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I am unable to commit to a date for delivering this journey time. The costs and benefits for delivering this need to be considered against those for delivering alternative rail enhancement projects, notably those that will contribute towards the decarbonisation of Scotland’s railway, within constrained funding.

In the meantime, as set out in our response on 16 March 2023, to PQ S6W-14784, Transport Scotland is, alongside industry partners, exploring options for lengthening passing loops on the Highland Main Line to enable longer and more frequent freight and passenger services.

Transport Scotland will consider these, and further infrastructure enhancements that would enable future journey time savings between Inverness and Edinburgh and Glasgow, within the constraints of available funding and subject to a robust business case.

On 2 January 2023, the number of people waiting for social care support assessment was 7,143. The latest data published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) shows that there were 6,706 waiting for a social care support assessment on 17 April 2023.

Please note:

• The demand for a package of care is unknown in advance of the assessment taking place, and some of the people being assessed will not need a package of care.
• Scotland estimates are derived by summing the number of people waiting from the partnerships. This excludes 3 Health and Social Care Partnerships who were unable to supply data.
• Figures are collected each Monday.

Source: Public Health Scotland, Social care – Demand for Care at Home services , published 25 April 2023.

The planting is designed to deliver specific objectives such as landscape integration, screening/shelter, and ecological enhancement etc. However, this does not necessarily mean 100% of the stock planted needs to establish in order to achieve the objectives. A number of annual inspections are carried out by the landscape architect throughout each year of the 5 year establishment period. These inspections determine whether the planting is on course to deliver the intended design outcomes, and can result in remedial actions for the contractor to carry out.

Over 1,000 replacement trees have been planted so far in 2023. Inspections will continue over summer of 2023 to monitor the development of the planting design before deciding what future remedial works and/or replanting may be necessary.

Other remedial works may include applying fertiliser or improving drainage. Fertiliser has already been applied to around 140,000 square metres of tree beds in 2023 to date. Trial removal of tree guards is underway in selected plots and this will be carefully monitored to assess any impact from grazing deer.

Officials have met with the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland (REHIS) to discuss attracting more people to apply for environmental health courses and to work in local authorities.

The Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health is due to meet with REHIS soon to discuss these themes.

The Scottish Government is committed to delivering a Net Zero, Wellbeing economy and a highly skilled workforce is critical to this ambition. Our National Strategy for Economic Transformation is clear that we must adapt our education and skills system to become more responsive and agile so that it can deliver on our key priorities.

The Scottish Government are committed to working with COSLA, ADES and our partners to deliver improvements in additional support for learning implementation and to ensure meaningful change for children and young people through our Additional Support for Learning Action Plan. The most recent ASL Action Plan update published in November 2022 confirms the progress made on this commitment, including that any updates will be made as part of the next review of the national performance framework.

Ministers are required by statute to review the National Outcomes within five years of their previous publication. The next statutory review of the National Outcomes is underway. Public consultation began on 14 March 2023 and the review is expected to conclude during term 3 of Parliament (2023-24).

The action plan update confirms that this work will be informed by the development of the national measurement framework. Work continues on the development of this, as was confirmed in the answer to question S6W-15807 on 22 March 2023. 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 will continue to report on the progress of implementation of the ASL Action Plan through formal progress reports. The next progress report is due to be published in May 2024.

a) Information on care home residents is reported on through the Care Home Census, published by Public Health Scotland (PHS). Information is published on a rolling 10-year basis; therefore, the figures below have been sourced from multiple Care Home Census publications. This includes historic extracts of publications from NHS Information Services Division, prior to the creation of Public Health Scotland. The Care Home Census was not run in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Table 1: The estimated number of care home residents aged 65+ years, 2007 – 2022

The Scottish Government is committed to delivering a Net Zero, Wellbeing economy and a highly skilled workforce is critical to this ambition. Our National Strategy for Economic Transformation is clear that we must adapt our education and skills system to become more responsive and agile so that it can deliver on our key priorities.

Published in 2020, the Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan (CESAP) provides a framework for green skills planning and investment across priority sectors directly affected in the transition to net zero: Energy, Construction, Transport, Manufacturing and Agriculture and land-use.

The Scottish Government’s Making Scotland’s Future programme brings together public sector partners, including Skills Development Scotland, to support the manufacturing sector. The workstream intersects with CESAP and has identified the skills implications of the transition to net zero for the manufacturing sector including the rise in demand for data and digital skills, increased need for design, analytical and technical skills on top of the requirement for resilience and adaptability in the face of technological change.

SDS is working alongside the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) to support industry including SMEs which make up 97% of the manufacturing business in Scotland. NMIS supports businesses to define their skills needs and support the transition to net zero, as well as providing training and professional development courses.

SDS have also commissioned Ekosgen to work up an evidence base for energy skills in the Inner Moray Firth to support the ScotWind project in the area. The piece commissioned by SDS was to explore the existing skills in the area and where gaps would be in supporting the project. This work was carried out alongside work which has been undertaken by the Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council, who have produced a skills roadmap to understand the skills needs to support the likely increased demand for Scotland’s potential offshore wind energy.

This work will support the development of a Just Transition Plan for the Manufacturing Sector.

I will have lead responsibility for the proposed Wellbeing and Sustainability Bill.

As set out in our 2022 Waste and Circular Economy Route Map consultation, we intend to set new circular economy targets for the period to 2030, which go beyond weight-based criteria.

We must ensure that any future targets correspond to our Environment Strategy and overall vision for a circular economy, alongside the four underpinning principles we set out in the consultation. These key principles included focus on achieving net zero by 2045 and the delivery of a sustainable international material footprint.

Our final Route Map is due for publication later in 2023.