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The Scottish Government continues to recognise the importance of engaging the performing arts sector, including live-music performers, in the development of guidance, to allow the safe re-opening of venues during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Scottish Government has engaged with a wide range of stakeholders from the performing arts sector, including performers, venues - including pubs and other hospitality settings -, industry bodies and trade unions such as the Musicians’ Union, Federation of Scottish Theatre, and Gilded Balloon, on both an official and ministerial level, to ensure a collaborative approach to provide guidance on this subject. This ongoing engagement has contributed to the development of various pieces of guidance covering live music in various settings to ensure it is accurate, comprehensive and helpful to the sector.

In addition to guidance for the performing arts sector, guidance regarding live entertainment in hospitality settings, such as in pubs, has also been developed in conjunction with and reviewed by performers, trade unions and the hospitality industry to ensure it remains current, clear and practical. This includes regular engagement with the hospitality sector, the Music Venue Trust on the development of guidance relevant to grassroots music venues, as well as with a number of specific venues across the country.

This engagement has ensured that guidance remains relevant as Scotland’s strategic framework has been updated, and has established a shared confidence around the safety of returning to workplaces, protecting public health and supporting Scotland’s economic recovery.

Plastic and other littered and flytipped materials represent a loss of resources, which contribute to the climate crisis and have the potential to impact biodiversity. Policy interventions are being developed to reduce this impact and a robust analysis of the environmental impact, through Strategic Environmental Assessments, is an essential part of that process.

We have already published an Environmental Report alongside our consultation on banning a number of commonly littered single use plastic items, as per the requirements of the EU Single Use Plastic Directive. Additionally, we will undertake a further Strategic Environmental Assessment when developing our new National Litter and Flytipping Strategy.

The National Transition Training Fund (NTTF) had a committed budget of £25m for 2020-21. Delivery of Year 1 projects completed at the end of July 2021 and a report on outcomes will be published later this year.

The First Minister announced a further £20m of funding on 16 June 2021, for an initial tranche of projects as part of the second year of the Fund. We continue to carefully monitor skills needs, particularly as the UK Government’s furlough scheme comes to an end.

Based on available data, between October 2020 – March 2021, the number of places delivered in Year 1 of NTTF was 6,327. Some projects are still to report final figures as delivery continued until end July 2021.

Final delivery figures for Year 1 will be published when all provision is complete. The sectors supported in Year 1 are listed below:

• Tourism and Hospitality
• Transport - Aviation
• Aerospace
• Rural
• Land-based/Aquaculture
• Forestry
• Seafood
• Screen
• Culture and Creative Industries
• Further education
• Higher education
• Energy
• Digital

As delivery under Year 2 has not started yet for many projects it is not possible to provide information on the number of applications that have been approved, rejected or are yet to be processed. The funding is being delivered through various sector-based projects which will have different application procedures and target audiences specific to the needs of the sector. The sectors supported in Year 2 are listed below:

• Transport - Aviation
• Seafood
• Tourism and Hospitality
• Adult Social Care
• Health and Social Care
• Land-based/Aquaculture
• Open University
• Childcare - Early Years
• Cyber Security
• Digital
• Rural
• Advanced Manufacturing
• Culture and Creative Industries
• Crofting
• Screen
• Aerospace
• Construction (Green)
• Energy
• Historic Environment (Green)
• Forestry
• Higher education
• Further education

The Scottish Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory shows that forests and woodlands in Scotland currently sequester over 6 MtCO2 per year, net of any emissions from forest management activities. All new woodland creation schemes take into account the requirement to ensure that the cultivation methods used balance the minimisation of soil carbon release with the need to quickly establish the young trees. Levels of woodland creation have been at historically high levels in recent years, and the country’s forests are predicted to remain a carbon sink in the coming decades.

Every homicide represents the loss of a loved family member, a friend or a work colleague. The emotional cost of such loss cannot ever be captured by the financial costs arising.

