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The Scottish Government has committed to establishing a £10 million fund to allow companies to pilot and explore the benefits of a 4 day working week. The pilot will allow us to develop a better understanding of the implications of a broader shift to a 4 day working week across the economy, and aims to represent a broad cross-section of businesses and organisations spanning the Scottish economy, including those who would find the move to a four day work week more challenging.

There has been extensive engagement with individual businesses registering an interest in participating in the pilot and with business representative organisations. Discussions have also taken place with academic experts and organisations regarding the promotion of flexible working. All this engagement is currently informing the careful and rigorous design of the pilot and it is anticipated that a timetable for implementation will be announced later this year.

The commitment to invest in access to school counselling services across education in Scotland was announced in our 2018/19 Programme for Government.

The Scottish Government provided guidance ( https://www.gov.scot/publications/guidance-education-authorities-establishing-access-counselling-secondary-schools/ ) and agreed a set of aims and principles with local authorities ( https://www.gov.scot/publications/delivery-of-access-to-counsellors-through-schools-aims-and-principles/ ) to support delivery of the commitment.

Our local authority partners have confirmed that access to counselling support services through secondary schools is now in place across Scotland. It was up to local authorities to determine how they would deliver the commitment to best suit the children and young people in their area.

The Scottish Government recognises the disparity between men and women in leadership roles in sport. We will continue to work with sportscotland and wider partners to understand how best to identify future leaders and support their development through programmes of educational learning, mentoring and experiential opportunities.

Our National Agency for Sport, sport scotland, run a number of programmes to encourage women into leadership roles. These include the Scottish Sporting Leaders Programme which helps improve the leadership skills or increase the leadership capability of staff within the sporting sector throughout the country. Each cohort will include a mix of delegates from local and national partners. The programme is open to women and men, with women being 54% of the participants across the four cohorts to date.

In addition to these national programmes, the SGBs and local partners in which sport scotland invest operate a range of programmes relevant to their specific context to support women into leadership roles in sport.

The Scottish Government also provide funding to the Scottish Sport Association to ensure there is enhanced governance through increased diversity, skill-base and competence of SGB boards via their On Board for Sport (OBfS) programme.

In order to gain a better understanding on how to support women into leaderships roles, sport scotland are convening a session on 5 October with around a dozen women who have progressed a coaching or leadership career in sport. This will be an open conversation to learn from the challenges and successes these women have faced in their careers, and to discuss what they would like to see to support more women to progress into coaching and leadership positions in sport in Scotland.

The Just Transition Plan for energy will be an integral part of the Energy Strategy Refresh which is due for draft publication in Spring 2022.

The 2021 Programme for Scotland announced a short-life Business Purpose Commission for Scotland to promote more purposeful businesses and better corporate governance.

The Business Purpose Commission is tasked with considering whether there would be benefits to a distinct agenda for Purposeful Business in Scotland, and how business and government can better embed this to become a leading Purposeful Business nation. It aims to shed light on purposeful business in Scotland, to gather an evidence base identifying champions of the issue in Scotland and to generate new ideas of ways to drive change towards purposeful business policies and practice in Scotland, whether through advocacy, influence, or policy.

The current membership of the Commission is as follows. A small steering group of around 7 people will be drawn from the Commission’s full membership of around 25:

Co-Chairs

Colin Mayer CBE, Professor of Management Studies, Saïd Business School, The University of Oxford/ Academic Lead, The Future of the Corporation Programme, The British Academy*

Amanda Young, Global Head of Responsible Investment, Aberdeen Standard Investments*

Commission

Stephen Boyd, Senior Economic Policy Officer, Scottish Government*

Sarah Davidson, Chief Executive, Carnegie Trust UK

Patricia Findlay, Professor of Work, Employment and Organisation, University of Strathclyde*

Crawford Gillies, Chair, Edrington

Alison Graham, Company Secretary, Baillie Gifford

Jamie Grant, Owner & Director, Glen Lyon Coffee

Poonam Gupta OBE, CEO, PG Paper Company Ltd

Dr Ifeyniwa Kanu, CEO & Founder, IntelliDigest

David McNeill, Director of Development, Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations

Jamie Maxton, Head of External Relations (Scotland), SSE Renewables

Andrew Murphy, Group Operations Director, John Lewis Partnership*

Paula Murphy, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer, Wood Group

Brie Read, Entrepreneur and Founder, Snag Tights

Clare Reid, Director of Policy and Public Affairs, SCDI*

Dr Lesley Sawers OBE, Non-Executive Director, Crosswind Developments

Ian Walker, Global Programme Lead, Essential Surgery, Janssen*

Scott Wilson, Executive Director – Development, Robertson Group

Eliot Wishlade, Director, Ove Arup & Partners Ltd

* Members of Steering Group

We will work collaboratively with partners, communities and other stakeholders to take forward the ten-year £500m Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray. The delivery of the Fund will exemplify our co-design and co-delivery approach that will be supported by a programme of broad engagement in the area. This Fund is a new commitment which will require detailed policy design work and implementation planning. We will provide further information on the process in due course.

The Just Transition Fund will support and accelerate energy transition, create good, green jobs and maximise the region’s future economic potential. We are determined to tackle climate emergency and mitigate the impacts of the transition on communities across Scotland, and will work at pace to deliver our sectoral plans for a just transition.

It is encouraging to see a record number of new patients – including those who have waited longest – starting treatment in CAMHS in the last quarter, as our NHS continues to remobilise.

Long waits are unacceptable and we remain committed to meet the standard that 90% of children and young people begin treatment within 18 weeks of referral.

Over the last 6 months Scottish Government officials provided enhanced improvement support to Boards with unacceptable backlogs to increase CAMHS capacity and reduce waiting lists. £4.25m of the Renewal Fund has been allocated to all Boards to reduce backlogs this year.

In their most recent CAMHS Waiting Times Data Quality Report, Public Health Scotland published that NHS Grampian are experiencing challenges reporting on “did not attend appointment” (DNA) due to the functionality of their current patient management system and database. Work is ongoing to rectify this and NHS Grampian anticipate that they will be able to provide this to Public Health Scotland by the end of 2021 when they expect to have transitioned to their new patient management system.

https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/8867/data-quality.pdf

We announced the launch of the new Just Transition Commission and confirmed Professor Jim Skea as returning Chair on 15 September. Further announcements on the wider membership will be made in due course.

Our response to the previous Just Transition Commission’s report was published alongside Programme for Government and set out our ambitious agenda to achieve a fairer, greener future for all. We are determined to get this right for the people of Scotland, bringing all affected communities with us while learning from unjust transitions in our recent history.

The previous Commission called on the Scottish Government to pursue an orderly, managed transition through the creation of Just Transition Plans for high-emitting industries. In our response, we set out our approach to just transition planning across the Scottish economy and I want the new Commission to play a crucial role in this.

Our new Commission will be delivery focused. It will support (and scrutinise) the production and delivery of Scottish Government-led transition plans.

Specifically, the Commission will be tasked with:

• Providing scrutiny and advice on the ongoing development of Scotland’s Just Transition Plans, including the application of the planning framework, as they are developed;
• Advising on the most suitable approaches to monitoring and evaluation;
• Supporting the Scottish Government’s ambition to be a leader in the international community and to take decisions informed by international best practice;
• Meaningful engagement with those most likely to be impacted by the transition; hearing from a broad range of representative voices to help shape just transition planning in Scotland;
• Publishing an annual report to reflect on Scotland’s progress.