Seòmar agus comataidhean

Scottish Ministers and Transport Scotland officials communicate regularly with key stakeholders in the Scottish ports sector about a wide range of issues, including the implications of the UK Government's response to P&O Ferries recent actions. The Member may wish to note that the UK Government Transport Secretary has repeatedly refused to meet with me on this matter.

Summaries of the first two papers in the Building a New Scotland series have been translated into 17 languages, including British Sign Language, Arabic, Gaelic, Polish and Ukrainian. Audio and Easy Read versions have also been produced to support accessibility. We have no current plans for a full translation of Independence in the Modern World .

The Scottish Government is committed to improving safety on our trunk roads including the A77. While there are no road improvement schemes or upgrades planned for the A77 in 2022, £6.75m has been allocated for the A77 through our provisional road maintenance programme for financial year 2022-23.

The Scottish Government has invested over £105 million on the A77 since 2007 to March 2022 to ensure its safe and efficient operation. In addition, we have spent approximately £64 million on five separate road schemes on the A77 including the recent completion of the £29m Maybole bypass which opened in January 2022 .

CalMac has noted that it is not possible to measure unmet demand using booking systems, including the eBooking solution being delivered by the Ar Turas Programme. We understand the desire to measure bookings “not made” for a specific set of reasons, principally vessel capacity on peak-demand sailings.

CalMac has been running a working group with a number of CalMac Community Board members during the last 18 months to help clarify and support understanding of measures that can be tracked. The group has explored a range of ideas and CalMac has developed a number of reports designed to support enhanced understanding of how and when vehicle bookings are made, amended, cancelled and the resulting impact on capacity. These requirements have been taken-forward for delivery against the improved data that the new system will capture.

A number of these items have already been made available in monthly Ferry User Group performance reporting packs.

Scottish Government funding schemes, in the main, do not fund community-run retrofit organisations directly.

However, a number of our schemes do support retrofitting. For example, our flagship Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES), delivered by Local Energy Scotland, has offered advice to over 900 organisations and supported over 600 community and locally owned renewable projects throughout Scotland, offering funding of over £58 million since its inception in 2010. CARES has supported 119 organisations to retrofit decarbonised heat and/or install renewable generation into their buildings.

The following schemes also provide support to households, businesses and other eligible organisations for retrofitting, though not exclusively:

• Warmer Homes Scotland – more than £176 million has been invested through the scheme since its launch in September 2015 helping over 27,000 households throughout Scotland.
• Area Based Schemes – up until the end of the 2020-2021 programme, £400 million has been invested delivering 110,000 measures to homes since 2013.
• Home Energy Scotland loans and cashback – since 2017, the scheme has issued 6808 loans, valued at over £37 million, and 4097 cashback offers, valued at over £11 million, to existing homes.
• SME loans and cashback – since 2008, the scheme has paid close to £40 million in loans and cashback, funding more than 1627 projects.
• Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund – since August 2020, the fund has committed over £14 million to the retrofit of 1800 social homes across Scotland.
• Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme – this programme has provided grant support for the retrofitting of over 1000 homes to decarbonise their energy consumption.

As the independent review of Additional Support for Learning (ASL) made clear, all teachers have a central role in assessing and supporting all children with additional support needs, including those from armed forces and veterans’ families.

Although the Scottish Government cannot mandate content for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses, as part of our jointly agreed ASL Action Plan, we have taken a number of actions to support the training and professional development of teachers:

• In 2021, the GTCS refreshed both the professional standards and the standards for ITE providers to make explicit reference to Additional Support Needs throughout.
• In June this year, the Scottish Universities Inclusion Group published an updated edition of the National Framework for Inclusion . This reflective tool supports both student and qualified teachers to continue developing their inclusive practice.
• Education Scotland, working collaboratively with the ADES National Transitions Officer and Forces Children Scotland, developed a professional learning resource – Supporting Armed Forces Families . This resource provides information about deployment, mobility, transitions and the impacts these can have on children from Armed Forces families.

As part of our ongoing work to implement the ASL Action Plan, we will continue to support the training and professional development of teachers in developing inclusive practice which supports all learners.

Further, the statutory Code of Practice on Additional Support for Learning which provides guidance to education authorities on their duties under the Act, makes clear that children of parents in the Armed Forces may have additional support needs.

The Scottish Government has committed to extend the Connecting Scotland programme over the course of this Parliament to reach a total of 300,000 people. Work is underway to scope the future service, including how best to reach priority groups who we know are most likely to be digitally excluded, including ethnic minority and migrant communities. Connecting Scotland supported migrant communities in its initial phases and has recently supported Ukrainian displaced persons on arrival in Scotland.

Connecting Scotland is delivered in collaboration with key partners, including local authorities, COSLA, SCVO and third sector organisations to support access to, and the provision of, digital skills and literacy opportunities.

Additionally, as part of the New Scots Refugee Integration Delivery Project, six projects have been awarded funding to support digital inclusion for refugees. This project is part funded by the EU Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-09748 on 27 July 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

As our joint ASL action plan shows, the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Association of Directors of Education (ADES) are committed to including and involving children and young people in policy development, including those from armed forces and veteran’s families.

This includes publication last year of the vision statement for success for children and young people with additional support needs which was created by young people from the Young Ambassadors for Inclusion network with the support of ASLIG.

Work is also progressing to develop a measurement framework, seeking to value and increase visibility of the diverse achievements that young people achieve and develop a mechanism to ensure that these are fully recognised and celebrated.

We are working closely with the ADES National Transitions Officer, Forces Families Federations and other third sector partners to ensure that the children and young people from armed forces and veterans’ families are included in this on-going work.

We have also provided funding to Forces Children Scotland through this year’s Scottish Veterans Fund. This will support their Mindful Connections work exploring the lived experiences of veterans’ families, including children and young people, with the aim of enhancing their transition into civilian life and integration into communities.

The Social Care Staff Support Fund was set up in June 2020 using emergency powers provided by the Coronavirus (No.2) (Scotland) Act. This provision is intended for a group of workers who, due to the nature of their work or work environment, may be expected to self-isolate on more than one occasion as part of infection prevention and control. The aforementioned emergency powers are due to expire on 30 September 2022, and my officials are currently scoping what support may be required beyond this date.