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The National Mission Oversight Group is supported by many areas of expertise including; academics, lived and living experience representatives, international expertise, clinicians and third sector organisations

Three members of the group are specifically appointed as lived and living experience representatives, but we should not presume that other members of the Oversight Group do not have their own lived and living experience alongside their professional expertise and experience they are bringing to the group.

The Group will link in to lived and living experience networks such as the National Collaborative to ensure that the perspective and experiences of living and lived experience are embedded in the work of the Group.

In line with the principle of producer responsibility, Circularity Scotland Ltd (CSL) is a private company, established by industry to lead on delivery of Scotland’s DRS as scheme administrator. As such, it is not for the Scottish Government to participate in the calculation or verification of the proposed retail handling fees.

The review of the Scottish Government patient travel guidance is a substantial exercise for the Scottish Government and NHS Boards and, regrettably, has been delayed due to prioritisation of our ongoing response to Covid and remobilisation of services. The review will take full account of the matters raised by Members, and will be taken forward as soon as possible.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-10433 on 20 September 2022. 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.

The retail handling fee is intended to ensure that the obligation to operate a return point is cost neutral for retailers. It is for Circularity Scotland Ltd (CSL) to manage this in a way that meets the needs of obligated businesses across Scotland.

The Scottish Government’s funding agreement with CoSLA enables local authorities to pay sustainable rates to providers in the private, third and childminding sectors who meet the National Standard, and enter into a contract with a local authority to provide funded early learning and childcare (ELC).

Last year’s Financial Sustainability Health Check reported that payments for the delivery of funded ELC account for around 33% to 45% of income for private providers. Providers are responsible for setting fees that are not associated with the provision of funded ELC.

The Scottish Government and local government recognise the need to strengthen the process for setting sustainable rates, and are progressing the programme of actions from the Health Check .

This includes publishing jointly with COSLA, on 26 May 2022, updated guidance to support local authorities to set sustainable rates. The guidance emphasises the importance of ongoing consultation and dialogue between local authorities and their local ELC providers.

The Scottish Government is committed to collecting annual data on the sustainable rates set by local authorities, and will publish an update this autumn.

Under current constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom immigration, including the Afghan resettlement schemes, are reserved to the UK Government and handled by the Home Office.

The UK Government has published statistics on the number of people who have arrived in the UK under the Afghan resettlement schemes since 2021, and have committed to providing more detailed data in their quarterly immigration statistics. Afghan Resettlement Programme: operational data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The latest published data (25 August) shows that across the UK 9,667 people are in temporary accommodation and 7,385 people are in settled accommodation. This does not include people who have made their own accommodation arrangements.

The membership of the panel is agreed between Scottish Government and COSLA and consists of a number of organisational representatives. A list of those organisations and current members is as follows.

Scottish Government   David Cowan (Co-Chair)

COSLA       Calum Lindsay (Co-Chair)

SURF Scotlands Regeneration Forum Laura Black

Scottish Futures Trust   Mhairi Donaghy

Highlands & Islands Enterprise Douglas Cowan

South of Scotland Enterprise Bryan McGrath

Scottish Enterprise     Gillian Adam

SOLACE – (Chief Executives) Russell McCutcheon

SLAED (Economic Development) John McCrone

HoP ( Planning)     Beverley Smith

Directors of Finance   vacant

The Tenant Grant Fund was a £10 million fund with each local authority receiving a share. The latest set of full available data, provides an overview of Tenant Grant Fund spend as of 31 December 2021, by local authority area. This was published in March 2022 and is available here - Tenant Grant Fund monitoring report: January 2022 .

The next set of data will cover the three month period up to 31 March 2022 and will be published once all 32 local authorities have provided the relevant information and analysis has been carried out.

To date, data up to 31 March 2022 detailing expenditure, grant and refusal figures have been obtained for 28 local authorities. This shows £5,143,119.56 expenditure, 4,430 grants and 1,326 refusals.

As the fund has been expanded and local authorities will continue to use any remaining allocation in 2022-23 until fully spent, a final review will be carried out once all LAs have closed their funds.

We regularly engage with businesses and over recent months this engagement has focussed on the difficulties businesses are facing in the current cost crisis and the lack of concrete action from the UK Government.

We continue to press the UK Government to use their reserved powers to help ease the current pressures, including expansion of shortage occupation lists, a VAT reduction on SME energy bills and an extension of the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

In the meantime we are continuing to work across government to consider a range of options to help businesses through these difficult times within the powers we possess.