Consultation Responses
A significant part of our output, which often receives less attention, is our submissions to Government or international bodies' consultations. A selection of these submissions can be found below.
The Strategy will guide the work that the Government, and its partners, will do to improve mental health and wellbeing in Scotland.
The Strategy will mainly cover the next five years, until 2027. However, it will set out a much longer term vision and outcomes for the mental health and wellbeing of the population.
DEFRA have developed a set of proposed changes to public sector food and catering policy, including the Government Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services (GBSF), to deliver their vision that public sector food and catering is an exemplar to wider society in delivering positive health, animal welfare, environmental and socio-economic impacts.
We've warned the proposed changes could lead to more meat from animals slaughtered without stunning supplied in the public sector.
The Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) will publish a new Suicide prevention Strategy and Action Plan in September 2022.
The NSS has emphasised the high suicide rate amongst the terminally ill and called on the Scottish Government to implement a legal framework around assisted dying. Helping a terminally ill patient who wishes to end their life is not a specific offence under Scots law but can be prosecuted as murder.
The UN Office of the Higher Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) are developing joint guidance on mental health, human rights and legislation. The guidance aims "to be a resource for countries when considering legislative measures to support the transformation of mental health systems, in line with international human rights law".
In our input, we advised the OHCHR and the WHO to be cautious about integrating religion in mental health care.
The independent Strategic Review of Funding and Commissioning of Violence Against Women and Girls Services, chaired by Lesley Irving, has been established by the Scottish Government to develop a new funding model that will ensure high quality, accessible specialist services across Scotland for those experiencing any form of violence against women and girls.
The NSS responded warning against the involvement of third party services with conservative religious views about gender, or which proselytise to vulnerable people.
The government has committed to develop a new cross-government, 10-year plan for mental health and wellbeing for England to support this objective. They have launched a discussion paper and call for evidence to ask the public a range of questions to help develop the new plan.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities held a consultation on social cohesion and resilience. They sought views on the experience of victims of extremism, protecting social cohesion, and strengthening resilience against extremist and other harmful divisive activities.
We responded giving examples of religious extremism and its threat to social cohesion.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) consulted on updates to its legal guidance on domestic abuse to assist prosecutors ensure the delivery of justice for victims.
We responded welcoming the inclusion of religious courts in the guidance, but warned that elsewhere, the guidance risks absolving religious organisations of contributions to domestic abuse.
The closure of a non-faith school in Wigan would further reduce the already limited options for secular education. Our response argues that this would be unfair and discriminatory, and may breech the Council's duty to provide adequate school places.
Press regulator IMPRESS is consulting on revisions to its standards code, which aims to protect the public from "unethical news reporting". All IMPRESS members must adhere to the code.
We've warned the code may restrict free speech and distort reporting through pro-religion bias.