Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government plans to publish its third National Dementia Strategy at the end of February 2017

Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) are responsible for commissioning dementia services, including post-diagnostic services, in their area and will monitor their effectiveness. Responsibility for the delivery of post-diagnostic services remains with the statutory body tasked with leading the service in each IJB area and this is determined locally.

On performance, the first round of annual national performance data was published in January 2017, relating to the 2014-15 beneficiary group. Work is in train to publish subsequent annual data at IJB level.

National support for post-diagnostic services is in place in areas such as supporting service quality and consistency, education, training and staff development, data analysis and improvement methodologies. As part of that activity, there is on-going engagement on the challenges and benefits around providing post-diagnostic support.

Scottish Ministers have asked Independent Living Fund (ILF) Scotland to extend the commitment to enable the Scottish Living Wage, for adult social care workers, to those employed as a result of ILF payments of support to disabled people. I recently discussed the Scottish Living Wage with the Chair and Chief Executive of ILF Scotland, at our meeting in December 2016. Officials have also had several meetings with ILF Scotland about Scottish Living Wage implementation. At all these meetings, both the operational implementation of the commitment and the budgetary implications were discussed.

As stated in my answer to S5W-06510 on 2 February 2017, Scottish Ministers have asked Independent Living Fund (ILF) Scotland to extend the commitment to enable the Scottish Living Wage, for adult social care workers, to those employed as a result of ILF payments of support to disabled people. In order to support this work, officials have had several meetings with the Chair, Chief Executive and staff of ILF Scotland about Scottish Living Wage implementation and helping to encourage nationwide compliance.

The Scottish Government is working to foster responsible retailing of energy drinks through voluntary and statutory means.

The provision of energy drinks at school is already banned under the School (Health Promotion and Nutrition) (Scotland) Regulations 2008. Through Beyond the School Gate, we are advocating that schools, communities and local authorities take a pro-active role to engage with young people, their parents and local retailers to ensure that consumption is appropriately limited, taking into account the 2015 European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) report on energy drinks. Similarly, there is guidance available in Better Eating, Better Learning on what schools can do to educate pupils about energy drinks as well as equipping them with the skills, knowledge and experience they need to make better health choices and live longer, healthier lives.

In the UK, high caffeine drink manufacturers are now required to include advice on their products (other than those based on coffee/tea or coffee/tea extracts where the term coffee/tea appears in the name of the product) about their unsuitability for children and pregnant women due to the high caffeine content. Manufacturers are required to label beverages with caffeine content in excess of 150 mg/l as ‘High caffeine content. Not recommended for children or pregnant or breast-feeding women’. This is a legal requirement set out in Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers which is enforced in Scotland by the Food Information (Scotland) Regulations 2014 (as amended).

Furthermore, the Scottish Government has continued to support voluntary mechanisms such as the British Soft Drinks Association’s (BSDA) code of practice not to promote energy drinks to under 16s. We welcome campaigns such as last year’s ‘Can It’ campaign which the Scottish Grocers Federation advocated to its members and we are calling on the larger retailers to take similar proactive measures.

The Scottish Government will continue to monitor the evidence base and carefully consider recommendations made in relation to this issue.

We are committed to helping all types of businesses to thrive, grow and create employment opportunities. Scotland's Economic Strategy focuses on the two mutually supportive goals of increasing competitiveness and tackling inequality. We are delivering those goals through policies that deliver publicly funded business support and advice, reduce the burden of taxation and regulation, improve access to finance, help to export and strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship.

We have shown a strong commitment to fair pay as an important contribution to promoting fair work and tackling inequality. We fund the Scottish Living Wage Accreditation Initiative, through which there are now over 700 Accredited Living Wage Employers, 537 of which are small businesses. Scotland has the highest proportion of employees paid at least the Living Wage of all four UK countries. We continue to promote the real Living Wage through public sector procurement and to all employers alongside advice on how to become accredited.

In addition, we promote the Scottish Business Pledge as a shared mission between Government and business with the goal of boosting productivity, employment, fair work and work force engagement and development. Paying the Living Wage to all relevant employees is at the core of the Business Pledge and all of the 324 companies who have signed up to the Business Pledge have achieved the Living Wage accreditation. Around 66% of these are small businesses.

The Scottish Government does not hold the information submitted to the Scottish Natural Heritage review of snaring legislation and has no plans to publish it.

The Scottish Government has received a report from Scottish Natural Heritage on its review of snaring legislation and intends to lay a copy of the report before the Scottish Parliament as soon as practicable, in accordance with Section 11F(5) of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (as amended by the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011). The Scottish Government will also publish a copy of the report on its website.

The next Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime Scotland Executive Group meeting will be held on 30 March 2017. It is expected that one Plenary Group meeting and one further Executive Group meeting will be held in 2017, but dates are still to be confirmed.

In 2016, the Executive Group met on 29 September. There were no meetings of the Plenary Group.

I am committed to empowering teachers, parents and schools to drive improvement in education and believe that, wherever possible, decisions about children’s learning and school life should be made at school level.

We have received almost 1,100 written responses to the Governance Review consultation and spoken to over 700 people in public engagement sessions across the country. The parents that I spoke to at those events had clear views about the strengths and the weaknesses of our current system. Parliament will note that the Scottish Parent Teacher Council state in their response “the status quo cannot simply continue”.