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Beavers have the potential to bring significant biodiversity benefits to Scotland. They may also have adverse impacts on some land uses. Our main policy focus at this point is to prevent and mitigate negative impacts of beavers before damage can occur.

NatureScot can issue protected species licences to control beavers for the purpose of preventing serious damage to agriculture.

NatureScot also support land and fisheries managers experiencing negative impacts through the Scottish Beaver Mitigation Scheme. The Scheme offers land managers advice and practical assistance with mitigating the impacts of beavers including taking pro-active measures to prevent impacts where appropriate. NatureScot will continue to work with stakeholders on the mitigation scheme looking to develop new and innovative approaches.

Increased use of translocation of beavers will also help prevent negative impacts and as set out in the answer to question S6W-04596 on 24 November 2021, we will also provide both financial and practical support to facilitate this translocation of beavers.

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 Scottish Government has embraced the Community Wealth Building (CWB) approach to economic development as it is geared to helping local businesses and communities own a greater stake in how their local economy functions. The CWB model involves local authorities and their community planning partners ensuring that collective investment decisions focus on how local economies can be helped to grow and flourish. Practical benefits can include more local, good quality jobs; improved access to public contracts for local businesses; more land being placed in community ownership or developed for the benefit of the community; and support being offered to new businesses exploring employee ownership or other innovative models.

We are working with local authorities to help them frame strategic CWB action plans and have committed to introducing CWB legislation during this session of the Scottish Parliament. Our objective is to embed the CWB approach as a strategic economic development policy. Many actions taken across the policy spectrum will contribute to CWB and creation of a national economy striving for prosperity and societal wellbeing in equal measure. Community access to allotments can play a part in this collective effort.

Allotments and their provision are the responsibility of local authorities. That is set out in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. However, since 2012, the Scottish Government has allocated more than £1.4 million to directly support and increase the land that is available for community growing.

The Scottish Government ambition is that everyone who wishes to is able to access fair and sustainable employment, which is why we have committed to at least halving the employment gap between disabled people and the rest of the working age population by 2038.

Employability has a pivotal role to play in supporting these commitments, ensuring those further from the labour market, including people who have a learning disability, have access to the right support at the right time to move towards, into and to sustain work. In partnership with Local Government, we have made clear our joint aim of delivering person-centred services that are inclusive and accessible.

The Fraser of Allander Institute report highlights the importance of monitoring and evaluation, which we agree with. We currently have a longstanding programme of evaluation on Fair Start Scotland, and have recently commenced a formal, independent and robust evaluation of No One Left Behind and the Young Person’s Guarantee, which we anticipate will cover a multi-year period.

In addition to this, we routinely collect data across our services about people with disabilities and their outcomes, including follow-up after 12 months to measure sustainment. As we move forward with our No One Left Behind approach, we are also taking into account learning from what has worked well in other areas, and where we can make improvements.

The report’s findings mention the visibility of people with learning disabilities in the data reporting under Fair Start Scotland. We have mainstreamed this through our recently published Employability Shared Measurement Framework, which covers activity under the No One Left Behind approach. This will allow us to better measure the reach of our services for people with learning disabilities, and the opportunities and outcomes we are supporting them to access.

Furthermore, in line with our commitment to person-centred services, the experience of users is a critical measure of success, which is why it has such a prominent role in our Shared Measurement Framework. As part of this programme of evaluation work outlined above we will consider opportunities to evaluate the experiences and outcomes of those with learning disabilities, where possible.

In addition to the socio-economic findings, we recognise from ‘Invisible No More’ that more must be done to understand the gaps in the existing data sources. To address this we are undertaking an exercise to assess the data collected across Scotland relevant to people with learning disabilities and autistic people. This will inform the development of a data action plan that Scottish Government and its partners will take forward to improve the data across a number of topics, including employment.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07181 on 24 March 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

This data is not centrally available; whilst Public Health Scotland publish the total number of patients waiting for specialist mental health services, detail of the individual types of assessment or diagnosis is not held. The publications for both CAMHS and Psychological Therapies waiting times for the quarter ending December 2021 can be found at Publications - Public Health Scotland .

The Scottish Government is committed to implementing the National Neurodevelopmental Specification: Principles and Standards of Care for Children and Young People, published in September 2021, which specifies service standards that all children’s services should follow, to ensure access to support is effective and consistent across Scotland. Scottish Government have also commissioned Directors of eHealth, working with others including Public Health Scotland, to work to improve digital infrastructure, applications and data to report on all standards within the National Neurodevelopmental Specification.

The Scottish Government have also established the National Autism Implementation Team , in partnership with Queen Margaret University, to support Health and Social Care Partnerships to consider best practice and support improvement through the redesign of autism diagnostic services.

The National Implementation Team is supporting NHS Boards to examine diagnostic pathways for autism and establish regional experts to assist with improving tiered autism specialisms across health boards.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-08108 on 3 May 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

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-08108 on 3 May 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 Chief Scientist Office as part of the Scottish Government provides fellowship schemes to support the career development of health researchers within Scotland. Details are available from the CSO website. Fellowships – Chief Scientist Office (scot.nhs.uk)

Clinical Academic Fellowship Scheme

This scheme is for clinical professionals early in their career to obtain a PhD. The eligibility for this includes medics in training, GP’s, Nurses, Midwives, Allied Health Professionals and health care scientists.

Early Postdoctoral Scheme

An early postdoctoral scheme which will provide 3 years of funding to health researchers with less than 2 years postdoctoral research experience. This is open to both clinical and non-clinical researchers who are proposing projects within CSO’s overall remit of early translational (experimental medicine), clinical and applied health research and social care.

NES/CSO Lectureship Scheme

A joint scheme run with NHS Education Scotland (NES) for speciality medics in training who have completed a PhD. This scheme provides 50% research time while they complete their training.

NRS Career Researcher Fellowships

This scheme has been running for over 10 years and supports GP’s and NHS-funded clinical staff in developing a research career within their post. The award provides funding for protected time (2 sessions a week) to contribute to, conduct and lead clinical research.

Our guidance to local authorities on the administration of the cost of living award, available at Local government finance circulars - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) , sets out that councils have discretion to choose how this support is provided to eligible households in order to ensure delivery in April 2022.

All local authorities have now confirmed that most payments are included as a credit in Council Tax Bills for 2022-23.