Seòmar agus comataidhean

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-16363 on 25 April 2023. This set out which justice organisations received resources through the ‘Recover, Renew, Transform’ (RRT) Fund in 2021-22 and 2022-23, and how much each organisation received. A central aim of the Fund was to support the justice sector to address backlogs, by increasing capacity across the system.

Before the establishment of the RRT Fund, the Scottish Government had provided £12.077 million to the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service in 2020-21 for the establishment of remote jury centres. By enabling jury trials to proceed at a time of strict public health restrictions, these centres helped to prevent the court backlog increasing further.

The 2023-2024 Budget allocates £42.2 million of RRT funding. This includes £26.5 million to the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to support them in continuing to address the court backlog by maintaining enhanced court capacity.

We also allocated an additional £10.75 million to frontline support services during the pandemic, to ensure that they could continue to respond to the needs of survivors of gender-based violence at a time when services were under increased pressure.

I am delighted that the Tall Ship Races will be coming to Lerwick at the end of July this year. They represent a fantastic opportunity for Scotland, in particular Shetland and our island communities. This event, supported by £130,000 of EventScotland funding, is expected to attract up to 30,000 spectators and around 1,300 participants from 8 countries to Shetland. Ministers with a portfolio interest will be delighted to consider any invitation in line with current commitments.

In 2021 we established the Anti-Racism in Education Programme (AREP), with the purpose of developing and delivering an education system in Scotland that is fundamentally anti-racist. As part of the work on the AREP that addresses curriculum reform there has been discussion and engagement with a range of anti-racism and education stakeholders, academics with expertise on history including the British Empire, and Black and other minority children and young people.

Within the broad general education there is the opportunity to teach the topic of the British Empire within the people, past events and societies section of social studies, and in the senior phase. This includes opportunities to teach the topic of the British Empire within the History qualifications, for example through the ‘Migration and Empire’ and ‘Atlantic Slave Trade’ topics (at National 5 and Higher).

In May 2018 a group of civil servants visited Norway to learn more about the country’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS). Total costs for this trip were £862.33.

The learning acquired on this trip helped to inform the early work undertaken to develop Scotland’s DRS.

There are currently no plans for a dedicated booking system for the referral of patients to the network of National Treatment Centres (NTCs).

Through on-going engagement with NHS Boards, the Scottish Government’s Planned Care Team actively monitor speciality-by-speciality throughput across NHS Scotland, including patients being seen at the NTCs. NTCs are key in the NHS Scotland approach to tackling the backlog of planned care, and activity going through the centres will be focussed initially to support treatment of the longest waiting patients.

NTC-Highland has been commissioned to support Orthopaedic activity for NHS Grampian, which will provide capacity to treat 434 patients from NHS Grampian who are waiting for Hip and Knee Replacement Surgery.

In line with the national clinical pathway approved for NTCs, NHS Grampian is responsible for providing a list of appropriate patients who have been pre-operatively assessed and NTC-Highland will oversee the booking of patients into both consenting clinics and for surgery. NHS Grampian’s Orthopaedic patients will be referred to NTC-Highland in batches of approximately 50 patients per month. The first batch was referred at the beginning of April for operating from the week commencing 15 May.

Numbers of patients waiting for Orthopaedic and Ophthalmic treatment can be found online on Public Health Scotland's website.

NTC–Highland treated its first patient on 17th April 2023.

We are committed to challenging stigmatising narratives in everything we do – taking a rights-based approach to social security, and embedding this in all of our communications. By embracing person-centred approaches to service design and delivery, and by collaborating with organisations working directly with people, we aim to tackle stigma and increase the take-up of Scottish benefits.

We continue to carry out user research to better understand and tackle stigma, and to ensure that Scotland’s social security system is designed with input from the people who will use it. Their experiences are central to tackling stigma through the design of the application process, from communication material (including factsheets, posters, flyers, social media and marketing campaigns), web content on mygov.scot, application forms, decision letters as well as operational guidance for staff.

The breakdown of CalMac scheduled sailings defined as (a) on time, (b) Level 1 Lateness and (c) Level 2 Lateness for each month since March 2022 are provided in the following table.

It is the responsibility of the operator, CalMac Ferries, to conduct negotiations for the charter of a vessel. Scottish Ministers have no involvement in these discussions.

Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL) and CalMac Ferries continue to pursue any opportunities to bring in additional tonnage to add resilience to the fleet.

Richard Lochhead, the former Minister for Just Transition, Fairwork & Employment engaged with a wide range of stakeholders in the offshore energy sector during this period. A comprehensive list of all Ministerial engagements for the year 2022 has been published and can be found online ( Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)).

For the period of January 2023 until March 2023 The Minister had the following meetings:

• 9 February – The Minister met with Opportunity North East, Energy Transition Zone and the Net Zero Technology Centre, discussing Just Transition and the next phase of the Just Transition fund.
• 21 February 2023 – The Minister attended SBCC (Scottish Business Climate Collaboration) SME (Small/Medium Enterprise) Net Zero Hub launch event, with EY (Ernest & Young) and Scottish Power representatives in attendance.
• 2 March 2023 – Mr Lochhead visited South of Scotland Enterprise in Dumfries and chaired a roundtable discussion that included representatives from Carbon Capture Scotland, and visited Cochran Ltd on site.
• 16 March 2023 – The Minister chaired a CBI round table event, which included representatives from Centrica Energy, Equinor UK LTD, Scottish Power and SEC (Scottish Events Campus).
• 21 March 2023 - Mr Lochhead attended the Scottish Renewables Net-Zero Dinner and spoke to representatives from EDF Renewables, Scottish Renewables and EY (Ernest & Young).
• 22 March 2023 –The Minister delivered a speech to the Scottish Renewables Conference, and participated in a panel discussion with representatives from Scottish Renewables, EDF Renewables and Ripple Energy.

I also refer the member to the answer to question S6W-15805 on 24 March 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 .

I have engaged with a number of stakeholders across the energy sector. On 13 April 2023, I visited the Hydrogen Refuelling site in Aberdeen, met Aberdeen City Council officials and technical experts, attended an Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub stakeholder meeting, and then a Scottish Cluster Roundtable Discussion.

I met with the CEO of NECCUS, on 26 April 2023 and attended the Energy Institute North East Highlands and Islands Dinner on 27 April 2023. On 2 May 2023, I visited Advice Direct Scotland, launching their Fuel Insecurity Fund. On 4 May 2023, I opened Scottish Renewables’ new office in Glasgow and on the 11 May 2023, I attended the All-Energy conference at SEC, Glasgow.