Chamber and committees

We remain focused on delivering the next phase of our free school meal expansion programme, which is to Primary 6 & 7 pupils in receipt of the Scottish Child Payment and will deliver this within the parliamentary term. We are committed to universal expansion in primary schools when the financial circumstances allow.

We review the eligibility criteria for free school meals regularly to take account of changes to the national living wage. The eligibility criteria were last updated in April this year.

Zero Waste Scotland intends to publish the report on their website on 11 October 2024.

The activities of our external network of international offices deliver tangible benefits to Scotland’s people, businesses and institutions, for example, supporting £1.73 billion in forecast export sales and more than 8,500 jobs in 2022-23. The offices help to ensure that Scotland remains well-connected among our closest friends and partners.

Delivering events and undertaking outreach work is an important part of our international network’s activity. It allows the network to promote Scottish goods and services and to make connections that support investment and knowledge exchange by engaging directly with businesses, governments, universities and other organisations in their respective countries. All events and outreach activities delivered by the international network are in support of business plans aligned to the government’s priorities, and funded within budgets agreed by Parliament.

As set out in our recent Programme for Government, we will provide nearly £2.5 billion in 2024-25, to support public transport, making our transport system available, affordable and accessible for all. We also committed, in the PfG, to work with local authorities to ensure as many children as possible can access their free bus entitlement, cutting travel costs and making sustainable travel a more attractive option.

The safety of all public transport users is crucial, and we are working with industry stakeholders to develop actions to tackle antisocial behaviour on the bus network. This includes a process for temporary suspension or withdrawal of concessionary travel entitlement.

Ministers continue to work closely with ScotRail to develop measures to tackle and prevent antisocial behaviour while maximising the safety of all rail passengers and staff. ScotRail has taken several steps to enhance the visible presence of staff on trains, especially on key routes identified as needing additional support. Initiatives such as the "Safer Shores" campaign demonstrate a collaborative approach, with ScotRail working alongside Local Authorities and British Transport Police to provide extra staff on trains to popular seaside destinations during peak times. ScotRail has invested £1.6 million to triple the number of body-worn cameras for frontline staff. ScotRail have also invested in improved CCTV with intelligent video analytics.

To remove barriers to public transport, we have supported operators to accept contactless payment, with about 98% of buses now enabled. We delivered on our PfG commitment to launch a new Traveline Scotland journey planning website and app on 17 September. This improves the quality and availability of travel data to provide a journey planner that is fit for the future.

Much progress has been made in recent years to improve smart, integrated ticketing and payment on public transport, as detailed in the Smart Integrated Ticketing Delivery Strategy, which was published in August this year. This strategy also outlines a programme of work and strategy for the next 5-10 years, building on this progress and including exploring options for a new national integrated ticketing system, reflecting passenger's desires for integrated contactless and digital ticketing.

Scotland is the only part of the UK that already offers 1140 hours (equivalent to 30 hours per week in term time) of funded ELC to all 3 and 4-year-olds regardless of whether their parents are working or not because we are committed to promoting equality for all Scotland’s children, putting their interests first. We also make 1140 hours available to around a quarter of 2 year olds and to all children whose entry to primary school is deferred.

It is far from clear that a universal system of ‘free’ childcare for everyone would deliver either value for money for the Scottish taxpayer or the best outcomes for our children and young people. Despite the unprecedented financial challenges facing the Scottish Government we have prioritised tackling child poverty and expanding access to funded childcare for those families who stand to benefit most.

That is why over the next two years we are investing £16 million within six early adopter communities to continue our work to understand what it takes to design and deliver local childcare systems that support those families most at risk of living in poverty.

In addition we are also continuing to support the ‘Extra Time’ Programme, investing £4 million in a partnership with the Scottish Football Association to deliver before, after school and breakfast clubs, providing 3,000 targeted free places each week for children and their families.

We have also invested close to £1 million to deliver free or subsidised school age childcare services through our Access to Childcare projects. These projects are also considering specific challenges for families including remote and rural childcare provision, and specialist provision for children with disabilities or complex additional support needs.

We remain committed to expanding funded ELC to reach more younger children and to building a system of School Age Childcare, and we are going as far and as fast as we can to deliver that.

Local authorities have statutory obligations in respect of the delivery of education, which includes ensuring they have a complement of staff to meet local needs.

In Scotland we have the most teachers per pupil and highest paid teachers in the UK. We are once again providing £145.5 million to local authorities for the purpose of protecting teacher numbers. We are also continuing to provide £20,000 bursaries to incentivise career changers to train in the hardest to fill teaching subjects. Since the introduction of the scheme, 659 bursaries have been awarded.

I have also asked the Strategic Board for Teacher Education, which is made up of a range of key education stakeholders, to look at issues around the recruitment and retention of teachers in Scotland in detail, including geographical and subject-specific issues, as well as how we can increase diversity within the profession and improve support for early career teachers.

We have 17,330 pupil support staff in Scotland, the highest level on record and an increase of more than 2,000 since 2020. This is a direct result of our continued annual investment of £15 million to councils.

The Scottish Government believes the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) continues to deliver the high standard of services required to keep Scotland safe. Firefighters play a crucial role in keeping communities safe and preventing fires remains a priority and we continue to support the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to be a highly effective emergency service.

The Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics 2023 was originally scheduled for publication in September 2024. This publication was delayed until November 2024 as a result of an unscheduled revision of previous years data for the United Kingdom by the Marine Management Organisation. Our publication includes fishing data from the Marine Management Organisation for the rest of the UK. We therefore needed to delay our publication. We are hoping to publish the Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics 2023 in late November or early December 2024. The exact date will be confirmed by the end of October 2024.

More detail on the data revision by the Marine Management Organisation, which was published on 8 October 2024, is available at: UK Sea Fisheries Statistics: Unscheduled Corrections - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Scottish Government has no plans to recommission the Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey (SALSUS), as it was integrated into the Health and Wellbeing Census in 2021-22.

Scottish industry has made good progress in reducing emissions but there is more to do. Reducing industrial emissions is central to Scotland’s net zero commitment and our economic ambitions as outlined in our Green Industrial Strategy.

Realising the environmental and economic opportunities in net zero is a collective endeavour with many policy, fiscal and regulatory levers reserved at the UK level, including for carbon capture and storage which is critical to decarbonise industry. Last week the UK Government announced that £22 billion of funding for carbon capture projects in England, but provided no update on the Acorn Project.