Seòmar agus comataidhean

In line with European best practice for scheme administrators of deposit return schemes, Circularity Scotland Ltd is a private company independent of the Scottish Ministers. Accordingly, the Scottish Government is not required to verify the processes used by the Scheme Administrator when it sets its fees.

The Scottish Government’s Social Enterprise Strategy was launched in 2016 and sets out a wide-ranging, ambitious and long-term programme to develop the potential of Scotland's social enterprise sector.

The latest Social Enterprise Action Plan was published on 24th March 2021 and covers the period 2021-24 and is available at: Social enterprise: action plan - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

In 2021-22 we spent over £7M in supporting social enterprise and expect to spend over £6M in 2022-23. £15M was distributed through COVID support funds in 2021-22.

Funding is provided to third sector organisations, including social enterprises, from across Scottish Government portfolios and is not collated centrally.

Social Security Scotland does not hold contingency funding. The budget for Benefit Expenditure is set against the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s forecasts. Any volatility arising from demand-led benefit expenditure is managed at a consolidated level, utilising the Scottish Government’s limited borrowing powers, as set out in the Fiscal Framework, where required.

SQA delivered a priority appeals process for learners requiring the outcome of an appeal for immediate progression to university, college, training or employment this year. These appeals were completed on 5 September and students informed of the outcomes.

Further industrial action has been averted following SQA’s unions accepting a pay offer on 23 September, and SQA is currently reviewing the remaining appeals with the aim of completing these by the end of October.

The following table details annual spend on signage on the trunk road network during the period 2013 to 2022 within the Scottish Parliament Highland and Islands electoral region. These figures include spend on sign plates, sign poles and sign bases.

Signage on Local Authority roads is a matter for the relevant Local Authority.

We do not hold the spend data for these specific items prior to 2013.

A review of the content of the Scottish Health Survey took place between 18 July and 26 September 2022. The review asked users to explain their use of the current survey content and provided the opportunity for them to suggest any new questions, which could include questions relating to eating disorders. A report will be published in advance of the 2024 survey reporting the findings of the review and decisions on the survey content going forwards.

£25.8m has been allocated to date through the Bus Partnership Fund (BPF) and has been awarded to support local authorities, in partnership with bus operators and Regional Transport Partnerships, to deliver bus priority infrastructure.

Funding has been awarded through the BPF for Partnerships to undertake the projects outlined in Table 1 below. The approach in the first year of the Fund was to deliver infrastructure already identified that could be constructed in the short term. This includes making permanent previously temporary projects that Transport Scotland funded to help passengers and operators during Covid through our Bus Priority Rapid Deployment Fund (BPRDF).

Given the limited number of projects that were ready to implement we also provided funding for business development in the form of Scottish Transport Appraisal Guidance (STAG) studies and Outline Business Cases (OBC). This essential work will enable Partnerships to identify more projects that provide the most benefit for passengers, businesses and communities across Scotland while ensuring value for money.

Table 1: Bus Partnership Fund awarded projects as at September 2022

This information is not held by the Scottish Government. Pay for directly employed staff would depend on a number of variables like the Banding of the nurse, the length of the shift and whether the shift takes place at night or over the weekend when an unsocial hours premium would apply.

Pulmonary rehabilitation services are made up of multidisciplinary teams which can include the following professions: physiotherapists, nurses, occupational therapists, pharmacists and doctors.

All healthcare students require practice placements in a number of settings, which can include pulmonary rehabilitation services, but the Scottish Government does not hold data on the distribution of students across these placements as they are managed by individual universities.

However, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) collects and analyses data relating to the provision of further and higher education in Scotland and a breakdown of the number of overall graduates from each profession over the past 5 years is available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (BIB number 63608). This is broken down by domicile : Scottish, rUK, EU, international.

It is important that NHS Boards can call on additional staffing when required, in order to deal with the exigencies of the service. It is for NHS Boards to decide when the additional support represented by agency staffing is required but the Scottish Government is clear that Boards should always make use of NHS bank staff as a first choice and the majority of additional staffing needs are met through NHS Scotland’s well established bank system. These act as, de facto, in house agencies. We have over 35,000 nurses registered on NHS Scotland Staff Banks. It would not be appropriate for the Scottish Government to establish a commercial agency. Combined spending on all agency staff (medical and nursing) remains less than 1% of the overall NHS Scotland budget.