 I remind members of the Covid-related measures that are in place and that face-covering should be worn when moving around the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. The first item of business is portfolio questions, and the first portfolio question is health and social care. If a member wishes to request a supplementary question, they should press the request-to-speak button during the relevant question or indicate so in the chat function by entering the letter R. I call question number one, Liz Smith. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government how many people have received free personal care under Frank's law since it came into effect in 2019. Minister Kevin Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Data on the implementation of free personal care to under 65s in line with other non-Covid-19 data collections was temporarily postponed due to the redirection of resources to the pandemic response. The Scottish Government restarted the collection of the data in August 2021, and it is scheduled to be published on 10 May this year. Liz Smith, I thank the minister for that. I know that he agrees that free personal care inspired by Amanda Cappell and Frank's law should make a very substantial difference to under 65s across the country, but there is concern notwithstanding the delays that its implementation has been slow. I have certainly got several constituents who are asking about this, and of course we know that there was the freedom of information request from West Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership, which shows from 2019 to the end of 2021 only four people under 65s had actually applied for it and received it. So notwithstanding the fact that there has been a delay in the publication that is forthcoming on 10 May, will the cabinet secretary consider his position in relation to the issue and agree with my colleague Miles Briggs' proposal to institute a national recovery group in partnership with Coslaw? We are doing a number of things to ensure that we get that right. I join Liz Smith in paying tribute to Amanda Cappell. We need to pay close attention to the statistics that will be published in May to see how things are going right across the country to ensure that we are getting it right for under 65s. We will continue to do all that we can to ensure that our intentions are implemented and that people get the care that they need and deserve, and I am more than happy to continue to engage with Ms Smith and Mr Briggs and others on the issue. We need to get it right for people and I want to ensure that we do so. Can the minister confirm that Scotland is the only nation in the UK to deliver free personal care and can he advise as to how many people in Scotland have benefited from that policy since it was first introduced? Scotland is the only nation in the UK to deliver free personal care. I am very proud of the moves that we have made to ensure that that policy is implemented. According to the most recent statistics available, which were for 2017-18, almost 80,000 people in Scotland benefited from free personal and nursing care. That included over 30,000 people in care homes and over 47,000 people living in their own homes. The number of people who have received free personal care at home has also been increasing. That reflects our policy of supporting people to live at home for as long as possible. I will not be the only member in the chamber who has had constituents in touch about having had their care packages cut or having experienced delays in packages being put in place in the first time. We know that the impact of those delays and cuts can be devastating. Does the minister accept that addressing the workforce shortages in social care is critical to fulfilling Frank's law? One way that could be addressed is by giving social care staff an immediate pay rise to £12 an hour, going up to £15 an hour. The Government is very well aware of the improvement that is required in terms of the social care workforce. That is why we have announced and funded two pay rises in the past few months. I recognise that there is more to do in that front, and fair work has to be at the heart of the agenda. It will be as part of the national care service, but we cannot wait until the national care service comes into play. That is why the cabinet secretary and I will continue to work with health and social care partnerships and others to ensure that we can do our level best for the workforce, who have done so much during the course of the pandemic and before that. To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken to raise awareness of the potential risks to health and wellbeing of children posed by button batteries. Button batteries have been involved in truly tragic incidents of childhood injury and death. I was shocked by reports of the harrowing death over Christmas of young Hugh MacMahon. My sympathies are with his family, who I understand have close ties with Claire Adamson's constituency. The Scottish Government supports organisations such as the Child Accident Prevention Trust and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which work tirelessly to publicise threats to children's health and wellbeing, including button batteries. We are engaging with them and with other stakeholders to identify what more can be done on this important matter. Claire Adamson Thank you very much to the minister for her answer and for her condolences, which I am sure are shared across the Parliament today for my young constituent, who died so tragically. The cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness has returned to this issue often. Within the past two years, we have had presentations on it, and our concern lies with the availability of fake goods online and fake goods in our shops, but we are also concerned that few parents are aware of the risks that are posed by them. I wonder if the minister would undertake to work with the UK Government's new working group under Paul Scully MP, who is engaged in the trading standard aspect of this, but also work with the CPD to see how we can raise awareness and parents' and carers of the potentially fatal health issue. Thank you. Let me first acknowledge the work done by Claire Adamson and the cross-party group, which she convened to highlight the risks of button batteries. The regulation of product safety is reserved to the UK Government, and Ms Adamson is correct that the UK