Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022 ("the Act") requires Scottish Ministers to publish a national good food nation plan. Work on the first iteration of the plan is currently underway. The Scottish Government expects to publish a draft of the national good food nation plan for consultation in summer 2023. Our intention is that, following completion and analysis of the consultation, the draft plan will be laid before the Scottish Parliament in spring 2024, with the final version of the plan published in late 2024.

In addition, the Act requires that the Scottish Ministers must, when exercising a specified function or a function falling within a specified description, have regard to the national good food nation plan. These specified functions must be set out in secondary legislation. We expect to consult on the proposals for specified functions in 2023, and to lay the relevant secondary legislation in time for it to come in force around the same time as final publication of the national plan.

The Act also requires that relevant authorities (defined in the Act as health boards and local authorities) must produce their own good food nation plans. We expect that relevant authority plans will be published in 2025. This allows time for relevant authorities to have regard to the content of the national plan when preparing their own plans, and to consult on the content.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-10348 on 29 August 2022, which outlines that the restart of self-referrals must be conducted in a careful, phased manner in order to understand and mitigate impacts on those for whom screening is recommended, and for whom it has the most benefits.

In November 2022, self-referrals for breast screening appointments were reinstated for those between 71 and 74, and anyone over 75 with a history of breast cancer.

The Scottish Government understands the wish some people have for this to be widened to include all those over the age of 75 without a history of breast cancer, but it is imperative to understand the impact this initial re-instatement is having on both programme capacity and overall wait times, before any further decisions regarding eligibility are taken. The current advice from the UK National Screening Committee is that breast screening should be provided to those age 50-70 years.

These impacts are being regularly reviewed, and an update will be provided to parliament once any decisions have been reached.

The number of planning appeals received, in each of the last five years, on the grounds of *non-determination and where a local authority has been unable to reach a decision within six months, is held in the following table :

The Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022 contains provisions to establish the Scottish Food Commission. Establishing a new public body is complex and it takes time to work through the processes associated with setting up a new body. The Scottish Food Commission’s functions are directly linked to the good food nation plans required by the Good Food Nation Act. We therefore intend to establish it in a similar timeframe to the publication of the final version of the Scottish Government’s first national good food nation plan, which is expected in late 2024. This will allow the Food Commission to take up one of its key tasks, which is to scrutinise and make recommendations in relation to the first national good food nation plan.

The Scottish Government is committed to investing in Changing Places Toilets during this parliamentary term, in order to increase the number of these facilities across the country and to support mobile Changing Places Toilets to allow people easier access to events and outdoor venues.

We have already published a Changing Places Toilets: Planning Guide to support communities to develop their initial plans and funding will be provided during this parliamentary term.

The Scottish Government has and continues to undertake, and commission, a significant amount of research in our efforts to deliver the key objectives within Equally Safe, Scotland’s strategy to prevent and eradicate violence against women and girls. We also learn from research undertaken elsewhere.

At this point we have not commissioned anything specific on the potential normalisation of violence in sexual activity, however, in 2020 the Scottish Government published findings from the 2018 Scottish Social Attitudes survey on the attitudes of adults to sexual violence, domestic abuse, sexual harassment and commercial sexual exploitation: Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2019: attitudes to violence against women - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

In addition, we included the same set of questions in the Young People in Scotland 2021 survey to examine attitudes among school pupils. We are currently working on the report and expect to publish later this spring. The report will compare against 2014 attitudes (when the module was last run): Young People's Attitudes To Violence Against Women Report On Findings From The Young People In Scotland Survey 2014 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The Scottish Government also asked young people about relationships and sexual wellbeing in the Health and Wellbeing Census Scotland 2021- 2022 Health and Wellbeing Census Scotland 2021- 2022 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

I also refer the member to the answer to S6W-15943 on 21 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 Financial Year 2023-24 budget increases the resource allocation for the college sector by £26 million. This funding is intended to support strategic change that will enable the sector to better respond to future demands.

A final response to S6W-15379 was issued on Monday 13 March 2023.

The following table shows the number of exemptions and voluntary return point applications, broken down by month, as of 16 March 2023.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

As the Deposit Return Scheme regulator, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency is required to publish a list of all producers registered with the scheme before the scheme launches in August.

This list will be searchable by producer name, business address, date registered, registration number, and brand information in cases where the producer does not use their name and address on their packaging.