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The Scottish Government is committed to tackling fuel poverty, with £119 million allocated this year to provide heat, energy efficiency and fuel poverty measures to fuel poor households throughout Scotland.

This incudes funding for our Area Based Schemes (ABS) delivered in partnership with local authorities. This year North Ayrshire council has been allocated £1.8 million to help fuel poor households living in `hard to treat’ properties (typically requiring external wall insulation).

Since the start of our ABS programme in 2013, we have invested £13.2 million in improvements benefitting over 2,800 fuel poor households in the North Ayrshire council area.

More than £210 million has been invested through our national Warmer Homes Scotland scheme since its launch in September 2015. This has helped over 32,000 households throughout Scotland to achieve an estimated average saving of £160 per year on their energy bills.

The Scottish Government has also established our Fuel Insecurity Fund (FIF), working with trusted third sector partners to deliver direct emergency funds to people struggling to pay their energy bills, and who were at risk of self-disconnection or self-rationing their energy use as a result. We have increased our overall funding to £30 million this financial year.

After weeks of intense negotiations, I am delighted we have come to an agreement with BMA Scotland on pay deal which they will now put to their members.

Recognising the incredible work that Junior Doctors do, we have offered a fair and progressive rise which will mean a cumulative pay increase of 14.5% over two years - the best offer on the table in the UK.

This offer means a doctor at the beginning of their career would receive a total salary increase of £3,834 over two years. For those at the end of their training the rise would be £7,951 over the same period.

I would like to note the good faith in which we have collectively engaged, along with my appreciation for the views and insight Junior Doctors have brought to these negotiations.

Electricity policy, including regulation of Great Britain’s electricity networks, is reserved to the UK Government.

According to the terms of their licence, network companies must treat all customers in the same way and cannot ‘ring-fence’ capacity for one group over another.

The Scottish Government has repeatedly called on Ofgem, the UK Government and the Electricity System Operator to ensure that networks are ready to support our just transition to net zero, including connection of community energy projects. Achieving this will require changes to the existing connection queue management processes to ensure that projects that are ready to connect are able to do so.

We are currently considering the Flexible Workforce Development Fund in 2023-24 as part of ongoing budget discussions. We will communicate the outcome as soon as a final decision has been reached.

Payments under the Scottish Suckler Beef Support Scheme (SSBSS) 2022 commenced in March 2023, as set out in the Rural Payments Strategy for 2022. Approximately 99.36% of anticipated expenditure for this scheme has been paid to date. The breakdown of expenditure per month is listed in the following table.

Over 1,000 homes are currently heated by heat networks where a significant proportion of the heat provided is from an Energy from Waste plant.

Two further heat networks are currently being built to use heat from Energy from Waste plants which are already in operation or commissioning and situated in Midlothian and Aberdeen. These projects are expected to connect approximately 2,000 homes by 2026, with the capacity to heat significantly more with further extensions of these networks.

All the heat networks (existing or being developed) referred to above are, or will be, connected to existing Energy from Waste plant.

Across all heat sources, approximately 30,000 homes are connected to heat network(s) in Scotland, based on the 2018 Heat Network Metering and Billing Regulation data.

The publication, Scotland's Marine Economic Statistics provides details on the sources and calculations used to produce the offshore wind turnover and employment information. It also provides some summary information on the uncertainty present within this data as well as a link to the source, the Office for National Statistics' Low carbon and renewable energy economy survey, data which provides more details on the quality and uncertainty of this data. The Scotland's Marine Economic Statistics publication is currently an experimental statistics publication, which means it is under development. The offshore wind data is one of the areas that will undergo further work as data sources expand.

We have finished our investigation into whether it is possible to more accurately measure the offshore wind farm economic activity. We have concluded that currently there is no more accurate way to measure using existing data sources, however this will be reassessed in future. The reasons for this conclusion are:

• The main source for economic data for businesses is the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Annual Business Survey. This uses Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes to classify businesses by main activity. There is a ‘Production of electricity’ SIC code, but the source of the electricity generation (e.g. offshore wind) is not separately identified within the SIC system.
• It is currently not possible to accurately calculate the gross value added of offshore wind using existing data or collecting it directly due to business structures. This is why the current source for the offshore wind economic activity, the low carbon and renewable energy economy survey, only estimates turnover and employment.
• Financial records at Companies House also use the same SIC codes as the ONS Annual Business Survey so it is difficult to identify relevant businesses. Even when identified their complex and interlinked business structures mean that is it not possible, using current sources, to separately calculate reliable gross value added associated specifically with offshore wind.

There is potential for future improvements in the measurement of the economic activity associated with renewables. As, for example, there is work ongoing led by the United Nations Statistics Division on a revision to the SIC codes, which were last updated in 2007. This planned update should better account for newer sectors such as renewables.

The Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group (HPSG) meeting on 30 March was postponed as the SNP leadership election result was announced on 27 March 2023 and it was not clear at that point who would have responsibility for housing and homelessness policy.

While we had provisionally rescheduled the meeting for 20 April 2023, it was agreed that a further reschedule to 23 May would be appropriate to allow the Minister for Housing time to be fully briefed on his new portfolio and to meet with Councillor Chalmers, co-chair of HPSG.

The last HPSG meeting took place on 23 May 2023 and was chaired by the Minister for Housing.

This information is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government is not currently directly involved in the Real Nappy Campaign or any other similar campaign in Scotland. It promotes the use of reusable nappies through Scotland’s Baby Box and its Parentclub website ( www.parentclub.scot) , as well as the Ready Steady Baby resource ( www.nhsinform.scot/ready-steady-baby/early-parenthood/caring-for-your-new-baby/nappies/ )

Zero Waste Scotland supported the Real Nappy Campaign in printed and digital form and at events until 2013-14,

The Scottish Government’s National Treatment Centres (NTCs) programme will provide protected capacity for planned care for orthopaedic, ophthalmic and diagnostic activity. NTC Fife and NTC Highland have already opened this year with NTC Forth Valley and Golden Jubilee Phase 2 due to open later this year.

The original and actual / projected costs, as well as original and actual/projected opening dates are shown in the following table.