Minister Paul Scully MP recently proposed a working group to progress safety improvement in this area. That comes against another tragic death last May, which sadly seemed to foreshadow the death of Hugh McMahon. I can give absolute assurance that the Scottish Government will engage with the UK working group. Indeed, our officials have already had positive discussions with the counterparts of Mr Scully's department around our eagerness to co-operate and to help drive forward extensive work to tackle the risks, and that eagerness to co-operate naturally extends to the cross-party group and any other partners in accident prevention. To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to support the NHS and social care recruitment in rural areas. Since 2016, we have supported the Scottish Rural Medical Collaborative to develop recruitment and retention measures, investing more than £300,000 in 2020-21. To support the recruitment of GPs to rural practices, we have allocated £200,000 to fund relocation expenses and £400,000 for golden hellos. We have established a graduate entry medicine programme with the universities of Dundee and St Andrews focusing on remote and rural medicine and healthcare improvement. We are also in the scoping stage for the creation of a centre of excellence for rural and remote medicine and social care. Alexander Burnett I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. In my constituency, the medical practices in Arford and Torffins have unfortunately, like many others across Scotland, been unable to recruit new GPs and have handed their contract back to NHS Grampian. I note the cabinet secretary's comments about the Scottish Rural Medical Collaborative funding in previous years. Can I just ask if he will commit to increasing funding to his programme to rediscover the joy of general practice, which seeks to provide GPs the opportunity to work in different parts of Scotland and outline any other plans to incentivise uptake and recruitment in rural areas? I can say this is an exceptionally important point raised by Alexander Burnett. I will explore the increase in funding, because he is right to rediscover the joy programme. It was an excellent programme, but we will also look to see what more we can do to incentivise. He knows that we have plans in place to increase the numbers of GPs in Scotland. He is absolutely right to say that that should be an equitable distribution, not just focused, for example, on the central belt but also on our remote, rural and island communities. I will look at the suggestion that he has raised, and I will come back to the member. Cabinet Secretary, what step is the Scottish Government taking to facilitate continued NHS and social care recruitment from EU countries? I thank Faisal Toddry for an exceptionally important question. It is important in the NHS, but it is also very important in social care as well. Faisal Toddry will have done, when I visit care homes in my constituency, since Brexit. There is clearly a noticeable absence of those European workers who work tirelessly to care for others in social care. We are working with the UK Government in relation to social care recruitment from overseas, including the EU. We had a good meeting this morning. A number of ministerial colleagues across Government, as part of the population task force, are looking at what we can do more in relation to migration for health and social care. Although that work is under way, where we can do that in Scotland, we will, where we need to work across the nations of the UK. We are doing that, but there is no doubt at all that the impact of Brexit on health and social care is absolutely being felt on the ground. I think that we need a bit more urgency from the health secretary. Recruitment in my constituency of health and social care workers is dire. Just this week, there are 36 advertised vacancies in social care and 176 in the NHS. Is not that the result of poor workforce planning and poor rates of pay in the social care sector? No, I do not agree with that. In fact, in the time that I have been health secretary, there has been two uplifts to pay for adult social care workers. I would say to Willie Rennie that we are not waiting for international recruitment, I was simply answering Mr Trawdry's very good question. He will have noted that when I stood here in Parliament in October as part of our £300 million winter package, a core component of that was recruiting some more healthcare support workers, and that included and includes in Fife. There has been some recruitment in Fife. I am happy to provide him offline with further detail to that, but I take his point. The number one issue that we are dealing with in relation to social care is workforce, workforce, workforce. I promise him that there is no lack of urgency for myself, my colleague Kevin Stewart, or the Government, on the very important issue that he raises. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the roll-out of its national cancer plan. The national cancer plan is tracked against key milestones and regularly reported on to the national cancer recovery group. Overall, the plan is progressing well, notwithstanding the effects of the pandemic. On our flagship actions, I can report that Scotland's first three early cancer diagnostic centres are now live in NHS Ayrshire and Ireland, Dumfries and Galloway and Fife, and initial preliminary data on those centres looks positive. We have 12 single-point of contact pilots, trialling a person-centred approach to supporting patients throughout their cancer journey. The digital prehabilitation resources are in development, and it is anticipated to go live with the nutrition and psychological wellbeing frameworks this spring. Lastly, the Scottish Cancer Network has established supporting our once-for-scotland approach to cancer services. Can you further advise how the detect cancer early programme and the national cancer screening programmes are being adapted to respond to the continuing health inequality gap? It is an exceptionally important question. I think that Stephanie Callaghan may well have been at the debate that we had that was secured by Jackie Baillie in relation to World Cancer Day. Last week, it was an important debate, and a number of the colleagues raised the issue of the cancer care gap and the inequality gap. I would say that there is one demonstration of how we are tackling that inequality gap, and there is still work