 Felly, inni ar gyfer y cyfwynhau i ymddir apwyntiaeth yma, yn ddif آn yn llaw daddog, i weithio gydych chi'n defnyddio'r dd оказ, mewn ffordd, ac yn gyfer y cyfwynhau i ddannu unrhyw o ph demonstrationu cyfwynhau i ddannu unrhyw o ffordd, i ddannu unrhyw o ffordd, iddyn nhw'n ei fodf yn gyfwynhau i ddannu ei ddannu unrhyw o ffordd. Mae'r gwrdd iawn yn ymddir Ie Skynt, the Equality and Human Rights Commission's Equality and Human Rights Monitor report for 2023. The Scottish Government and COSLA's Suicide Prevention Strategy creating hope together takes a targeted approach to reaching and supporting people who are at higher risk of suicide, including men. Through the likes of targeted work with partners in the West Highlands and Sky and the Changing Rooms Extra Time programme, we're continuing to understand more about what helps men to reach out for support and what type of support works best. Another key part of our strategy is building peer support groups right across Scotland as a way to prevent suicide, which we know works well for many men. Finally, our gender balance suicide prevention and lived experience panel allows us to continue to benefit from the insights of men affected by suicide, and that's invaluable in helping us to prevent male suicide. I welcome the minister's answer, because the suicide rate for boys and young men aged 5 to 24 is two times higher than that for young girls and women in the same age group. One of the recommendations within the report is that the Scottish Government should set a national equality outcome to reduce the rate of suicides among 5 to 24-year-olds, particularly in males. Will the minister commit to implementing that? What other recommendations from the report could be introduced to provide support to boys and young men to prevent more lives from being lost to suicide? I agree with Megan that we need to be very careful about targeting our support for teenage boys and young men. When we look at suicide as a whole, it's a U-shaped curve, and the highest rate is in middle age, so we can't take our eye off every age group. We need to make sure that we have strategies that meet the needs of every age group. We're doing that very carefully. We're working with partners, as I mentioned, the programme in Sky and West Highland. It looks particularly at rural communities where we know that there is a particularly high rate and people are susceptible. We also have work going on in the LGBT communities. I'm confident that we are doing the right things. We need to do more, and every suicide is preventable, and every suicide has absolutely tragic consequences, so we will absolutely remain focused on tackling this issue. Can the minister provide any update regarding work that is under way to raise awareness about suicide and improve understanding, particularly in sectors that support groups, with a higher rate of suicide, including, as we've heard, men and boys? In implementing our policy-creating hope together, we are working with partners that represent high-risk groups, such as the LGBT community and other known marginalised groups, on developing tailored approaches to suicide prevention, awareness and raising and support. We've already taken a targeted approach to learning so that the workforce, who are most likely to be supporting people who feel suicide, are supported. That's in health and social care, in education, in emergency services and third sector organisations working in local communities. We're going to extend that approach further into other key services such as homelessness support. The community-based supports, which we fund for children and young people and adults, also have a focus on distress prevention and support. Through our time-space compassion approach, we've worked hard to identify and to connect services and communities that are already doing important work to support communities at a higher risk of suicide. To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to support the roll-out of electric buses across the Glasgow city region. Since 2020, £62 million of Scottish Government investment has supported operators to acquire 315 zero-emission buses and supporting infrastructure to serve the Glasgow area. 305 of those buses are already on the road and the remaining 10 will be by the end of March. The final phase of the Scottish zero-emission bus challenge fund is currently live, offering a further £43 million to transform the market for zero-emission buses so that they are affordable to all operators without subsidy. I thank the minister for that answer. Electric vehicles go a long way on improving inner city air quality and public health, as well as contribute to meeting the net zero target. Naturally, the decision not to award Strathclyde partnership for Transport ScotZeb 2 funding for a new fleet of electric buses has been met with disappointment. What support can the Government offer organisations such as SPT to help to meet their electric vehicle ambitions? Organisations such as SPT can contact the remaining lead bidders to discuss joining their consortia ahead of the deadline for best and final bids on 19 January. Information is available from the Energy Savings Trust who are administering the scheme. I would also encourage all bus and coach operators and organisations to explore the range of information packs, how-to guides and case studies produced by our bus decarbonisation task force, hosted on the Confederation of Passenger Transport website. Graeme Sturff-Simpson. With the budget announcement that there is going to be no direct funding for the bus partnership fund next year, what is going to happen to the work done by the Glasgow City Region bus partnership and other partnerships to progress bus priority measures? That is not necessarily a direct relationship to the roll-out of electric buses in the fund from the ScotZev fund, but Graeme Sturff-Simpson will be aware that there has been progress on bus partnerships to help to support bus priority lanes. I might add that his Conservative colleagues in Aberdeen have been highly critical of the work and investment that has already taken place in Aberdeen to encourage those bus lanes. However, I remind Graeme Sturff-Simpson that we cannot have a situation where the UK Government introduces budgets such as that by Liz Truss and her Chancellor that decimates the public finance system and provides for a situation where there is almost 10 per cent of a capital reduction at a time of increasing construction costs and come back to this chamber and ask for more money that is literally just not there because of his Conservative colleagues at Westminster. Question 3, Donald Cameron. