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The Scottish Government is working in partnership with governments and football associations across the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland on the joint bid to host EURO 2028. This bid was submitted jointly by the five football associations of the UK and Ireland on 12 April, 2023. The winning bid will be announced on 10 October, 2023.

Together with the Scottish Football Association and partners across the bid nations, we are continuing to develop legacy, sustainability and governance plans, in the event of a successful bid. UEFA EURO 2028 will have a significant global reach and has the potential to leave a positive lasting legacy in Scotland by generating significant economic, environmental and social benefits. The bid vision – Football for all, Football for good. Football for the future’ – is a promise to help the Football Associations and UEFA grow a more diverse and inclusive game.

The four delivery model pilots of school swimming have now been completed and an evaluation is currently being undertaken which will be published in September. We will work with Scottish Swimming and sport scotland to utilise the learning from these pilots to consider the best approach for a continued roll out of a national framework for school swimming.

The decision on whether or not to issue a statement of prosecution policy in relation to the prosecution of users of any proposed safer drug consumption facility is for the Lord Advocate to consider in her position as independent head of the systems of prosecution and investigation of deaths. This decision is independent of Scottish Government so the timing of this response is unknown.

Once the Lord Advocate reaches a decision the Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy will be able to respond appropriately, likely including a ministerial statement.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-19616 on 6 July 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

A policy decision has been made to link the student loan age cap in Scotland to the UK state pension age, ensuring a 5 year gap between the two. This was implemented to allow students sufficient time to complete their studies, enter repayment and pay back some/all of their student loan. The current age cap of 61 reflects the UK state pension age of 66 and will increase in line with any future changes.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government, and this would be a matter for Local Authorities. However, not every Local Authority has a Young Carer Champion, and if they do, they are not necessarily a teaching member of staff.

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, published earlier in the summer, sets out the shared vision of the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) to improve mental health and wellbeing.

It will be supported by an accompanying Delivery Plan and the Workforce Action Plan in the autumn and, thereafter, we will publish related actions to support students.

We are spending every penny of consequential funding we receive on this programme of work, with spend to date of over £3.6m and the anticipated whole-life cost approximately £400m.

Spending information and quarterly updates were published in July 2023 and is publicly available at Single Building Assessment programme: spending information - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . Work is underway on a stock census to evaluate buildings and explore ways to minimise cost and maximise revenue to ensure the programme can deliver its objectives in full, efficiently and in a reasonable timeframe.

The Scottish Government provides funding annually to Health Boards for smoking cessation and prevention services, but this funding isn’t split for adult and child smoking cessation and prevention services.

This funding is provided as part of a wider Outcomes Framework budget allocation to Health Boards to cover a range of outcomes – in 2023-24 this outcome framework funding totalled £74.1 million.

The table below sets out the Outcome Framework budget allocations for the last 5 years for Health Boards, which is then for Individual Health Boards to determine the allocation of and final expenditure from this budget. For illustrative purposes,‎ c£9-10 million per annum is notionally included as part of the Outcome Framework budget allocation for smoking cessation and prevention.

The Joint Working Group on Sources of Local Government Funding and Council Tax Reform is exploring proposals for meaningful changes to be introduced to Council Tax, this includes the consideration of approaches to longer term reform of the Council Tax system.

The Scottish Government have provided local authorities with nearly £13.5 billion of funding in 2023-24, a cash increase in local government day to day spending of over £793 million which represents a real terms increase of £376 million or 3 per cent.