to do. Of course, there is one demonstration of how we are tackling that, if we look at lung cancer in particular. A £44 million detect cancer early programme aims to increase the proportion of bowel, breast and lung cancers diagnosed at stage 1 while reducing health inequalities. Through that work, we have seen that the proportion of lung cancers diagnosed at the earliest stage has increased by 45 per cent and by 53 per cent in the most deprived areas of Scotland. There is more work to do right across the various different cancer types, but reducing that inequality gap is key to the recovery of our cancer services. I wonder whether I could push the cabinet secretary slightly further on that, because there is a shocking 20 per cent point gap in bowel screening between people in the most deprived and the least deprived areas. It is indeed a matter of great shame that the most deprived in our communities remain at the greatest threat due to late cancer diagnosis. We know already since the start of the pandemic that almost 30,000 of our fellow Scots have died from cancer. Can I press the cabinet secretary on what urgent action the Government is taking to encourage the uptake on screening across all cancers in our most deprived communities? Yes, I agree with Jackie Baillie's characterization that that is unacceptable and she was right to raise that in the debate that she did and right to raise it again today. We have allocated £2 million over 2021-22 and 2022-23 to continue our cancer inequality screening programme to tackle inequalities and encourage those who are eligible to take up their invite to the cancer screening programme. That is in addition to the £5 million that we invested in the previous five years. Following feedback, we will no longer ask for bids for individual, often small-scale projects. Instead, we have developed a brand, a blend of national-based approaches complemented by local investments. There is more to do in that. We are investing in that inequalities gap, that cancer care gap that Jackie Baillie and Stephanie Callaghan have spoken about. As we recover our cancer services, which is my number one priority, reducing that inequality gap is the key component of that. Question 5, Mercedes Villalba, who is joining us remotely. Please continue. We can hear you now, Ms Villalba. Please pose your question, thank you. Okay, thank you. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what steps it is taking to improve the provision of services for NHS Tayside breast cancer patients. The Scottish Government officials are currently working closely with the chief executive of NHS Tayside to support the board to take forward a rebuild plan for recruitment of oncology consultants, specialist nursing and other support staff to deliver a local service. That will include options around international recruitment, training schemes, marketing strategies and campaigns, training placements and reexamining local capacity too. It is a priority to ensure a locally delivered service for breast cancer patients in NHS Tayside. Mercedes Villalba. Thank you, Minister, for your response. NHS Tayside revealed today that vacancies that leave the health board with no breast cancer oncology specialists remain unfilled. There seems to be an issue with nationwide skills shortage. The minister mentioned looking at all options, including international recruitment and training. Could he outline specifically what is being done to develop the long-term plan for training and recruitment for such specialists domestically? Cabinet Secretary. I think that it is a very important point raised by Ms Villalba. What I would say is that NHS Tayside has undertaken a number of recruitment rounds and they have not been able to fulfill those posts. That is not just unique to NHS Tayside, but she is right to suggest that that is an issue. That is broader than that. We are looking at what we can do to ensure that we can recruit—I have mentioned some of that in my opening answer—in domestic and international recruitment, training placements and local capacity. Ultimately, I am asking my officials and some others to give us some assistance in relation to what we can do to fill those oncology workforce gaps that we currently have, not just in Tayside but across Scotland. However, although I am referencing the issues across Scotland, they are most acutely felt in NHS Tayside. Without any equivocation, the situation in NHS Tayside's breast cancer service to me is simply not a satisfactory one and therefore one that is a priority for us to try to resolve. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will meet its chronic pain clinic waiting time target during the current reporting quarter 1 January to 31 March. Public Health Scotland published waiting times for pain services from the data provided by health boards in line with their reporting schedule. Data for the quarter ending 31 March 2022 will be published in June. Although I cannot predict those figures, health boards have continued to make progress in restarting pain services during the pandemic, waiting times for the figures, waiting times figures for the quarter ending September 2021, so almost 90 per cent of people referred to pain services were seen within the 18-week target. That is an improvement on the previous quarter where almost 80 per cent of people were seen within the target. Thank you, Minister, for that answer. In 2019, before the pandemic, some 3,000 patients were seen in a Scottish pain clinic each quarter. In quarter 3, 2021, this number was around 1,900. The Government announced a £240,000 chronic pain winter support fund to enhance support for people with chronic pain, but we have yet to see a detailed plan on where this money will be spent and what patients will benefit. My questions are how much of this money has gone into health boards and other partners? Specifically, what will the money be used for and compared with quarter 3 2021? How many additional patients do you anticipate will be seen in pain clinics during quarter 1 and 2 of 2022 as a result of your initiative? Services are working extremely hard to tackle this issue. There have been real impacts throughout the pandemic on people suffering chronic pain. I understand just how incredibly difficult it is to continue to suffer chronic pain. We are supporting boards to take action and making every effort possible to remobilise pain management services as quickly and as safely as