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The Scottish Government is committed to finding ways to make sustainable travel modes more attractive, and supporting people to take fewer journeys by car. We recognise that accessible and reliable public transport services, as well as active travel options, can alleviate stresses on household incomes, as well as support our climate ambitions.

We are providing over £2.1 billion investment in bus services and infrastructure over the rest of this parliament. This financial year, we are forecasting spend of up to £300m to enable over 2 million people to travel by bus for free with the Young Persons Free Bus scheme which, in addition to other concessionary schemes, means that we are providing up to 50% of the population with access to free bus travel across Scotland. Rail fares will also be frozen until at least March 2023 and there are a number of schemes on offer for discounted rail travel such as Kids for a Quid and railcards giving around 1/3 off many fares.

The route map to achieving a 20% reduction in car km by 2030, published in January, sets out how we will support people to reduce their car use. For those who have access to a car, but are struggling with the costs of fuel, the route map interventions aim to support them to reduce the number of trips or the distances they need to drive by car, thereby saving them money, as well as supporting their health and wellbeing.

In the 2022 Programme for Government the Scottish Government set out immediate steps this government will take to help families and businesses to get through the cost of living crisis, outlining our ambition to create a better future beyond the immediate crisis. This includes a transport initiative to test a new mobility and scrappage scheme to help low income households to replace a polluting vehicle with the means to travel sustainably. It will be targeted to car-owning low income households and provide up to £1,000 per household of mobility credits for more sustainable options including the purchase of assets such as bikes or e-bikes and sustainable travel vouchers for bus, car clubs, and taxis.

The project group is currently made up of representatives from Scottish Government, Scottish Water, Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland, Consumer Scotland and Aberdeenshire Council, and have been selected based on their relevant experience in the water industry and with private water supplies. The Environmental Health Officers from Aberdeenshire Council bring a wealth of local knowledge about private water supplies as a result of their regulatory activities and efforts to deliver emergency supplies of bottled water to households whose private water supplies have run dry. They engage with and listen to local resilience groups through the wider council network and I would encourage local resilience groups that would like to be involved in the project to contact Aberdeenshire Council.

At COP26, the Scottish Government pledged £2m to address loss and damage and in doing so became the first government in the Global North to explicitly pledge such finance. £1.7m of the £2m is now allocated and supporting projects in Bangladesh, the pacific and Malawi; as well as funding research to contribute to the global evidence base for practical action.

In addition to loss and damage funding, Scottish Government provided £250,000 from our Climate Justice Fund (which we trebled at COP26 to £36m) to the humanitarian efforts in Pakistan and we are also currently tendering for our flagship “Climate Just Communities” programme, which will commit £24m to our partner countries of Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia building resilience through engagement with marginalised communities using a participatory design and implementation approach.

The Culture Collective programme was awarded £5,891,553 in March 2021 and £4,241,918 in March 2022. This is supporting 26 projects in communities across Scotland and has, to date, created over 320 opportunities for creative practitioners.

With regard to the Centre for the Moving Image entering into administration, it would not be appropriate for the Scottish Government to comment on ongoing legal proceedings, but the Scottish Government is engaging with Creative Scotland, as well as Aberdeen and Edinburgh City Councils, to provide support where possible.

The Scottish Government remains committed to ensuring Scotland’s festivals have a global competitive edge. Our Festivals continue to be one of Scotland’s world-leading cultural brands, and we want them to retain their world-class status and continue to offer widespread accessibility to culture for community and education settings. We have and will continue to support our festivals and performers to get back in the international spotlight, backing our major festivals in Glasgow and Edinburgh, to ensure they stay globally competitive.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with the Culture sector to identify barriers to immediate and long-term recovery, and we will continue to do everything within our powers and resources to help those most affected by current economic challenges.

The Scottish Government has undertaken analysis into the costings of implementing a pay increase to £15 per hour for social care workers.

An increase in pay from the current rate of £10.50 per hour to £15 per hour for adult social care workers providing direct care in commissioned services would be in the region of £1.2 billion per year. To also include workers within Children’s and Justice commissioned services would be in the region of £1.75bn.

