I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-34544 on 6 March 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government published a further update to the work on Scottish Government bonds alongside the 2025-26 Scottish Budget https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781836910558.

This explains the outcome of the initial phase of due diligence and the work required in the next stage in the due diligence process. This phase will include timing considerations for an inaugural issuance given market conditions and related events.

The Scottish Government remains committed to ensuring Parliament is updated on this work as it progresses.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-34544 on 6 March 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government and its enterprise agencies have provided £1,354,000 for the development of carbon capture and storage technology in 2025.

The Scottish Government has committed £2m of grant funding support to the National Gas Transmission SCO2T Connect Project and to date, £1,345,000 of this funding has been provided.

The Scottish Government remains wholly committed to supporting the development and deployment of CCUS, including the Acorn Project and the Scottish Cluster. Unfortunately, the UK Government continue to delay making a final decision on the Acorn Project which is risking billions of private sector investment and thousands of jobs.

The Scottish Government is absolutely committed to ending violence against women and girls. As part of this commitment, in March 2024, the Scottish Government published a new framework on preventing and responding to gender-based violence.

The framework sets out guidance for schools on recording and monitoring incidents of gender-based violence. Schools will have their own reporting and recording systems connected to their local authority system or as a grant-aided or independent school. If a behaviour is covered by the definition of GBV provided in the framework, it should be recorded in the Bullying and Equalities module of SEEMiS, or under an equivalent section of a schools’ recording system. The Bullying and Equalities Module of SEEMiS should not be interpreted as being focused solely on bullying; it is designed to capture a range of behaviours related to equalities, and includes ‘GBV’ as a specific category.

Schools will have separate recording systems for incidents where a staff member is affected by a GBV incident, connected to their Health and Safety at Work or Dignity at Work policies. It is important that such incidents are part of the same monitoring and evaluation systems to capture a whole school picture of prevalence.

Finally, the joint relationships and behaviour in schools action plan includes an action to review all current processes for recording incidents, to identify potential means of streamlining processes and improving consistency. That work is scheduled to begin later this year.

The Scottish Government undertakes a detailed annual workforce planning process to determine intake targets for Initial Teacher Education (ITE), based on data from the annual Summary statistics for schools in Scotland and following consultation with the Teacher Workforce Planning Advisory Group.

To inform this process, we develop and publish an annual statistical model on future teacher number requirements. We also engage with universities throughout the year to collect data and monitor progress of intakes against targets.

As part of December’s education agreement with COSLA, we are also committed to working with local government to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels in 2025-26, and make meaningful progress towards reducing class contact time for teachers. Medium and long-term joint workforce planning will take into account the importance of responding to these issues, including different local needs.

Improving employment opportunities for Scotland’s teaching workforce will also be a key feature of the Education Assurance Board, that we are working with COSLA to establish, noting that the recruitment and deployment of teachers is the responsibility of local authorities.

The Scottish Government have published and commissioned several research papers to inform the development of Scottish Income Tax policy, all of which have been shared with Ministers upon conclusion of the work.

HMRC has published three pieces of research reports commissioned by the Scottish Government:

1.Estimating Scottish taxpayer behaviour in response to Scottish Income Tax changes introduced in 2018 to 2019: Estimating Scottish taxpayer behaviour in response to Scottish Income Tax changes introduced in 2018 to 2019 - GOV.UK

2.Intra-UK migration of individuals between Scotland & rUK: movements in numbers and income: Intra-UK migration of individuals: movements in numbers and income - GOV.UK

3.Labour market participation and intra-UK cross-border migration of Scottish taxpayers: Labour market participation and intra-UK migration of taxpayers - GOV.UK

In December 2021, The Scottish Government also published its own evaluation of the 2018-19 reforms: Scottish Income Tax: 2018-19 policy evaluation - gov.scot/

The Tax Strategy reaffirms our commitment to evaluate the impacts of our tax policies. This includes enhancing the evidence base on the links between tax and economic competitiveness, and fully evaluating the impacts of the 2023-24 and 2024-25 changes to the Scottish Income Tax system.

VisitScotland fees paid to influencers 2020 – 2024.

Please note:

• Lower spend in 2020 and 2021 was due to COVID-19 related travel restrictions.
• Lower spend in 2024 was due to in-year return of marketing budget and pause on marketing.
• Increased spend in 2022 was due to the growing impact of influencers on travel and booking habits and the opportunity to reach new audiences at a critical point in the recovery from COVID-19.

To evaluate influencer partnerships, VisitScotland review content performance such as view rates, comments and sentiment, shares, saves and other metrics.

VisitScotland’s Net Economic Impact (NEI) assessment looks at the incremental influence and impact of marketing activities on visitor spend. This is reviewed annually and reported in VisitScotland’s annual performance report. In 2023-24 VisitScotland’s holistic consumer marketing activities resulted in an NEI of £56.7m.

Currently, a breakdown of spending returns on AI business support is not available as it is challenging to break down elements of work that are specific to AI and their impact as it is implicated in so many wider business impacts. However, recent research indicates that private equity investments were up by a third in 2024, with VC investment in Scotland rising by 14% in the last quarter of last year indicating a strong investment growth into AI in Scotland. We continue to work with enterprise agencies to identify where the Scottish economy is benefitting from AI and SE are soon to publish research on the economic opportunities for AI in Scotland.

Although the regulation of AI as a technology is unfortunately reserved to Westminster, Scotland can and has indeed been taking action for years to influence the national and global development of AI in a responsible way that reflects Scottish values. The purpose of Scotland’s 2021 AI Strategy is to make Scotland a leader in the development and use of trustworthy, ethical and inclusive AI. The actions to deliver this vision include multiple, complementary interventions from education, with our foundational Living with AI course, supporting our business ecosystem, with the AI Playbook geared towards SMEs, and collaboration, through forums like the monthly public sector AI Taskforce and a strong public engagement programme led by the AI Alliance. Scotland’s position globally continues to be influential with Scotland being the first country to mandate a public sector AI Register and our unique Children and AI programme, which was featured in the brochure of last month’s AI Action Summit in Paris, the most important and selective global AI event since 2023 – and to which the Head of the Scottish AI Alliance was also invited. We engage closely with the UK Government to influence UK AI Policy, and internationally though membership of multilaterals such as the Disruptive and Emerging Technology Alliance (https://detalliance.com/).