Within this context, the Scottish Government does not make specific assessments of the public financial costs of individual crimes, including homicide. However, it does publish general information on financial costs of the justice system in the ‘Costs of the Criminal Justice System in Scotland’ publication (available at:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/costs-of-the-criminal-justice-system-in-scotland-dataset-2016-17-published-december-2019/ ).

The publication has financial information that may be useful in considering financial costs associated with a homicide (e.g. the average costs of prosecution or a prison place).

Further to this, table 4 of the publication discusses the “economic and social” cost of crime. It explains that UK Government research has estimated the total economic and social costs associated with a homicide in England and Wales at £3.3m. Based on this, it is estimated that the costs associated with all homicides in Scotland are around £200m per anum. However, these “economic and social” costs go far beyond the financial cost to the public sector – including both non-financial costs and impacts outside the public sector.

Limiting the incidence of long COVID is dependent on our ability to limit the spread of the virus. Throughout our response to the pandemic, all decisions taken by the Scottish Government have been clearly underpinned by the latest available clinical and scientific advice of the Advisory Sub-group on Education and Children’s Issues, which considered the latest evidence on long COVID when producing its latest advice on the return to school in August.

We have committed significant funding to local authorities and schools to deal with the impacts of the pandemic, which has included £90m of funding to meet the cost of necessary safety measures and infrastructure adjustments in schools, as well as over £60m funding to support partners to deliver a comprehensive package of wellbeing and outdoor activities. As we settle in to the new term, the most recent changes to policies on self-isolation, testing and contact tracing for under 18s will help reduce the risks of COVID-19 in schools as Scotland transitions to beyond level 0. We are providing a further £10m to support access to CO2 monitoring in schools and Early Learning Childcare settings and we have asked local authorities and schools to ensure staff and secondary pupils are advised to take Lateral Flow Device (LFD) tests and record their results in the run-up to the return, and to keep testing and recording results thereafter. To ensure a safe and sustainable start to the school term, we are asking schools to continue with the majority of mitigations in schools for up to 6 weeks after the start of term.

These importance changes are set out in our latest guidance on Reducing risks in schools , which has drawn on feedback from the COVID-19 Education Recovery Group (CERG), wider workforce representatives, and children and young people. This represents a proportionate set of measures which has evolved throughout the pandemic to limit the spread and impact of the virus.

The regulated childcare sector is operating throughout the summer and The Scottish Government created guidance to support this. Organised children’s activities are also operating with guidance available, which has been updated in line with easing of restrictions.

The Scottish Government have invested £20 million into the Get Into Summer initiative. This funding is providing targeted and wider support for Local Authorities and national partners to ensure that more children have access to play experiences during the summer. As part of that, guidance was provided to encourage Local Authorities to work with partners including early learning and childcare and school age childcare providers.

The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills announced that the government will create a children and young people’s education council as part of her Parliamentary statement on Scotland’s curriculum on 22 June.

Following that announcement, a meeting was held on 21 July between Scottish Government officials and representatives from the national children and young person organisations, including those who have recently been involved in supporting the Education Recovery Youth Panel and contributing to the Covid Education Recovery Group as young people. This allowed officials to gain the benefit of their insights into the principles, working methods and detailed arrangements for the new council.

The Scottish Government is developing plans for the Council utilising this feedback, with a view to holding the first meeting of the new council as soon as possible in the autumn.

The Scottish Government will fully fund the manifesto commitment to 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants over the Parliamentary term. As part of this commitment the Scottish Government has already allocated funding of £50 million in 2021-22 to local authorities to increase teacher numbers by 1,000 and classroom assistants by 500.

A breakdown of this allocation by local authority area can be found on the Scottish Government website https://www.gov.scot/publications/education-recovery-additional-funding-2021---2022-local-authority-allocations---additional-gbp50-million/ This funding will be added into the General Revenue Grant annually from 2022-23, which will provide the certainty that councils need in order to continue to plan their future permanent workforce requirements.

The settings that these additional teachers will be employed in will be determined locally, based on local need.

My officials will conduct a trawl for the information requested and I will write to Mr Mundell when their findings are complete.