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This information is provided in Scottish Water’s Annual Report and Accounts which is published on Scottish Water’s website and laid before Parliament each year. The accounting provision Scottish Water has made for household bad debt in each of previous 10 financial years is set out in the following table.

The Scottish Government has no plans to bring forward a Public Debt Bill.

We are currently working in partnership with Simon Community Scotland to pilot and evaluate an innovative Managed Alcohol Programme for people who experience homelessness.

Funding allocated to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) is for both alcohol and drug treatment services. In 2021-22 ADPs and Health Boards received over £106m for alcohol and drug services.

This funding is used to ensure that services meet the needs of people who experience alcohol as well as drugs harms, including preventative approaches.

As required by the Water Industry (Scotland) Act 2002, Ministers made a Principles of Charging statement for the 2021-27 regulatory period. The statement included the increase to the maximum discount available under the water charges reduction scheme from 25% to 35%.

The average household bill in Scotland is calculated as revenue, net of applicable discounts and divided by the number of household properties in Scotland. The average household bill in England and Wales is published on the Discover Water information site at https://discoverwater.co.uk/annual-bill .

In 2020, the Scottish Government set up the Scottish Energy Task Force to focus on near-term, collaborative actions, which can stimulate investment in Scotland’s energy sector to support delivery of net-zero.

The Energy Task Force consists of 12 organisations, including renewable energy companies, who have helped to develop the Joint Business Plan for Unlocking Investment in Scotland’s Energy Sector which was published in May this year.

The Plan outlines actions which can be taken to make near-term progress on working towards net-zero. The Task Force will continue to work collaboratively to deliver these actions which support net-zero.

The Energy Strategy & Just Transition Plan (ESJTP) will be developed not only to ensure the delivery of a viable net-zero energy system but also to provide an action plan that enables the transition to that system in a fair and just way for all of Scotland and maximises the economic opportunity that Scotland’s resource provides.

To ensure the impacts of the ESJTP reflect the challenges and opportunities facing the supply chain, a co-design process is being carried out to ensure the supply chain are able to engage, contribute and help shape the ESJTP.

As set out in response to S6W-08423 on 19 May 2022 , we remain firmly focused on supporting the six priority family types identified within our first Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan and will continue to engage with our partners, including gender representative stakeholders and women with experience of poverty, to ensure an intersectional and gendered approach is embedded in the development, implementation and monitoring of the actions set out in the plan.

‘ Best Start, Bright Futures ’ , our second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for the period 2022-26, recognises that to tackle poverty effectively we must deliver holistic, person-centred services and support that meets the needs of families - whilst also driving forward the transformation in our wider economy, necessary to tackle inequalities in our labour market.

The Plan is underpinned by robust data and evaluation, this includes our recently updated Child Poverty Measurement Framework as well as policy level evaluations and overall Child Poverty Evaluation Strategy . We also produce focus reports on the various child poverty family groups that explore progress achieved over time. This includes experiences of lone parents (who tend to be women) and mothers aged under 25.

Whilst quantitative data will enable us to track progress towards our outcomes, families will often fall into more than one priority group and in reality many face a combination of barriers and discrimination. We will ensure we use lived experience and a deeper understanding of the impact of intersection of characteristics in the design, implementation and monitoring of our actions and policies to ensure delivery approaches which are increasingly tailored and, ultimately, more effective.

To support our focus on implementation we have strengthened our approach to governance, including establishing a new Child Poverty Programme Board bringing together leaders, decision-makers, delivery partners and those who champion change across Scotland. The Programme Board will complement the statutory functions of the Poverty and Inequality Commission to ensure we hold ourselves to account on our performance against the plan, challenge our ambition, maintain a focus on our priority families and implement learning from the new approaches we are taking and testing.

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

Information is provided in the following table.

Figures are available for the past 6 years. Between 2017 and 2022 there were 13 incidents within core Scottish Government where information was determined to have been inappropriately released to the media. During that same time period 2 people were identified as having breached protocols.