possible. Owing to continued and expected pressures on pain services in the winter period, it is a challenge to expect performance to improve over the next reporting period. In recognition of that challenge, we launched the chronic pain winter support fund, which has provided almost £240,000 of funding to a range of national and local projects, which are intended to provide additional capacity and to support people with chronic pain right across Scotland in the coming months. The chronic pain service in NHS Lanarkshire has effectively been closed down for anyone needing pain relief injections. I draw the Government's attention to my constituent, Liz Barry, whose pain relief injection is overdue by three years. Liz, a former nurse and a courageous advocate for chronic pain patients, fears that her mental health is being destroyed and that she is losing hope. Another constituent, disabled ward veteran, Matt Walton, has been waiting in agony for treatment since 2019. Will the minister work with me urgently to support Liz and Matt and confirm that any patients who need a vital pain relief injection will be offered a deferral to another board if their own health board cannot cope with demand? First, let me reiterate again that I absolutely appreciate how difficult it is to live with chronic pain, particularly during the pandemic, and that is why we are taking action to support patients and to ensure that health boards are making every effort to remobilise pain clinics. We specifically highlighted the remobilisation of pain services as a priority in our first NHS remobilisation plan in summer 2020, and we further underpinned the specific and clear instruction to health boards via our recovery framework for pain management in September 2020. We provided advice for people with chronic pain during the pandemic, which highlighted relevant information on the matter of injections to assist them with their discussions with their clinician and their health board. During the pandemic, we also explored alternative arrangements for specialist treatments such as injections that could be implemented locally. Based on clinical advice and guidance from professional bodies, they concluded that it would not be clinically safe in all circumstances. We will continue to work with boards to restart the full range of services as they continue to emerge from the latest wave of the virus. As ever, I am more than happy to work with Monica Lennon to improve the situation for the constituents that she has mentioned. To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to review and assess the pilots conducted as part of the strategy, the best start five-year plan for maternity and neonatal care. We have established early adopters to lead the way and to test a range of best start recommendations, including continuity of carer, the new model of neonatal intensive care, and the national bereavement care pathways. Those early adopters continue to develop, capture and review their practical experience of implementing recommendations, which has already informed development of guidance and standards to share with the wider maternity and neonatal community. That will support planning as we prepare to remobilise implementation. The Scottish Government intends to evaluate best start and is working with Public Health Scotland to develop the approach. I recently met a large group of midwives from NHS Lothian, including those with best start pilot experience. They have concerns with the pilot measurement of continuity of care, the integrity of actual results, the risk to postnatal continuity in the model and importantly recruitment and retention of midwives. Can the minister take a closer look at the issues arising from the pilots and be prepared to meet with midwives and indeed mothers involved to ascertain the best way forward for continuity of maternity care, including the aim of reducing C-sections? Best start continuity of carer provides relationship-based care and is a key feature of high quality midwifery care. The early adopter boards, including Lothian, were established to test implementation and to capture the learning from that. The best start programme board with the Royal College of Midwives undertook a deep dive into the implementation of the continuity of carer recommendations and their impact on the workforce prior to the pandemic. The findings were shared with the early adopter boards and fed into the next phase of implementation. That next phase will also include publication of an evaluation framework developed by the early adopters to support boards and to measure continuity. I look forward to meeting with midwives and mothers to hear about their experiences of the best start and to plan and to continue that engagement as we remobilise the programme over the coming months, so I'm more than happy to meet with your constituents. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, to ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the NHS recovery plan. Stated in the recovery plan, we've committed to reporting progress against commitments in the plan on an annual basis. The plan was published at the end of August last year and we've therefore aimed to provide the first annual update this summer. I thank the minister for that answer. What does it tell us about the SNP Government's recovery plan? A recent survey by RCN Scotland reveals that six in 10 nurses are considering quitting their jobs. We have a good record on NHS staffing. In fact, we have record numbers of staffing in Scotland. We have the best paid staff in Scotland in terms of nurses and qualified midwives. We have a decade of consecutive growth. When we look at Scotland, we have 95 GPs per 100,000. In England, where his party is in charge of that number, it's 78 per 100,000. We have a really good track record here in Scotland. It's probably why his party has ripped off our NHS recovery plan. I've been contacted by a constituent whose son is nearly three and has complex needs. My constituent has been informed by NHS Lanarkshire that our son may have to wait up to four years for an autism assessment. As we recover from the pandemic, does the cabinet secretary agree that this is unacceptable and what action can the Government take to support the health board to reduce waiting times? I don't know the details of the individual circumstances, so I would ask if Ms Mackay has the consent to do so to pass the details on to us, and we'll be happy to