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We recently consulted on a range of options to potentially restrict alcohol advertising and promotion in Scotland, in order to protect children and young people.

The consultation closed on 9 March. An independent contractor will comprehensively analyse the responses and publish a report. We will then further consider possible restrictions.

The Scottish Government welcomes the report detailing offshore workers’ demands for a just energy transition, and agrees that listening to and acting on recommendations from workers is critical to ensure a Just Transition. This is why we have provided £100,000 in funding to the STUC to ensure workers’ voices are at the heart of our just transition planning. The recommendations provided within this report will be considered in full during the consultation period for the Energy Strategy Just Transition Plan and responded to in the final draft.

On the 13th March 2023, following substantial stakeholder engagement, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released an article; "Green jobs" update current and upcoming work - Office of National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) announcing that ONS will now define a green job as:

Employment in an activity that contributes to protecting or restoring the environment, including those that mitigate or adapt to climate change.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has continued to review the approaches, expectations and challenges of defining and measuring green jobs, supported by a range of research and engagement with stakeholders and users, many of which were open to the public. This has included a public user engagement exercise (Response summary: Defining and measuring green jobs - ons.gov.uk), an interactive workshop, bilateral conversations with several stakeholders, and discussions with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Economic Experts Working Group (EEWG). All ONS engagement was conducted in line with the existing code of practice for statistics and they will continue to engage as they develop the detailed framework behind the definition.

The data required to make Winter Heating Payments was supplied by the Department for Work and Pensions on 31 January 2023. Following this, Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland carried out internal assurance processes on the around 400,000 records received. To ensure the safety and security of the payments, payments began in small batches.

As of 28 February 2023, 34,261 people had received the Winter Heating Payment and a further 365,303 eligible clients were to be paid. We expect to distribute £20 million in this round of Winter Heating Payments, more than double the £8.3 million provided on average by the Department for Work and Pensions in each of the last seven years of Cold Weather Payment.

A first release of Official Statistics on Winter Heating Payment will be published on 6 June 2023. These will be available at our statistics publication page at:

https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/about/statistics/social-security-scotland-statistics-publications.

It is crucial that the voices of children and young people are at the heart of developing our next steps on alcohol policy.

Our recent consultation on restricting alcohol advertising and promotion directly references the recommendations of the Children’s Parliament and contains a section, and questions, on potential restrictions on alcohol sponsorship of events.

The consultation closed on 9 March. An independent contractor will comprehensively analyse the responses and publish a report. We will then further consider possible restrictions.

Transport Scotland has a highly successful record of reintroducing stations and routes to the network, reconnecting and bringing new opportunities to Scotland’s communities. These include the Airdrie to Bathgate line and the Borders Railway, and most recently, the reopening of Reston Station. A new station at East Linton is expected to open before the end of this control period. Work is well underway on the Levenmouth Railway, which will enter service in 2024, reversing historical closure and returning stations and new journeys and economic opportunities to the communities surrounding Leven and Cameron Bridge.

The Scottish Government has been following the agreed process for excluding the deposit return scheme regulations from the Internal Market Act.

We first raised the issue with the UK Government in 2021, and on 28 February 2023 we published correspondence and a timeline setting out the steps that have been undertaken to secure an exclusion. Internal Market Act: correspondence - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

On 6 March I met with Ministers and Senior Officials from each UK administration at the inter-ministerial group on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to ask for an urgent decision from the UK Government for securing an exclusion from the Internal Market Act.

I will keep Parliament updated on further developments.

As our recent consultation on restricting alcohol advertising and promotion set out, there is evidence that those who drink heavily have increased susceptibility to alcohol marketing and that this can translate into drinking behaviours. For those in recovery, alcohol marketing can be a trigger which threatens their recovery and can be responsible for relapse.

The consultation closed on 9 March. An independent contractor will comprehensively analyse the responses and publish a report. We will then further consider possible restrictions.

The Scottish Government takes a whole population approach to tackling alcohol-related harms, in line with the World Health Organization’s focus on affordability, availability and attractiveness of alcohol.

We published our first consultation on restricting alcohol advertising and promotion in November 2023. The consultation has now closed and will be independently analysed before any potential proposals are put forward for consultation.

Minimum unit price (MUP) is a policy which aims to tackle the consumption of alcohol at a population level by setting a floor price at which alcohol can be sold, this is currently 50 pence per unit of alcohol. A recent report from Public Health Scotland (PHS) found that MUP had been successful in creating a 3% net reduction in total alcohol sales in the first three years of implementation. PHS will be producing a final report on the evaluation of MUP in summer this year and we should wait until this has been published before drawing any overall conclusions.

Our recent consultation on restricting alcohol advertising and promotion reflects the WHO’s recommended approach and sets out a range of potential options to restrict alcohol advertising and promotion, in order to prevent and reduce alcohol-related harms.

The consultation closed on 9 March. An independent contractor will comprehensively analyse the responses and publish a report. We will then further consider possible restrictions.