I am very concerned about the impact on people’s lives that will result from the recently announced amendments being made to the Personal Independence Payment regulations by the UK Government. I have already written to the UK Minister responsible for this policy, expressing both this Government's opposition and the strength of feeling in Scotland about the number of people who will be affected, and calling on the UK Government to reconsider these changes.

For our part, we are committed to embedding dignity and respect in every aspect of Scotland’s approach to delivering social security. We will do this by involving those with direct experience of the current benefits system in the design of our new processes - through our Experience Panels – and by drawing on expertise through groups such as the Disability and Carers Benefits Expert Advisory Group, chaired by Dr Jim McCormick, current Associate Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Scotland has a thriving life sciences community which is recognised for the distinctive capabilities of our business base and research institutions, international reputation and potential for significant growth and creation of high value jobs.

The Scottish Government’s Programme of Government (2016) outlines our commitment to life sciences as a key sector. The Scottish Government and our agencies will continue to support the work of Life Sciences Scotland as they work to implement the priorities identified in the industry led Life Sciences Strategy for Scotland 2025 Vision: Accelerating Growth, Driving Innovation published on
2 February 2017. The strategy, which as co-chair of Life Sciences Scotland I fully welcome aims to increase the turnover in the sector to £8 billion by 2025, or a 90% increase. Since 2010 the life sciences sector has seen a 29% growth in turnover and 24% growth in gross value added (GVA), with current turnover in excess of
£4.2 billion.

Our overarching economic ambition is to see Scotland ranked in the top quartile of OECD countries for productivity, sustainability, equality and wellbeing. In working towards this, a strong innovation performance will be critical to improving Scotland’s long-term productivity growth. The Life Sciences sector is an important contributor to this, as spending on Research and Development in this sector represents 32.7 per cent of the total Business Enterprise Research and Development (BERD) spend in Scotland.

As regards to Scottish Government interactions to support growth in the sector we have, among many other areas of support, introduced six Enterprise Areas for life sciences, including Edinburgh Bioquarter, provided initiatives such as the Health Innovation Partnerships, developed the Innovation Centre programme, covering Biomedical and medical devices, and we have enhanced support for the sector by linking more effectively to the NHS.

Since 2010 the life sciences sector has seen a 29% growth in turnover and 24% growth in gross value added (GVA), with current turnover in excess of £4.2 billion.

A package of support is available through the Scottish Government and our agencies to stimulate further growth, including:

• Facilitating academic and industry collaborations through the Innovation Centres, particularly in Digital Health, Stratified Medicine, and Industrial Biotechnology;

• Providing innovation support through the SMART programme;

• Offering the Highlands and Islands Pathfinder Accelerator initiative;

• Delivering the Skills Investment Plan for Scotland;

• Developing 6 Life Science Enterprise Areas across Scotland to support employment, investment and growth;

• Supporting the development of medical technologies through the Health Innovation Partnership with the Scottish Life Sciences Association;

• Arranging account manager support for national and international companies; and

• Stimulating access to the NHS and to clinical investigators and patients through a single point of contact for industry; accessible clinical research support infrastructures; and streamlined and timely clinical trial approvals.

Significantly, the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) is one of the most active investor in Life Sciences across in the UK, with 30 per cent of its portfolio in life sciences. SIB has invested £39 million in the sector over the last 5 years, leveraging £98.6 million in private funds which has been a great stimulus to the sector.

The Scottish Government is considering the benefits and drawbacks of a deposit return scheme. Such a scheme has the potential to reduce litter and improve recycling, but other factors must be taken into consideration. These include the impact on small stores with limited space, costs to retailers, and the impact on local authority kerbside collections.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the representation of women in senior and decision making positions. Gender balanced boards are clearly important as a matter of equality and moral principle, but evidence shows that there is a strong economic imperative too. Businesses that have a mix of men and women responsible for corporate governance do better on measures like return on investment and total shareholder return. In 2016, a study by the International Monetary Fund titled 'Unlocking Female Employment Potential in Europe' found strong evidence that companies with a higher proportion of women on the board, tended to be more profitable.

On 25 June 2015 the First Minister launched the Partnership for Change 50/50 by 2020 campaign, inviting private sector companies, voluntary sector organisations and public bodies to sign up to a voluntary commitment to work towards 50/50 gender balance on their boards by 2020. At the time of writing, the Partnership for Change has 191 signatories, including 36 private sector companies. Improving gender diversity on boards and in the workforce is also one of the nine components of the Scottish Business Pledge.

