Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Council act in an advisory capacity to inform our National Strategy for Economic Transformation, which the Scottish Government will publish in late Autumn.

The Advisory Council includes representatives from industry, trade unions and academia, and has been appointed to provide expert advice and insight to the Scottish Government, drawing on their extensive experience and networks. Alongside an extensive programme of engagement with business organisations, the third sector and wider public, this will help shape the National Strategy for Economic Transformation to deliver a stronger, greener, fairer and more inclusive wellbeing economy for Scotland.

The latest official waste data published by SEPA for 2019 shows that two-thirds of local authorities improved their recycling rate between 2018 and 2019.

However, while we have made significant progress towards our ambitious waste reduction and recycling targets, we know that we must accelerate progress.

This year we will make our first investments from the £70m Recycling Improvement Fund, to support local authorities in improving recycling infrastructure; and will work with industry, local government and environmental groups to develop a route map to achieving our targets to 2025 and beyond. We are also working with local government to review the Household Recycling Charter’s Code of Practice, to help make it easier for householders to recycle the right things and encourage high levels of citizen participation in waste prevention, recycling, and reuse.

We are working with the other administrations on the introduction of an extended producer responsibility system for packaging that will recover full net costs from producers and allocate funding to local authorities for the provision of effective and efficient kerbside recycling services. This will support improved recycling for all packaging types.

The Scottish Government supports the development of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) as an industrial scale decarbonisation system which has the potential to make a big impact on achieving Scotland’s emissions targets. The advice from the Climate Change Committee describes CCUS as a “necessity, not an option” to achieve net zero emissions.

The Scottish Government is supportive of the Acorn project at St Fergus, Aberdeenshire, considered the UK’s most advanced CCS project; we have worked closely with the Acorn project team from inception and provided policy support and funding through its feasibility and development phases. We believe that the Acorn CCS project is uniquely placed to be the least-cost and most deliverable opportunity to deploy a full chain CCS project in the UK, providing opportunities to repurpose existing legacy oil and gas pipeline infrastructure, and close access to vast offshore CO2 storage sites.

Acorn is leading the Scottish bid into UK Government’s cluster sequencing process to allow CCS to be deployed by the mid-2020s, and we are supportive of this bid. It is critical that the UK Government’s cluster sequencing process recognises Acorn CCS as one of the first two projects to commercialise in the 2020s.

The August 2021 agreement between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Green Party recognises that CCUS technologies will play a part in a just transition , and that ( t)he Scottish Government remains supportive of these technologies as part of the energy transition and in particular it remains committed to supporting the delivery of the Acorn project.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) publishes information on retention rates of Scottish-domiciled university students at Scottish Universities in their Report on Widening Access (RoWa). SFC data on retention rates go back to 2012-13 (into 2013-14).

http://www.sfc.ac.uk/publications-statistics/statistical-publications/2021/SFCST052021.aspx

(See Table 2)

The current data gathering arrangements for the physical examination of the newborn and the newborn hearing test reflect that the services are locally commissioned by Health Boards. As such, Health Boards take primary responsibility for identifying and addressing workforce planning and resourcing issues at a local level.

Governance is provided to the Pregnancy and Newborn Screening Programme, of which the hearing test is a part, through the Programme Board and National Screening Oversight, which reports to the Scottish Screening Committee. Boards therefore have a clear route to flag any issues that may require national action.

The coronavirus guidance for pregnant employees and employers is published at www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-advice-for-pregnant-employees , and applies in all four UK countries. The guidance supports discussions between employees, employers and occupational health teams on how best to ensure health and safety for pregnant women in the workplace at any gestation, and recommends a more precautionary approach for women who are 28 weeks pregnant and beyond. As with all coronavirus guidance, this is regularly updated in light of new information and evidence in relation to the virus.

Telephone and video consultations have and continue to play an important role in ensuring that care and support for new mothers and babies, children, young people and their families continues across Scotland during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are many examples of continued, innovative and high quality service provision by universal community health services; maximising opportunities to utilise IT, flexing telehealth capacity, with professional judgement remaining the main driver in determining an individual's level of support. Where face-to-face contacts are necessary NHS Boards are ensuring that they can be carried out safely.

As outlined in the NHS Recovery Plan, published on 25 August 2021, technology enabled care will continue to play an important part in the delivery of care as part of the mix of service provision. NHS Boards should aim to return to normal service provision with increased numbers of face-to-face health visitor contacts and this should be planned for and built into NHS Boards' overall COVID-19 recovery response.

We recognise that long waits are unacceptable and we remain committed to meet the standard that 90% of patients start treatment within 18 weeks of referral.

We have asked all Boards to set out their plans and trajectories for meeting the waiting times standards and clearing backlogs by the end of March 2023. To support this, we have already allocated £9.25m from the Mental Health Recovery and Renewal Fund, for the first year of clearing waiting list backlogs in CAMHS and Psychological Therapies. This is part of a wider investment supported by a £120m Recovery and Renewal fund to transform services, with a renewed focus on prevention and early intervention.

Scottish Government and Dumfries and Galloway Council officials engage regularly on how to progress this commitment and a further meeting is planned in October, which will also involve South of Scotland Enterprise.

Delivery of the actions set out in our Mental Health Transition and Recovery Plan is ongoing. Since publication we have undertaken a wide range of activity to help people deal with the mental health effects of the pandemic. That includes, for example, working with local authorities to establish new community mental health and wellbeing services for children, continuing to support the roll-out of computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and providing ongoing support for the Clear Your Head campaign.

A £120 million Recovery and Renewal Fund was announced in February to support the Plan. So far over £50 million has been allocated from the Fund. This includes allocations of £40 million to improve Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. We are currently allocating the remainder of the fund and will make further announcements in the coming weeks.

I will update Parliament on progress against the Transition and Recovery Plan in the months ahead.