Seòmar agus comataidhean

To enhance the support available for low income families with school age children, the Scottish Government will double the final Bridging Payment due to be paid in December 2022. This will increase the payment from £130 to £260 for every eligible child.

This increase is anticipated to reach in the region of 145,000 children, backed by additional investment of almost £19 million. As a result, Bridging Payments are expected to put around £169 million in the pockets of low income families across 2021 and 2022.

This is in addition to the expansion and further increase in the value of the Scottish Child Payment, which will become available for eligible children under the age of 16 as of 14 November and will be worth £25 per child, per week.

The Scottish Government will continue to assess all opportunities to redirect additional resources to those most in need through the Emergency Budget Review.

The Scottish Government vision is for Scotland to be a leading Fair Work Nation by 2025, where fair work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity for individuals, businesses, organisations and society. This includes tackling the drivers of workplace inequality for women and ensuring they are supported to enter and progress in all of Scotland’s workplaces.

Through our Fair Work First policy we are leveraging employers’ commitment to fair work by applying Fair Work criteria to public sector grants, other funding and contracts where it’s relevant and proportionate to do so. Through this we are asking employers to adopt fair work practices such as enabling workers to have an effective voice, tackling gender pay gaps and offering flexible working from day one of employment which can especially benefit women experiencing menstrual or menopausal issues while at work.

Scottish Government has committed, through the Women’s Health Plan, to develop a menopause and menstrual health workplace policy, as an example of best practice, starting with NHS Scotland, and promote this across the public, private and third sector.

Our Women Returners funding has helped over 1,500 women since 2018 with their transition back into the workplace offering training, skills and peer support at a time and pace that best suits their needs. 11 projects are receiving funding in 2022-23 to support women including the Return with Resilience project that supports women aged 50 or over who’re experiencing menopause symptoms return to the workplace. Women are able to access employability skills, peer support and access to a variety of skills sessions such as ‘managing menopause’ and mental health coaching to build confidence and resilience.

We are still modelling potential structures based on updated scheme membership data and plan to engage with the Scheme Advisory Board on these shortly. The previous proposals we consulted on put forward broadly similar rates for lower earners to those in the contribution structure implemented in England and Wales.

When developing the structure, protecting lower earners from large increases in contribution rates is a key driver but has to be balanced against the legal imperative to begin to reduce the very highest rates and flatten the contribution structure. The biggest challenge in comparing against the rates in England and Wales is that there is a bigger yield shortfall to recover in the Scottish scheme, principally due to workforce demographics.

The Scottish Government is deeply concerned by, and fundamentally opposed to, the UK Government’s plans to potentially dismantle laws protecting nature as outlined in their Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. As drafted, the Bill will undermine the Scottish Government’s ability to protect Scotland’s natural environment because unless existing legal protections set out in retained EU law are preserved, they will be removed from the statute book at the end of 2023. In addition it is unacceptable for the UK Government to give itself powers to act in areas of devolved competence. Devolution must be respected.

The Scottish Government will do everything within the powers available to us to prevent such dismantling of laws protecting nature and to protect devolution. We remain fully committed to protecting nature in Scotland and maintaining or enhancing environmental standards. The Scottish Government shall achieve alignment with improvements to EU environmental standards, wherever this is possible and within our interests, including where appropriate through specific powers within the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021.

Minutes and notes of meetings are not routinely published and are available upon request from Transport Scotland.

We intend to publish our Strategy for Seafood today. The strategy underlines the importance of the seafood sector and sets out how we are supporting industry to contribute to achieving our Blue Economy aspirations.

Scotland’s world renowned seafood sector is a vital part of our economy that particularly supports our coastal and island communities. Our marine environment contributes significantly to our commitment to being a Good Food Nation and to the ambition of the Local Food Strategy, with locally sourced seafood forming part of a healthy sustainable diet. The fishing, aquaculture and processing communities also have an important role to play in helping us achieve Scotland’s net zero targets and in implementing a range of measures articulated in the Bute House Agreement to improve existing ecosystems, encourage sustainability and protect our marine natural capital assets.

The strategy draws together and provides cohesion to the many existing initiatives which deliver for the seafood sector, and makes some recommendations which we will continue to explore as we transition towards net zero and delivery of the Blue Economy outcomes.

We look forward to taking this important work forward with the sector.

The publication of the strategy is consistent with our Programme for Government commitment to publish a strategy for seafood in 2022 and the document will be available to view on the Scottish Government website from today.

All payments as part of the national contractual framework are published annually. The latest iteration can be found at SHOW - Scotlands Health On the Web - Publications, including payments for non-activity based services delivered as part of the Pharmaceutical Services Remuneration Global Sum.

Health Boards can recover remuneration in line with the measures available as set out in the National Health Service (Pharmaceutical Services) (Scotland) Regulations 2009 and the National Health Service (Discipline Committees) (Scotland) Regulations 2006.

As investigations into this matter are ongoing, it would not be appropriate to comment.

The Scottish Government along with the BMA and other stakeholders provide evidence to the Doctors and Dentist Review Bodies (DDRB) who make an independent recommendation on pay uplifts for medical and dental staff across the UK.

We take part in this process in good faith and in the knowledge that the DDRB make independent recommendations which can be above or below what participants are seeking. This year, the DDRB have recommended a pay award which we have implemented in full for all Medical and Dental staff.

The Patient Travel Guidance is a substantial exercise for the Scottish Government and NHS Boards and, regrettably, a start date is not confirmed at this time. This important piece of work requires prioritisation alongside our ongoing response to Covid and recovery of services and will be taken forward as soon as possible.