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The Scottish Government is working with Rape Crisis Scotland to seek proposals from each rape crisis centre on how it can best reduce waiting times by utilising additional resources. The outcome of decisions on how to allocate the additional funding will be made public.

The Scottish Government will discuss further with stakeholders how this funding may be allocated, and further details will be provided on this in due course.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5O-02319 on 6 September 2018. The answer to the oral parliamentary question is available on the parliaments website, the Official Report can be viewed at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=11643&i=105514 .

Both centres are supported by specialist staff for pain management and fertility.

The last meeting with the Independent Race Equality Adviser was the Race Equality Action Plan Programme Board meeting on 22 August 2018. The discussion was around the progress being made on the actions in the Race Equality Action Plan.

The Race Equality Action Plan Programme Board was established to oversee the implementation of the Race Equality Action Plan. The first meeting of the Programme Board was held on 22 August 2018, attended by the Independent Race Equality Advisor. At the first meeting Paul Johnston, Director-General Education, Communities and Justice, and Chair of the Programme Board, instructed Directors to share learning from successful and unsuccessful initiatives and apply this learning to work in their own areas. It was also advised that initiatives should focus on understanding and measuring impact not just outcomes for determining success.

The term of the Independent Race Equality Adviser ends on 31 October 2018. Consideration will be given by the Race Equality Action Plan Programme Board to the appointment of another Adviser.

According to Rape Crisis Scotland, as of August 2018 waiting list times for each centre were as follows:

The Scottish Government position remains consistent: we will not consider requests to implement a tourist tax unless the tourism and hospitality industry is involved from the outset and its long-term interests are fully recognised.

Whilst the City of Edinburgh Council, and more recently COSLA, have both published papers calling for a tourist tax, in our contact with the Scottish Tourism Alliance [most recently with the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs this morning] they repeat that neither they, nor their member organisations, are aware of having been approached in any substantive way to consider the probable longer-term impact of a tourist tax on Scotland’s visitor economy.

In the meantime we continue to deliver a fair deal to councils across Scotland, with revenue and capital funding both increasing in real terms in this financial year.

We are committed to presenting information in an open and transparent way, using feedback from users to drive improvements to the corporate website.

As part of the continuous improvement process we are considering options to make it easier for users to search for and access multiple documents that contain related information, including ministerial engagement data.