investigate them further. The waiting list for orthopedic surgery in Scotland has risen from 21,000 in March 2020 to 37,000 in January 2022. A patient added to the waiting list for hip replacement in January 2022 will wait between 18 months and three years for surgery, depending on health board. Does the cabinet secretary agree that this is an unacceptable time to wait for treatment and it's wrong that waiting times are determined by a postcode lottery? And what urgent action will the Scottish Government take to address that? What I would say to the member is that, of course, the impact of the pandemic has undoubtedly exacerbated some of those weeks. I'm not suggesting that there wasn't challenges before, but I think that it would also be equally incorrect and inaccurate not to recognise the real shock that the pandemic has had. That's why, and I know that Ms Duncan Glancy will have looked at the NHS recovery plan. It does go into detail about those elective procedures and how we look to increase capacity by 10 per cent over the course of that plan. Key to that will be the £400 million that we will invest in the creation of a network of national treatment centres that will help us to get through some of those elective procedures so that people will not have to wait the length of time that Ms Duncan Glancy references. Thank you, cabinet secretary. That concludes portfolio questions on health and social care, and I'll allow a very brief pause before we move on to the next portfolio questions to allow front-bench teams to change safely. The next portfolio is social justice housing and local government. Again, if a member wishes to request a supplementary question, they should press the request-to-speak button during the relevant question, or indicate so in the chat function by entering the letter R. I call question 1, Pam Gozel. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on homelessness rates in Scotland. Tackling and ending homelessness remains a critical priority for this Government, which is why we are investing £100 million between 2018 and 2026 to implement our ending homelessness together action plan in partnership with local government. The latest homelessness rates that were published in June 2021 showed that the average rate of homeless households per 1,000 population in 2020-21 was 6.1. However, we know that the impact of the pandemic meant that the 2020-21 reporting year was unusual, making year-on-year comparisons of homelessness rates quite difficult. Pam Gozel, I thank the cabinet secretary for her response. I recently supported the homeless veterans project to re-home a veteran named Andy. Veterans account for around a quarter of all rough sleepers. Like Andy, many veterans begin in unsustainable accommodation or temporary housing before ending up on the streets. Will the Scottish Government help support veterans into safe and stable housing as quickly as possible by working with local authorities to nominate armed forces lead officers within their housing and homelessness services? Pam Gozel raises an important point. It is very important that veterans are supporting. I know that there is a lot of good work going on around local authorities to do just that. The rapid rehousing transition plans are critical in making sure that people are moved into settled accommodation with the correct support. We know that for a number of veterans, not all, but a number requires additional support for all the reasons that we fully understand. That is the best way of solving homelessness and will remain the focus of the Scottish Government. However, if there is more that we can do, I am working with local authority partners and some of the suggestions that Pam Gozel made, I am happy to take forward and investigate further. Thank you, Presiding Officer. First, it is clear that the latest statistics are that there is much work. It is clear that the latest stats show that there is still a lot of work to be done. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that the latest data also makes it clear that councils and front-line organisations have put in a remarkable amount of work on minimising the potential immense damage that the pandemic could have had on those rough sleeping or at risk of rough sleeping? Throughout the pandemic, local authorities and front-line organisations have worked tirelessly to ensure that people at risk of or in rough sleeping a situation can access accommodation and support. That includes the eradication of night shelters in Glasgow and Edinburgh and those being replaced by self-contained rapid rehousing welcome centres. I had the opportunity to visit the Glasgow centre a few weeks ago. Councils and the third sector share our commitment to ensuring that everyone has a safe place to stay. I thank them for the work that they have undertaken. The Scottish Government remains committed to working in partnership with them to end rough sleeping. I wonder if the cabinet secretary is able to say why the homelessness prevention and strategy group that she chairs has only met once since the election, given the rate of homelessness and whether she feels that she is getting the Government's support. They need to implement the next phase of the homelessness together action plan. The prevention strategy group has a really important role to play in getting on with the work in-between meetings and coming together to check the progress of that work is really the aim of the meeting itself. I have engaged over the last few months with numerous key stakeholders in the homelessness sector and the housing sector who are working on the agenda. There is no lack of meetings. What is most important is the action from those meetings in making sure that the progress is made to deliver the strategy to eradicate homelessness. Cabinet Secretary, patience on this is running out. In 2012, the Government promised to eradicate homelessness within months. 