On 1 February 2017, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands & Islands Enterprise, in collaboration with the Scottish Government, delivered a conference for private sector companies to raise awareness of the business benefits of diverse boards and to support companies to consider what action they can take to improve the gender balance and wider diversity of their boards. The Enterprise Agencies also offer a wide range of business support, and actively encourage companies who want to sign up to the Business Pledge to boost their performance through their commitment to fair and progressive business practices.

The Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise are working together through Scottish Development International to attract inward investment to Scotland. Over the last year 55 inward investment projects have been attracted to Scotland and 354 for 4 of the last 5 years. The 2016 Ernst and Young Attractiveness Survey on inward investment to the UK http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/2016-UK-Attractiveness-Survey/$FILE/EY-UK-Attractiveness-Survey-2016.pdf

has shown that Scotland is the 2nd most attractive location for Foreign Direct Investment outside of London. With 79% of investors citing the Single Market as an important factor in their decision to locate in Scotland the UK Government's hard approach to Brexit puts this at risk.

Attracting inward investment is becoming increasing competitive on a global basis and it is important we prioritise and co-ordinate our efforts and resources to increase our success rate. To that end we look to match Scotland’s capabilities, assets and resources with the global market opportunity through our sectoral approach. In particular, we are increasing the co-coordinated efforts of our One Scotland approach in the technology and Financial and Business services sectors in California and London given its global hub position.

The Scottish Government welcomes the recent figures that show a 6% increase in overseas tourism expenditure in the twelve months to September 2016 and that the number of North American visitors and their spending increased notably during this period with increases of 14% and 28% respectively.

Scotland is actively promoted by VisitScotland as part of its national and international marketing campaigns, as well as through other marketing activities including its consumer website, visitscotland.com, social media, its network of iCentres and information partner programme across the country.

North America remains a key overseas market, with ancestry a major driver for visitors. The Scottish Government recently provided an additional £100,000 to VisitScotland as part of the Year of History Heritage and Archaeology promotion to enable it to undertake a digital ancestral campaign launched in January to target consumers who are engaging with programmes such as Outlander and related Scottish interest programmes.

Improving productivity and competitiveness of Scotland’s economy is a central aim of Scotland’s Economic Strategy (SES). Our approach is based on the twin objectives of boosting competitiveness and tackling inequality. The SES sets out four priority areas for supporting Scotland’s economic growth: Internationalisation, Investment, Innovation and Inclusive Growth.

We are taking a number of actions under these four areas to support productivity across Scotland. These include a £500 million Scottish Growth Scheme to provide investment guarantees, and some loans, for eligible businesses. We are also improving Scotland’s connectivity, through strategic transport investments and investing in Scotland’s digital infrastructure to improve access to superfast broadband. Investment in our universities is planned to be more than £1 billion in 2017-18, and we are supporting collaborations between universities, businesses and others through our Innovation Centres. As announced in the Draft Budget, the Government will continue to expand the number of Modern Apprenticeship opportunities to 30,000 per year by 2020.

The Scottish Government is also a full partner in all the City Region Deals agreed in Scotland so far, matching and in some cases exceeding the financial contributions made by the UK Government. In January 2017, we established a Board of Trade, and are creating permanent trade representation in Berlin to add to our Innovation and Investment Hubs in Dublin, London and Brussels.

The Scottish Government are focused on the delivery of our enterprise and skills support, to help ensure we maximise the contribution our agencies make to improving Scotland’s economic performance.

I welcome the report and agree with its focus on collaborative action. The three key transition areas for plastics packaging identified by the report on redesign, reuse and optimising recycling are very much in line with the principles set out in our Circular Economy Strategy, ‘Making Things Last’.

We have already:

• agreed the Household Recycling Charter with COSLA, for more consistent local collections, improving quantity and quality of recycling including plastics packaging, with 23 Councils now signed up;

• established the Scottish Materials Brokerage Service to combine public sector recyclables contracts of sufficient scale to nurture reprocessing in Scotland and get a better deal for Councils, particularly as they move to consistent, higher quality materials under the Household Recycling Charter;

• introduced the carrier bag charge to increase reuse, reducing numbers of ‘single-use’ bags and cutting litter; and

• announced plans to legislate to ban plastic microbeads in cosmetics to protect the marine environment and to work with other administrations to ensure the ban is implemented effectively across the UK.

The Scottish Government is already involved in the New Plastics Economy initiative through Zero Waste Scotland input to the collaborative ‘pioneer projects’. One such project is currently in development with Scottish companies, focused on innovation in mechanical and chemical recycling of plastics.