It is important to note that this does not include any costs for uplifting the pay of social care workers employed within Local Authority settings who have existing pay arrangements, which are devolved to Local Authorities and COSLA.

Raising the hourly rate for social care workers to £15 per hour would likely cause significant issues of parity across public sector pay, as well as within Local Government.

The Scottish Government are considering all options to tackle delayed discharge and officials will continue to engage with external partners to develop appropriate approaches.

The Scottish Government have also announced significant additional funding to address delays in discharge. This includes for 2022-23:

• £124m to enhance care at home
• £200m to increase the hourly rate of pay to £10.50
• £20m to support interim care arrangements
• £40m to enhance multi-disciplinary teams

Since 2020 we have invested more than £4.5m to scale up Hospital at Home services, now established within 20 HSCPs. A further £3.6m is available for 2022-23, taking our total investment to over £8m.

Through expanding our virtual capacity we have avoided or saved bed days equivalent to adding a large district general hospital. This has already saved 45,000 hospital bed days this year and is being further rolled out over the coming months.

A range of published data sources provide information related to the level of unmet need in adult social care in Scotland:

• The Health and Care Experience Survey collects data on unmet need for care and support. This survey runs every two years, and the latest version, published in May 2022 covers 2021-2022.
• The Social Care Eligibility Criteria And Waiting Times publication presents information on new clients meeting eligibility criteria for social care support, and the waiting times between first contact, completion of a community care assessment and delivery of a new personal care service. The latest edition, published in May 2022 covers the years 2012-2021. We are working with Public Health Scotland on approaches for improving the completeness and robustness of these data.
• Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes Delayed Discharge data on a monthly basis. The accompanying Excel workbook on standard delay reasons provides the number of patients delayed in hospital at a monthly census point for patients delayed for health and social care reasons. Health and social care reasons includes those delayed due to issues with assessment, funding, place availability, care arrangements & transport. It should be noted that patients delayed in hospital are just a subset of all individuals with unmet social care needs. The latest edition includes figures up to and including August 2022.
• The Independent Review of Adult Social Care describes two indirect approaches to assessing level of unmet need, one of these involves comparing level of provision in different areas across Scotland and determining where areas are below the Scottish average level. The latest data on care provision is available in the PHS Insights into Social Care publication.

The Scottish Government is currently working with stakeholders at PHS and Health and Social Care Partnerships to collect robust data on the number of people waiting for assessment for Care at Home services and the associated number of hours to be provided. The first publication of these figures is expected from PHS later this year.

The National Records of Scotland published the latest life expectancy statistics on 22 September 2022. As reflected in these statistics, the pandemic has hit our most deprived communities the hardest, including many in Lanarkshire.

Reducing poverty and inequality sits at the heart of our investment across all portfolios and remain the best way of improving life expectancy. As a result we are mobilising action across government to tackle the underlying causes of inequality in our society.

This includes our commitment to providing free school meals, increasing the number of hours of free childcare, investing in affordable housing and continuing to deliver free prescriptions, concessionary travel and free personal care. Our Programme for Government and COVID Recovery Strategy include further commitments to improve life expectancy and to tackle health inequalities.

We are greatly concerned by reports of children and under-age young people obtaining e-cigarettes or vaping products. Vapes and other nicotine products are part of a range of cessations tools available to existing smokers to help stop tobacco use. They are not a lifestyle accessory for children, young people or adult non-smokers.

There are already regulations in place which restrict the marketing, promotion and sale of vaping products to under 18s. We wrote to all retailers involved in their sale to remind them of their duty at the start of October 2022.

Our recent consultation proposed restrictions on vaping products that strike a balance between protecting all non-smokers from the potential harms of vaping, while still providing existing adult smokers with the information they need to make an informed choice on cessation. We hope to bring forward further regulation in the new year.

We recognise the importance of having a clear public health message for young people around the dangers of vaping. We are working with Young Scot and the Children’s Parliament to bring their voices into our work to develop a bold refreshed Tobacco Action Plan due to be published in Autumn 2023.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service have confirmed that in the last five financial years, as of 14 October 2022, there have been 11 charges reported and 2 charges convicted under the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010 S4A(1) in relation to the selling of vaping products to under 18's.