10 years later, 7,500 children were found to be in temporary accommodation. When will the Government make its promise to those children? It is very clear from the feedback from stakeholders, which I am sure if Willie Rennie wanted to contact them, he would tell him not just me saying that we have the right plan in our homelessness strategy. He will be aware that it is not an easy thing to do to eradicate homelessness. It is very complex, which is why we now have the rapid rehousing transition plans, why we now have housing firsts, which recognises that it is not just about bricks and mortar, it is also about the wraparound services to deal with issues around addiction, around mental health and the other supports that people need. We will get on with the delivery of the plan, progress is being made and we will continue to work with our stakeholders and partners to make that progress. To ask the Scottish Government what support it is giving to local authorities to help tackle homelessness. In 2022-23, £8 million of our £10 million ending homelessness together fund will go to local authorities to support rapid rehousing transition plans, which help to move people as quickly as possible into settled accommodation. We will also provide local authorities with resource of £23.5 million for homelessness prevention and response measures. Through the housing options hubs, we are supporting all local authorities to share learning and good practice and we are engaging with a number of local authorities to address key issues such as aiding their compliance with the unsuitable accommodation order. I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer. Does she say in my optimism that the example set by Finland on their own successful housing first programme is proof that Scotland is on the right track with its co-ordinated approach to prevent homelessness across the country? The Scottish Government is fully committed to supporting local authorities across the country to develop housing first programmes as part of their rapid rehousing transition plans. A key component is the prevention of homelessness. We are aware that 27 local authorities have developed or are in the process of developing their housing first programme. Over 1,000 housing first tenancies have started across Scotland to date, and the Scottish Government is working with partners on a suite of tools to support the continued scaling up of housing first, because we know that it works. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Last year, Glasgow City Council were able to recover £8.8 million from the health mobilisation plan arrangement through its IJB, whilst Edinburgh was unable to recover at the equivalent cost of £9.3 million. I have raised that with the finance minister but I have not heard any response to date. Can I ask the cabinet secretary what her view is on that, whether or not that financial anomaly should be addressed? Can I also ask whether the Scottish Government intends to extend the tenant grant fund beyond March of this year? First of all, on the tenant grant fund, we will be looking at a range of measures to support the recovery from the pandemic to ensure that we sustain tenancies, avoid homelessness and address the cost of living pressures that are impacting on families. On the health mobilisation plans, if the member does not mind, I will go and have a look into that. I will make sure that either a response comes from my office or the cabinet secretary for finance or health. Last week, new figures were published showing that Glasgow has seen a rise of 27 per cent in homelessness in the city. Glasgow City Council is increasingly failing to close homelessness cases and people are continuing to go without basic necessities such as warmth, shelter and a place to sleep. Can the cabinet secretary set out what the Government is doing to support Glasgow City Council to reduce homelessness and does the cabinet secretary agree that cutting local authority budgets will damage those efforts? We do not want to see any increases in homelessness. We know that one of the issues that we have in Glasgow that I am sure the member will be aware of is the largest dispersal area in Scotland for asylum seekers and some of the issues that are impacting on the statistics. However, I am happy to write to Pam Duncan-Glancy with a bit more information on that. We work with all local authorities to make sure that their plans for addressing homelessness are the right plans. The welcome centre that I mentioned earlier is a really good centre that provides high-quality advice and assistance to people. They are trying to get people into settled accommodation as quickly as possible and to reduce the use of temporary accommodation. There is always a lot to do, but I think that they have worked really hard, along with stakeholders in the third sector, to reduce rough sleeping dramatically. Of course, we cannot be complacent. I am happy to write to Pam Duncan-Glancy with more specifics on what Glasgow is doing to tackle homelessness. To ask the Scottish Government when ministers last met with officials from the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. I met the interim chair and chief executive of the office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, Oscar, on 19 August 2021. I meet at least once a year with the Oscar chair and chief executive and my officials meet with Oscar staff on a regular basis. Most of Scotland's 25,000 charities are honest and do incredible work. However, over the past two years, 105 have been subject to regulatory action, yet Oscar has only published details of five of those cases. In the interests of public confidence and transparency, will the minister urge the watchdog to show its teeth by routinely naming and shaming Scotland's charity rogues? The first thing to say is that Oscar is an independent regulator and registrar for, as the member said, over 25,000 charities in Scotland and report directly to the Scottish Parliament, not to the Scottish Government. Those are issues that could potentially be pursued through that route. I think that Oscar does a good job overseeing and monitoring the charitable sector, but if there is any more helpful information that I can give him, I will write to him with further information. Karen Adam, who is joining us remotely. