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The Warmer Homes Scotland successor will be a demand led scheme, i.e. the number of households supported will depend on the number of households contacting the scheme, which reduces the accuracy of any estimates of households that will benefit. Substantial changes in customer volumes are not anticipated in the new scheme in comparison to Warmer Homes Scotland.

Budgets for the scheme will be set annually in line with the Scottish Budget allocation process. For example, if the budget in a given year was £60m, we envisage between 3788 – 4252 households may be supported.

The successor scheme will have a widened eligibility criteria which will allow a broader range of households to access the scheme. The scheme will adopt PAS 2035 standards, delivering whole house retrofit and with a greater emphasis on zero direct emission heating so households will on average benefit from a higher level of interventions per household.

The support offered through WHS sits alongside other help, such as our Home Energy Scotland grant scheme and our Area Based Schemes which provide local delivery of energy efficiency improvements.

The successor scheme to Warmer Homes Scotland will launch on 2 October 2023.

Our seas must remain a source of prosperity for the nation, especially in our remote, coastal and island communities. It is vital that those communities help shape the creation of Highly Protected Marine Areas, which is why we chose to consult early on in the process.

We recognise there is considerable strength of feeling on this issue – from those who support it and those who have concerns. We are currently analysing responses to the public consultation and will consider these very carefully as we develop next steps.

We are also committed to ensuring that any future decisions on the creation of Highly Protected Marine Areas is informed by a robust process, supported by impact assessments, which provide a clear and transparent assessment of the economic, social and environmental effects of the policy.

In the meantime, I have committed to visiting coastal and island communities in the coming months to hear directly from those people who may be affected.

We will continue to engage directly with coastal and islands communities before any sites are proposed and we will work with those communities throughout the site selection process to ensure their concerns and views are listened to and understood.

Budgets for the scheme will be set out annually in line with the Scottish Budget allocation process.

The contract for the Warmer Homes Scotland successor has a maximum value of £728m (ex VAT) over a period of 7 years.

Household intervention rates have not yet been set for the scheme, however these are anticipated to be higher than the current Warmer Homes Scotland scheme.

This support through WHS sits alongside other help, such as our Home Energy Scotland grant scheme and our Area Based Schemes which provide local delivery of energy efficiency improvements.

As this is an operational matter for Scottish Water I have asked them to respond. Their response is as follows:

The cost of providing an overflow monitor can vary between £3,000 and £20,000 per location. Whilst the equipment itself is relatively inexpensive, the associated costs of securing access to the overflow chamber can be expensive with costs for traffic management, safe access and rescue coverage and 3rd party agreements potentially being high for some locations.

The Care Inspectorate is an independent public body with a duty to support services to ensure high-quality care for all children and young people experiencing care. This includes transgender and non-binary young people.

The Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991 provides that a person under 16 can consent to medical procedures or treatment where the qualified medical practitioner attending them considers they are capable of understanding the nature and possible consequences of that procedure or treatment.

The powers required to legislate in respect of company acquisition and ownership are reserved to the UK Parliament and, as such, the Scottish Government does not have the power to take action in this area. In addition the legislative change in the UK via the National Security and Investment Act enables an increased screening of acquisitions on grounds, for example, of national security. This reflects similar change in EU legislation.

These legislative mechanisms notwithstanding, company acquisition remains a commercial decision to be undertaken by two private entities. The Scottish Government and Enterprise Agencies therefore aim to work with businesses in Scotland, domestic and overseas owned, to ensure Scottish operations are not only secured here but opportunities for growth are pursued.

Scottish Enterprise research suggests acquisition can be an important route for companies with growth potential to achieve their ambitions; either Scottish companies who acquire other businesses or Scottish companies acquired by businesses from other parts of the UK and internationally. This is not unique to Scotland and is a feature of similar economies.

In addition both our Inward Investment and Global Capital Investment Plans place maximum emphasis in supporting good quality investment into Scotland aligning with our values as a nation and delivering our net zero economy supported by good green jobs. We will therefore continue to work closely with those Scottish and overseas-owned businesses and organisations with whom those values most closely align.

In my statement to Parliament on 30 May 2023, I announced that the Public Health (Restriction of Promotions) Bill will not be introduced. We instead plan to consult on the detail of proposed regulations to restrict promotions of food and drink high in fat, sugar or salt where they are sold to the public this autumn.

My statement is available on the Scottish Parliament website .

The Scottish Government has today published Cash-First: Towards Ending the Need for Food Banks in Scotland. This sets out our human rights approach to tackling food insecurity and details nine actions that we will take in collaboration with partners over the next three years to improve the response to financial hardship and reduce the need for emergency food parcels.

Scotland is the first nation in the UK to have such a plan and the actions will help to identify measures that move us closer towards our longer term ambition of a Scotland without the need for food banks.

The next set of results for the SCJS will be published in Autumn 2023. These results will cover a full years' worth of interviews through to December 2022.

Along with the other large household surveys that rely on face-to-face interviews, the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) was suspended in March 2020 to restrict social contact during the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, no SCJS interviews were conducted during 2020-21 and no report will be published for that year. In recognition of the evidence gap opened up by the suspension, the Scottish Government introduced the Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey as a discrete and additional collection to the SCJS. This asked people about their experiences and perceptions of crime, safety and policing during the COVID-19 pandemic, with findings available at: Coronavirus (COVID-19): Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey 2020 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . Fieldwork for the SCJS resumed in late 2021.