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The work of Armed Forces and Veterans Champions throughout Scotland is crucial to ensuring veterans can access the right support, guidance and services. The Scottish Government supports fully the work of the Champions in public sector organisations including Police Scotland, Local Authorities, the NHS, Department for Work and Pensions and Higher and Further Education institutions. I am chairing a roundtable with Local Authority Champions in late January.

We would encourage any service delivery organisation providing support to veterans to consider developing a veterans champion role.

The Scottish Government actively participates in a number of cross border networks through MoD/Department of Health Partnership Board and Department of Health and Social Care sub groups. These groups have UK wide representation and provide an opportunity to share information regarding veterans health.

In addition we have regular meetings with Office of Veterans Affairs and NHS England.

The research in question was based on archetypes rather than individual properties. As such, it is not possible to precisely identify the location of the 170,000 off-gas-grid households and the 40,000 households directly from the data outputs.

Before introducing any legislation for a minimum energy efficiency standard and prohibition on the use of direct emissions heating systems in homes, we will publish an Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA) and Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) which will consider the impacts of our proposals on rural and island communities.

The RSA programme started in 1972 and not all records dating back to this time are available to Scottish Government or Scottish Enterprise. In answering this question we have therefore provided all information available to both Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise.

Scottish Enterprise who currently have responsibility for delivery of the programme, have interrogated all digital records available to them and provided the information in the following table. This captures the year in which grant offers were accepted and the maximum grant payable, broken down by local authority area. It does not reflect the funding paid to projects in those local authority areas, or the duration of the projects.

It should be noted that while the digital records available to Scottish Enterprise include some grant awards dating back to 1994, it was not responsible for recording keeping prior to 2009 and so cannot guarantee that the information provided is a complete record of all grant awards made in the local authority areas within that timeframe or in the period preceding it.

The next Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme in Scotland: Statistics – January 2023 experimental statistics publication was released at 9:30am on 26 January. Scottish Government publishes a list of forthcoming publications which is updated weekly, and is available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/official-statistics-forthcoming-publications/

We established the Digital Mental Health Programme in late 2020 to oversee ongoing development of cCBT and other digital mental health services. The development and expansion of digital services was supported by a national implementation team.

The number of available cCBT treatments has increased from 1 in 2019 to 27 in 2022. The introduction of self-referral treatments, Sleepio and Daylight have greatly increased access to digital treatments with 25,668 self-referrals in 2022, compared to 12,356 the year before.

These numbers continue to rise, with usage of cCBT programs increasing from 22,385 in 2020 to 66,163 in 2022. We continue to invest in the long term sustainability of digital therapies (including cCBT), including innovation, staff training, evaluation and inclusion.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-14058 on 27 January 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 is using a range of interventions across its policies to advance the Race Equality Framework and human rights for all minority ethnic groups, one of which is the Interim Governance Group (IGG).

The IGG is a short-life working group with a specific remit to provide advice and feedback to Scottish Ministers on establishing long-term anti-racism infrastructure. Its membership includes those with experiences of intersecting marginalisation(s) and the realities of systemic racism and expertise in tackling it. Individuals were also appointed on the basis of having extensive knowledge and/or experience of policy-making processes in Scotland, and design and implementation of policy/systems. More information on the remit and membership of the group is available here: Interim Governance Group to Develop National Anti-Racist Infrastructure

The IGG is supporting the government’s development of improved infrastructure and accountability that has a positive impact on the lives of all racialised minority communities. Racialised outcomes are not experienced uniformly, and effective interventions need to take specific experiences into account. In Scotland, this includes important disparities impacting Black/minority ethnic groups.

Ensuring that communities are engaged with policy development and in long-term oversight and accountability, is of utmost importance, and we use mechanisms and routes to achieve that in the best way possible. Policy areas focussed on anti-racism and race equality actively engage with a range of stakeholders and communities as part of their work. The IGG has commissioned a programme of community engagement, to both disseminate information about forthcoming anti-racism infrastructure and to gather community members' and stakeholders’ perspectives on how it can work best to deliver genuine change-making policy and practice in Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-14802 on‎ 27 January 2023 which outlines that the IGG is committed to being open and transparent about its work. Documents and minutes of meetings are published on the IGG webpage: Interim Governance Group to Develop National Anti-Racist Infrastructure

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 Interim Governance Group (IGG) is a short-life working group with a specific remit to provide advice and feedback to Scottish Ministers on establishing long-term anti-racism infrastructure. Its membership includes those with experiences of intersecting marginalisation(s) and the realities of systemic racism, and expertise in tackling it. Individuals were also appointed on the basis of having extensive knowledge and/or experience of policy-making processes in Scotland, and design and implementation of policy/systems. More information on the remit and membership of the group is available here: Interim Governance Group to Develop National Anti-Racist Infrastructure

Members of the IGG were appointed on merit in accordance with the Ministerial Code, taking into account the views of the co-chairs and ensuring membership comprised of people with expertise and lived experience of racism. Membership reflects a gender balance, and includes those with experiences of intersecting marginalisation(s) and the realities of systemic racism and expertise in tackling it. Membership also includes:

- community members and community-led organisations

- young people

- scrutiny and governance expertise

- expertise in gathering and using inequality data

- expertise/leadership from the public, private and third sector

Two national membership organisations were invited to nominate community-led organisations to be involved in the IGG in order to provide grassroots perspectives.