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on calls by the anti-poverty campaigner, Jack Monroe, for policy makers to take a more comprehensive view of tracking the full cost of poverty, as highlighted by the Vines Boots Index. The Scottish Government commends Jack Monroe for bringing this to the attention of the public and agrees that one inflation rate does not fit all. Whilst the Vines Boots Index does not yet exist, it is proposed that it should be designed to reflect the experience of inflation for those on the lowest incomes. I welcome the work that the Office of National Statistics is doing to develop and enhance consumer price indices to help us to measure impact for lower-income households and to increase the range of products used to calculate inflation. The initiative complements this Government's existing work to monitor progress in reducing poverty and income inequality, and we look forward to monitoring its progress. Karen Adam. The Vines Boots Index sets out the socio-economic unfairness that people on low incomes and in poverty face. Living hand to mouth means buying cheaper products, which do not last as long as more expensive, well-made products. It is relatively more costly to be on a low income, and those earning the least bear the brunt of austerity the most. Can the minister commit to ensuring that we look holistically at the true costs of being on a low income in Scotland and outline how that can be done? As Karen Adam emphasises, lower-income households spend a greater proportion of their income on essentials such as food and fuel, and are disproportionately affected by the cost of living crisis. That is why we favour a cash-based approach to tackling poverty so that low-income households can spend money where it makes the most sense for their household. More accurate measurement of consumer costs, as proposed by the Vines Boots Index and as being taken forward by the ONS, is a welcome step that will help to better understand and importantly address the impacts for lower-income households. To ask the Scottish Government how it is supporting households that are facing hardship and debt as a result of the rising costs of living. We are providing immediate support for households during the cost of living crisis, especially those on low incomes. Our £10 million fuel insecurity fund, part of our overall £41 million winter support package, is helping people to deal with rising heating costs. This year, we have provided £25 million to local authorities to tackle financial insecurity, alongside £7.4 million of investment in free debt advice this year. The finance secretary will set out further details on mitigating the cost of living crisis tomorrow. We have a Westminster Government that has not only put a cap on benefits, cut universal credit and put up national insurance but has also locked people into years of rising energy bills and concerns about how they heat their homes. When David Cameron told them to cut the green crap, they pulled the rug away from alternatives to gas, a decision that has added £2.5 billion to our home energy bills. Does the minister agree that green energy is the key to reducing our reliance on gas and cutting bills, and only with the full powers over energy policy can we build a greener Scotland? The UK Government has indeed failed to this juncture to deal effectively with the cost of living crisis, which, of course, is very serious for communities and families all across the UK, all across Scotland and for all of our constituents. We urge them to use their powers to the greatest extent, their wide-ranging financial powers that, of course, this Parliament does not have to do more for people in communities across Scotland and across the UK. Of course, the greater provision of renewable energy, although covered by another portfolio that is relevant to all of us, has had a significant positive impact on the reliability of supply here in Scotland. As we continue to develop that capacity, that will be of benefit to not just the environment but to job creation and wider public good here in Scotland. We need to maximise the opportunities for renewable energy. Research has shown that households that have prepayment meters often face additional challenges with fuel poverty. Can I ask the minister whether or not the Scottish Government has spoken with energy companies with regard to the replacement of payment meters? Specifically, what support schemes are being developed when we know that that is having an impact? The cabinet secretary, Michael Matheson, has engaged extensively with the energy sector on a regular basis and has been doing so particularly in recent weeks, as the cost of living crisis and increased energy costs have been particularly pertinent. The question of engagement with the energy sector and supporting consumers is, of course, something that the Scottish Government, particularly those on low incomes, has been doing not just in the recent weeks but for some time. For example, we have been providing £65 million of direct financial support to around half a million households through our £130 pandemic support payment, which was paid by the end of October 2021. We are committing to delivering doubling the Scottish child payment from April onwards. We have invested in bridging payments. We continue to invest in the Scottish welfare fund and we have provided our £40 million winter support fund among many other initiatives. We will continue to do all that we can. Mr Briggs raised an important point and we will continue as the Government to consider the points raised and to help families as much as possible at this time. While the Scottish Government has introduced game-changing policies such as the Scottish child payment, progress is undermined by a cost of living crisis that is being ignored by the Tories in Westminster. Does the minister agree that, while the SNP Government is using all the powers that are available to support hard-pressed households, is it the UK Government that holds the key powers to make a difference? As I have emphasised already, so far the UK Government has unfortunately failed to fully get to grips with the cost of living crisis and has not used its many powers that are reserved to them to support people in need. We continue to urge them to do so. The Scottish Government will continue to use all the powers that are available to us to help hard-pressed households. As was published earlier this week, for example, we have supported 530,000 households with £130 pandemic payment. In addition, we have our £41 million winter support package that helps people struggling with costs. We also have a range of benefits that includes our five family benefits. One of those is the Scottish child payment that we are doubling in April. To ask the Scottish Government whether it anticipates that the lifting of the eviction ban in place during the Covid-19 pandemic will result in increased homelessness. The rental eviction ban was a temporary public health measure that ended on 9 August 2021 when the health protection coronavirus restrictions and requirement local levels Scotland