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support businesses across the Highlands and Islands region. Our economic development agency for that region Highlands and Islands Enterprise provides advice, training and funding to help businesses grow and innovate. It invested £20.1 million in 272 small businesses across the region during 2223, supporting 478 jobs and an increase in turnover of £122 million. Our investment of £242.5 million in the four city region and growth deals across the Highlands and Islands will deliver significant and lasting economic benefits for businesses. The 2024-25 Scottish budget ensures that businesses across the Highlands and Islands will continue to benefit from a competitive, non-domestic rates relief package, which includes, according to the latest figures, 23,000 business properties paying no rates at all thanks to the small business bonus scheme. Donald Cameron. Last October, HRE's chief executive, Stuart Black, told the Economy and Fair Work Committee of this Parliament that a projected cut of 4.8 per cent to HRE's budget would, I quote, affect its ability to work with communities at local level. Given that HRE's total budget is now at its lowest level in more than a decade, following a cut three times as great as previously forecast, does the cabinet secretary not recognise the serious damage that it will do to business confidence across communities in the Highlands and Islands? High will continue to make a key contribution to achieving the Government's objectives through the support for businesses and communities in strategic economic development. The budget provides investment of almost £67 million in 2024-25 as the first part of the Scottish Government's commitment of up to £500 million to anchor a new offshore wind supply chain in Scotland. We expect High to play a key role in delivering our ambitions for delivering the supply chain for offshore wind and maximising the economic benefits there. I will also continue to work with High to ensure that it can prioritise the funding that it has received to maximise the opportunities available, but I respectfully say to Donald Cameron that it is incredible at the time when our budgets are under attack from the UK Government that he comes here asking for more money and it does not come up with the answers to where it is supposed to come from. Before Christmas it emerged that the Lerwick Kirkwall Aberdeen Serco North Link ferry service costs would be hiked up by an eye watering 8.7 per cent from April 2024. That is obviously above inflation and it will hit businesses with increased freight costs. Does the cabinet secretary consider such cost hikes on the lifeline service supportive of island businesses? We will continue to work with Serco North Link to make sure that they provide a sustainable and supportive environment for the lifeline services that they provide. I declare an interest having travelled on the North Link ferries over the Christmas period in order to visit family and I will be happy to meet Beatrice Wishart in order to discuss the issues that she has raised. I welcome the Government's commitment to supporting business in my region and there are now more than 1,200 social enterprises across the Highlands and Islands, the highest density in Scotland and a third of all of Scotland's social enterprises are in rural areas, contributing 88,000 jobs and more than £2.3 billion to the economy. Can I ask the Scottish Government to confirm what specific support can be offered to the growing social enterprise sector in the Highlands and Islands? We recognise the unique importance of social enterprises to business and community life across Scotland's Highlands and Islands, our social enterprise action plan recognises the different challenges that they face. The Scottish Government directly funds the rural social enterprise hub and social enterprises from Highlands and Islands can access business support from Just Enterprise, a Government-funded national business support service. That is delivered locally, often through partners like Impact Hub in Burness and since April 22 we have awarded over £600,000 of financial support directly to social enterprises in the Highlands and Islands through our delivery partner first port. Question number four is not lodged. I call Stuart McMillan at question number five. Thank you very much to ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what steps it is taking to address the cost of living crisis. Cabinet secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville. Despite the difficult financial situation from the UK government, this government is doing everything it can with the powers available to it to support people and communities through the cost of living crisis. We are investing a record high £6.3 billion in social security benefits and payments. That is £1.1 billion more than the level of funding forecast to be received from the UK government through the social security block grant adjustment, helping low-income families and disabled people with their living costs. Stuart McMillan. I thank the cabinet secretary for her reply. Earlier this week I visited Advice Direct Scotland, which is funded by the Scottish Government. According to its own stats, more people from my constituency have contacted Advice Direct Scotland for energy advice than from any other constituency in the country. I do believe that the outreach work across the country, including in one constituency, certainly leads to some of that increase. There will also be a 10-year-old one tomorrow at Southern Argyll Mewds Street in Port Glasgow. However, does the cabinet secretary give me that it is vital that people reach out for support when they need it? Does