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At its heart, Scotland’s Baby Box strongly signals our determination that every child, regardless of their circumstances, should get the best start in life by ensuring that every family with a newborn has access to essential items needed in the first six months of a child’s life. It’s a simple idea which helps to tackle deprivation, improve health and support parents during the first few months of their child’s life.

To ensure that Scotland’s Baby Box is delivered in as cost effective manner as possible, the box and its contents are bought in bulk aligned to Scotland’s birth rate to maximise efficiency savings and the operation and delivery of the Baby Boxes is streamlined to provide the best value for money while maintaining the highest quality of service. Any customisation of the box and its contents would result in a cost increase to the overall programme.

The Baby Box balances practical items, such as the clothing, changing mat, digital thermometer and bath & room thermometer with items designed to have a positive impact on parent-child interaction such as books, a baby wrap and a play mat to support attachment, early learning and play. The current box and its contents have been shaped by the evaluation of the initial pilot http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2017/06/8891 and ongoing feedback from health professionals and families.

The Scottish Government continues to monitor the Baby Box programme and has commissioned an independent evaluation of Scotland’s Baby Boxes which will be published later this year.

The reusable nappy voucher was first included in Scotland’s Baby Box in April 2019. The number of nappies claimed each year was as follows:

2019 – 4912

2020 – 7192

2021 – 3128 (this is up to 02-07-2021)

Scotland’s Baby Box Managing Agent, APS Group (Scotland), has continued to work with suppliers since the start of the programme to reduce the use of single use plastic in the Baby Box where possible. Currently, only items which require individual wrapping for safety or hygiene purposes are individually wrapped. This includes the baby wrap and the mattress which are packaged to ensure the important safety information is not missed and the teether which is packaged for hygiene purposes.

All clothing is delivered to APS Group (Scotland) as multiples in single protective outers (rather than individually wrapped) for protection in transit. The protective packaging included in the Baby Box is made from 50% recycled paper and is FSC accredited. Other packaging such as cardboard outers, is also recyclable.

We will continue to evaluate how Scotland’s Baby Box is helping families and continue to monitor how it can be improved. We will keep the contents under review and adapt these to meet the needs of babies and parents. This will certainly include removing single use plastics wherever possible.

We are committed to building a more circular economy as a vital part of our journey to net-zero, and continue to work with industry, businesses and other organisations to design products to last as long as possible while encouraging reuse, repair and recycling.

We are already taking action to maximise recovery of materials from decommissioned wind turbine infrastructure. Zero Waste Scotland are working to improve the circularity of the sector and SEPA have published guidance on extending life and decommissioning of onshore windfarms, encouraging the reuse and recycling of turbines.

We are committed to introducing a Circular Economy Bill to advance Scotland’s ambitions for the circular economy through measures which will encourage reuse of products and reduce waste.

I chair the Construction Leadership Forum (CLF) that meets monthly with trade union, construction industry and government representatives collaborating on driving progress on the Construction Recovery Plan, which contains a range of practical actions to support the sector. The trade union representative is a positive, and active, member of the group. The CLF and I am committed to supporting the sector as best I can.

We are focused on delivering the maximum support for businesses and the economy as possible. Since the start of the pandemic, businesses have directly benefitted from more than £3.7bn in support – more than a third of total COVID-19 funding – £2.8bn in grants and £965m in COVID-19 non-domestic rates reliefs.

The Scottish Government supports measures to ensure that individuals and businesses pay a fair amount of tax. However, IR35 and VAT are both areas of policy fully reserved to the UK Government.

As I said in my reply to S6W-01546 on 29 July 2021, I chair the Construction Leadership Forum (CLF) that meets monthly and is driving progress on the Construction Recovery Plan. Actions implemented so far include: introduced new ways of working for managing infection control health and safety; work to retain the current and future apprentice pipeline and the Construction Pipeline Forecast Tool.

Policy on corporate insolvency is largely reserved to the UK Government. The temporary suspension on statutory demands and restrictions on petitions to wind up companies is scheduled to expire at the end of September. The Scottish Government would support action by the UK Government to enable further transitional provisions and to extend these protections.

We remain focused on delivering the maximum support for businesses and the economy as possible. Since the start of the pandemic, businesses have directly benefitted from more than £3.7bn in support – more than a third of total COVID-19 funding – £2.8bn in grants and £965m in COVID-19 non-domestic rates reliefs.

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

SEPA has not yet published information on its Compliance Assessment Scheme results for 2019 and expect to publish the results later this year. As such, no discussions have been held with SEPA or Ineos in relation to the assessment.

The draft result for Ineos Kinneil Terminal was included in the information stolen from SEPA in the cyber attack and was subsequently published in the press. The information stolen was an draft of this assessment - and had therefore not been subjected to all the necessary verification processes to finalise the assessment.

The information requested regarding the number people who have been identified and contacted through the NHS Scotland Protect Scotland app at a local authority level is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The information requested regarding the number patients who have contracted COVID-19 while attending hospital is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

However, on 14 July 2021 the Public Health Scotland weekly report titled “Hospital onset COVID-19 cases in Scotland” shows that up to 20 June 2021 in NHS Lanarkshire there were:

• 493 definite hospital onset cases (first positive specimen date was 15 or more days after admission)
• 270 probable hospital onset cases (first positive specimen on days 8 to 14 of admission to NHS board)
• 203 indeterminate hospital onset cases (first positive specimen on days 3 to 7 of admission)
• 1,223 non-hospital onset cases (first positive specimen on day 1 or 2 of admission)

These statistics are not published with a hospital breakdown. The report can be found at the following link:

https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/media/8430/2021-07-14-covid19-hospitalonset-week-24-2021-report.pdf

The Scottish Government is committed to improving planning and preparedness for any potential future pandemic.

We set out within our first one hundred days to establish a standing committee on pandemics, bringing together scientists and clinicians to advise us on the future risks and to ensure we are as prepared as it is possible to be. We have also committed to a comprehensive public inquiry and we will continue to work with local, regional and national partners to inform and improve pandemic planning and preparedness in Scotland.

Additionally, we continue to work closely with other UK nations to plan and prepare for a range of pandemic diseases.