regulations were revoked. That reflected advances made against the pandemic. Since then, data from the first-tier tribunal does not show any significant increases in repossession action compared to pre-pandemic levels. Existing measures such as the private landlord pre-action protocols, tribunal discretion and the £10 million tenant grant fund are helping to sustain tenancies and prevent homelessness. Where evictions are unavoidable, we have strong homelessness legislation in place to support people. Jackie Baillie New figures from the Scottish Government show that homelessness among private renters has soared by over a third between 2020 and 2021. I suspect that that will in part be due to the lifting of the eviction ban, which we warned the Government was a likely consequence. The Government is set to close the tenant grant fund scheme for struggling tenants at the end of March, despite the escalating cost of living crisis. Will the cabinet secretary say whether there are plans to extend the scheme or whether there are specific proposals to tackle the drastic rise in homelessness in the private rented sector? As Jackie Baillie will be aware, the action taken at the time in terms of the eviction ban was based around the public health guidance at the time. Once that changed, we cannot then impose a measure that is based on public health guidance, because it would not have been sustainable in the courts, either, I would think. What can we do? As I mentioned earlier on, in my response to Miles Briggs, we will be looking at what further measures can be made. The tenant grant fund is helping people in here and now, and local authorities are working hard to make sure that those in the private rented sector and the social rented sector who are struggling with their years on a risk of homelessness are being helped through that. We also have discretionary housing payments of £80 million, which are also helping people who need that support with housing costs. We are looking at the moment as a Government at what more we can do around the cost of living crisis. Kate Forbes will make further announcements about support to families tomorrow. We will continue to look at what more we can do across portfolios to support people through the coming weeks and months, because we know the pressures that families will be under. The emergency measures on evictions were clearly effective during the height of the pandemic, but does the cabinet secretary agree with me that the longer-term structural changes currently under way, prevention of homelessness, is set to ensure a fair table system of solid? I am afraid that Mr Coffey's sound was not great. Did the cabinet secretary get enough to... I have to suggest, I think, that we have the hearing now where we have to support families, particularly with the cost of living pressures, but we also need to make sure that we make the changes over the medium to the long-term that need to be made. Our goal of making sure that everyone has access to a safe, warm, affordable, high-quality and energy-efficient home that meets their needs is our goal. By taking further steps to improve accessibility, affordability and standards across the rented sector and preventing homelessness happening in the first place, will help us to achieve that vision. The new proposals that are out for consultation build on the strong housing rights that already exist in Scotland, including through proposed new duties on landlords and public bodies and the implementation of a national system of rent controls. To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to ensure that children living in temporary accommodation have access to permanent homes. While it can provide an important safety net, temporary accommodation must be of good quality and time spent there should be as short as possible, especially for families with children. The number of households in temporary accommodation is too high, despite efforts from councils, charities and other partners. The Scottish Government is supporting local authorities with £53.5 million between 2018 and 2024 to implement their rapid re-housing transition plans and housing first approaches. Those measures support councils to reduce the overall need for temporary accommodation, as well as the length of time spent in temporary accommodation. Can I thank the cabinet member for that answer and draw attention to my register of interests? We have a housing crisis with the Zoopla reporting today that average rents through their site in Edinburgh have risen to £974 a month. Only 14 per cent of Edinburgh's homes are available for social rent compared to the national average of 23 per cent, and Scottish Government grant funding for homes covers only a fraction of the bill's costs. Will the Scottish Government commit to investing in Edinburgh to bring the number of social rent homes here closer to the national average? I am well aware of the particular issues in the rented sector and the owner-occupied sector. The housing situation here is not replicated necessarily in other parts of Scotland, so we recognise that. I have had a number of discussions with local leaders about that. I support the City of Edinburgh Council over the last decade. It has amounted to more than £0.5 billion in grant support from the Scottish Government, which has contributed to the delivery of more than 13,000 affordable homes. The City of Edinburgh Council will receive a further £233.8 million funding for good quality affordable housing across the capital over this Parliament. That is an increase of £32.4 million, a 16 per cent increase on the previous five years. We are also making sure that we are responding and supporting Edinburgh's response to homelessness with £3.3 million for prevention. We have given them more than £871,000 for rapid rehousing, as well as a winter fund for social protection of £563,000. We have also supported the delivery of a rapid rehousing welcome centre in Edinburgh. I know that there is more to do in the City of Edinburgh, and we are supporting Edinburgh, along with other local authorities. If there are innovative measures that can be brought forward that Edinburgh wants us to consider, then that is something that we would be happy to consider. Question 8 was not lodged. That concludes portfolio questions on social justice, housing and local government. There will be a short pause to allow Front Bench teams to change safely before the next item of business.