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On April the 1st, ScotRail passenger services were successfully brought into public ownership. This move now offers us the opportunity to take the right actions to make rail travel more sustainable, affordable and accessible for the people of Scotland.

Affordable rail travel, including a consideration of peak rail fares, will be considered by the Fair Fares review. This review will seek to consider the affordability of public transport across the network, whilst also considering how journeys can be better connected through integrated ticketing, for example. In the context of the cost of living crisis it is absolutely essential that all Governments consider how to support an affordable public transport network.

The Scottish Government has worked at pace to deliver emergency business support to creative businesses, via Creative Scotland, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Scottish Government has announced £256 million support to the culture, creative, heritage and events sectors.

In March 2021, the Scottish Government launched a £1 million Creative Digital Initiative to help develop the digital capabilities of creative businesses in response to the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The programme has been developed through a partnership of enterprise and development agencies, including Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland.

The Scottish Government established a creative industries ‘Future Focus’ working group to enable detailed discussion with Scottish Enterprise, Creative Scotland and other key partner agencies throughout the pandemic to consider key issues facing the creative industries, business resilience and support, and opportunities for partnership working.

The Scottish Government has a Programme for Government commitment to refresh the Creative Industries Policy Statement and will work with CS, SE and other partner agencies to refresh this statement, as well as the Creative Industries Framework Agreement , in order to ensure these documents reflect the priorities of the creative industries and signpost creative businesses to the expertise and business support available to the sector.

Local authorities are obliged by law to offer the minimum of temporary accommodation, advice and assistance to anyone at risk of homelessness. Anyone who is threatened with or experiencing homelessness should contact their local authority in the first instance.

We already have a national strategy to end homelessness and rough sleeping in Scotland, which was updated in October 2020. Our Ending Homelessness Together action plan, backed by funding of £100 million between 2018-26, demonstrates our commitment to end homelessness in Scotland and we publish an annual report to show the progress being made to tackle these issues.

The Scottish Government is committed to bringing forward a Student Accommodation Strategy for Scotland which, in part, will be informed by a review of Purpose Built Student Accommodation, now underway. We will look to develop and incorporate this alongside and within the Rented Sector Strategy. This will include issues such as supply, affordability and wider planning and regulatory issues.

Some premises listed in Use Class 7 (of the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Scotland) Order 1997) are exempt from short-term let licensing legislation. Schedule 1 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022 (the “Licensing Order”) sets out excluded accommodation. Class 7 premises that are exempt are:

• a hotel, which has planning permission granted for use as a hotel
• a hostel

In addition, the following exemption will also be relevant to some Use Class 7 premises (including hotels and guest houses):

• premises in respect of which a premises licence within the meaning of section 17 of the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 has effect and where the provision of accommodation is an activity listed in the operating plan as defined in section 20(4) of the 2005 Act

Guest houses were originally listed as excluded accommodation in a previous version of the Licensing Order laid in December 2020. However, in response to feedback from our stakeholder working group we subsequently removed guest houses from the list of excluded accommodation and undertook further public consultation on this in June 2021. As guest houses can be variants of home sharing, they should not be automatically excluded. Further information is set out in the 2021 consultation paper (item 1 in table 2 at page 12): Short term lets - draft licensing order and business and regulatory impact assessment (BRIA): consultation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

Unless otherwise excluded by any of the criteria set out in Schedule 1 of the Licensing Order, use class 7 premises are therefore within scope of the definition of a short-term let in the Order laid in November 2021 and approved by the Scottish Parliament in January 2022.

It is an existing criminal offence to knowingly make a false statutory declaration and the Bill creates a new offence of knowingly making a false application for legal gender recognition. The maximum penalty for these offences is imprisonment for up to 2 years or an unlimited fine, or both.

There is provision in the Bill for a person with an interest in a Gender Recognition Certificate, such as the Registrar General to make an application to the Sheriff for revocation of a GRC on the grounds that it was fraudulently obtained. For example, the Registrar General may receive information that would have led to the refusal of the application or a person may make it known they have submitted a false application.

As with any criminal offence, it would be a matter for the police, the procurator fiscal and the courts to demonstrate and determine where an offence has been committed.

The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill includes a specific provision which places a duty on the Registrar General to report annually on the number of applications received and the number of applications granted.

The Scottish Government is working closely with local authorities and COSLA to ensure that all appropriate checks are carried out on properties. These checks include an enhanced disclosure process, a local authority systems check and a property check to ensure there are no known safeguarding or visible accommodation issues.

The visits will ensure the accommodation provided is of an approved standard, meets the minimum requirements to live in, and there are no concerns of overcrowding. More information about home visits, including what is being checked, can be found on the Super Sponsor Scheme and Homes for Ukraine guidance for local authorities website.

The current full time postgraduate student support package offers a loan of up to £10,000 (comprising £5,500 for fees and £4,500 for living costs). Students whose tuition fees are above the maximum available to them from SAAS have to make their own arrangements for the balance. This applies to all eligible postgraduate courses.

The current student support package has been designed to support students with the costs incurred during their time studying at university, and the support now available in Scotland is at its highest level.

A review of postgraduate funding was part of this Government’s manifesto commitments. This is underway and will include consideration of the overall level of funding available to students.

Through the National Missing Persons Framework for Scotland, which was launched in 2017, the Scottish Government has developed and strengthened local multi-agency partnerships. A survey in 2020 by the Working Group for Missing People in Scotland showed that there are now multi-agency groups in 27 local authority areas and we aim to work with all areas to implement them by 2025.

The Scottish Government has funded the Missing People charity to deliver a Framework Implementation Project; and funds a National Coordinator to deliver a programme of consultancy, training and best practice sharing in local areas in Scotland.

Since 2019 the Implementation project has worked with local partners in Edinburgh, Fife, Dundee, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Moray, Dumfries and Galloway, East Dunbartonshire, North Ayrshire, Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire to develop their multi-agency partnerships, protocols and strategies. A further seven local authority areas will be engaged with the project in 2022-23.

Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of children who go missing in Scotland return home safely – but, any child who goes missing is one too many. Through these actions, Police Scotland, the lead agency for tracking missing people, is working more closely with families, friends and statutory bodies to track and safely return those children who go missing.

We have published guidance for local authorities which outlines the role of councils in supporting Ukrainian guests who arrive under both the super sponsor scheme and who match privately into Scotland through the Homes for Ukraine Scheme. This Super Sponsor Scheme and Homes for Ukraine guidance for local authorities can be found on the Scottish Government website.