the cabinet secretary also agree that in energy-rich but fuel-poor Scotland we see yet another damning indictment of Scotland's place in the union? I agree with Stuart McMillan's assessment on that. It is deeply concerning that we see so many people still in poverty. That is why the First Minister made an announcement very early on when he came in to post about the fuel and security fund, because he recognised importance of that in the limited powers that we have to tackle. However, the vast majority of those powers lie with Westminster, so they have walked away from supporting people with the cost of living, particularly in fuel poverty. However, we will do everything that we can, and that includes funding to Advice Direct Scotland and others who provide such valuable advice to people at times of crisis. One thing that will not help the cost of living crisis is slashing the affordable housing supply budget by over a quarter in real terms in the coming year. Anti-poverty charities such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have used words such as disappointing, brutal and baffling to describe the decision. Surely access to affordable housing is a bedrock of dealing with the cost of living pressures. When will the Government recognise that there is a housing emergency on their watch and take action, including revealing their budget decisions that are exacerbating the cost of living crisis? I will be more than happy to meet the member to discuss this, as I am sure the housing minister would, so that he can tell us in detail how we are supposed to deal with a 10 per cent cut to the Scottish Government capital budget, while still increasing budgets, as he demanded. It is absolutely within his rights, of course, to come to this chamber and ask for more money. If he wants to get into a genuine discussion about how to help housing and homelessness, my door is open, the housing minister's door is open, about where that money would come from so that we can get past the headlines and into the details of that. To ask the Scottish Government how its budget will support household incomes in the Rutherglen constituency. Cabinet Secretary, Shona Robison. Of our budget is the social contract between the Scottish Government and people of Scotland. The people in Rutherglen will continue to benefit from our long-standing commitments to free prescriptions, free access to higher education and, of course, the game changing Scottish child payment. In addition, the Scottish budget commits a record £6.3 billion in social security benefits and payments to deliver on our national mission to tackle inequality, and of course also sets aside £144 million to support a council tax freeze for next year and protect household incomes across the country. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. The Scottish Government's budget ensures that a majority of people in Scotland pay less income tax than elsewhere in the UK, and at a Westminster cost of living crisis, the budget will freeze council tax, as the cabinet secretary said, and increase the Scottish child payment and also provide the most generous early learning and childcare package across the UK, saving families £1,000 each year. Does the minister agree with me that the UK Government must now step up to protect incomes and that it should do so by tackling rising food prices, mortgages and energy prices? I do agree with that. Our values-based budget prioritises what matters, supporting people through the cost of living crisis, investing in our front-line public services. Of course, the oversight and regulation of mortgage lenders is a reserved matter, and we have repeatedly called upon the UK Government to increase support for those most impacted by increasing inflation, interest rates and living costs. In June 2023, Scotland became the first nation in the UK to publish a plan to work towards ending the need for food banks. That includes a new £1.8 million programme to improve urgent access to cash in a crisis. Of course, we continue to repeat our calls on the UK Government to provide more targeted support for vulnerable consumers. That includes pressing for the urgent introduction of a social tariff mechanism, as a much-needed safety net for priority energy consumers, but which, unfortunately, the UK Government has so far chosen not to progress. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether its proposed budget spend increase of £0.1 million for alcohol and drugs policy, which is reportedly a real-terms reduction, is sufficient to address the challenges that are faced in this area. The 2024-25 alcohol and drugs budget has remained the same as 2023-24. The minor change seen in the published 2024-25 budget is not a proposed budget spend increase, but rather funding being formally baselined into the alcohol and drugs budget line. From 2022-23 to 2023-24, the £13.6 million budget increase includes an additional £12 million to deliver the cross-government plan, published in January 2023. The remaining £1.6 million increase covers portfolio operating costs for drug and alcohol staff, which was previously held centrally. Funding for drug policy has increased by 67 per cent in real terms from 2014-15 to 2023-24, according to Audit Scotland figures published in 2022. There is some reality that we need to get. The Scottish Government declared alcohol harm as a public health emergency in its 2022-23 budget, and since then we have seen the number of people losing their lives to alcohol tragically increase. Since 2016-17, the number of people with alcohol problems accessing treatment has fallen dramatically. Is it time for the Scottish Government to stock tinkering on the edges of that and to put forward a comprehensive strategy to ensure that fewer people experience problems caused by alcohol and that they get the support and treatment that they need when they need it? I thank Carol Malkin for that question. It gives me the opportunity to inform the chamber that, in the coming weeks, we will have a debate within the chamber on alcohol harms and how the Scottish Government is seeking to address that. I look forward to Carol Malkin and others participating in that debate with me.