Assessment, Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment, Fairer Scotland Duty Assessment and Island Communities Impact Assessment were published alongside the original DRS Regulations in 2020. This included the impact on local authority budgets. Any significant changes to the scheme will most likely require further engagement with stakeholders, impact assessments and regulatory change.

Scottish Government has regular engagements with local government and other key stakeholders. Local government is represented on our Ministerial Strategic Advisory Group, and our Hospitality Sector Group, as well as on the Waste and Resources Sector Forum and joint Scottish Government/Local Government Strategic Steering group on Circular Economy and Waste with respect to wider waste and circular economy policy. They will have a role to play in the governance of the DR which will look at strategic and operational issues.

This information has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre under BiB No. 64319.

The Scottish AI Alliance continue to align their work with the delivery of Scotland’s Digital Strategy and the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review (STER) programme, to realise potential synergies in areas such as infrastructure, skills, and investment. In particular, In July 2022, the Scottish Government awarded a five-year £42m contract to Codebase for the delivery of a national network of Tech Scalers. Tech scalers are a major piece of infrastructure designed to support the creation of more tech start-ups in Scotland, and to help them to grow to scale.

Similarly, while use of AI attracts a set of AI-specific ethical questions, the Scottish Government recognises that the ethical challenges and opportunities of using data and digital technologies are interlinked. Work is currently underway across several Government directorates to identify synergies and to explore how to bring the different aspects of ethics in the digital world together while ensuring responsible use of data.

We meet regularly with colleagues from across government and further afield to ensure our work is joined up and responsive.

Civil servants operate flexibly across a range of policies and programmes according to the specific requirements of the work at any time. They do not, as a matter of course, record the proportion of their time that they spend working on particular matters. It is therefore not possible to say specifically how many hours were spent by civil servants involved in this work.

The design of the ship is the responsibility of Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow. We are aware that detailed design of Hull 802 will draw upon lessons learned during the design and build of MV Glen Sannox.

An Islands Community Impact Assessment was not completed as part of the due diligence exercise. Previous analysis of the value to island communities of ferry services was however considered.

Wide-ranging progress has been made since the publication of the Women’s Health Plan in August 2021 and the first report on progress , published on 26 January 2023, sets this out in more detail.

Our Women’s Health Champion, Professor Anna Glasier, recently published her first blog , highlighting her initial work and priorities for the months ahead. Future blogs will be published quarterly, and provide updates on the work of the Women’s Health Champion, as well as the delivery of the Women’s Health Plan more broadly.

The draft route map to achieving a 20% reduction in car km driven in Scotland by 2030 published in January 2022 outlines our approach to achieving this. A period of engagement and consultation followed publication, and the analysis and consideration of the consultation responses have shaped the final route map which will pe published in the coming months. The route map was co-produced with CoSLA, in recognition of the importance of local-level interventions, and we will continue to work closely with local and regional partners to achieve this commitment.

The route map contains over 30 national-level interventions, and recognises the need to shift towards sustainable alternatives to car use. We know that to reduce car use, public transport has to be available, affordable and accessible so, as part of the Fair Fares Review, a pilot to remove ScotRail peak fares on all routes will start in October. In addition, £421.8 million has been allocated in funding for bus services and concessionary fares in 2023-24, providing up to 2.3 million people in Scotland with access to free bus travel. This is part of a total of over £2 billion spent on supporting public transport by the Scottish Government annually.

We continue to work on this issue and will provide an update to Parliament on this commitment when appropriate.

Gender reassignment surgery is a specialised field of surgery, accessed by a small number of patients each year. Given the highly specialist nature of this surgery it is carried out in the UK under a four-nations contract, managed by NHS England.

NHS Scotland monitors the number of surgical referrals to the service. Patients referred for assessment do not necessarily proceed to surgery. A patient’s surgery will not necessarily take place in the same year as the referral.