I am pleased to confirm that the Relationships and Behaviour in Schools Action Plan 2024-27 progress report was published today:

https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781836914686

The progress report sets out actions that have been taken to support relationships and behaviour in schools between November 2023, when I announced my intention to develop an action plan, and March 2025.

The Programme for Government 2024-25 committed to publishing annually on progress against the action plan. Further progress reports will be published in 2026 and 2027.

Those working in our retail sector should be lauded for the important work they are continuing to do during such challenging economic circumstances. They, like anybody, should be able to work without fear of abuse.

Retail workers (as well as all other workers) are protected by a wide range of criminal laws (i.e. the statutory offence of threatening or abusive behaviour; the common law offence of assault; and the common law offence of breach of the peace).

In addition, the Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-Restricted Products) (Scotland) Act 2021(“the 2021 Act”) came into force in August 2021 and created a statutory offence of threatening, abusing, or assaulting a retail worker, adding to the offences that can already be used to prosecute those who abuse retail workers.

Scottish Government partners, like the Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) and Scottish Grocers’ Federation (SGF), share best guidance and resources, such as the free GroceryAid helpline, and Victim Support, for victims of violence and abuse in a retail setting.

Unlike the NHS App in England, which is currently just for the NHS, our planned service is for both health and social care. The development is also linked into wider digital developments for Scottish public services overall, particularly in relation to a common approach to how the people of Scotland receive official communication digitally. Officials have, however, engaged extensively with NHS England to explore both whether we could use the NHS App and to take learning from the approach to the development of the NHS App.

The information requested on how many consultants specialising in endometriosis there are, broken down by NHS board is not centrally held.

The Scottish Government does not collect information on maintenance costs for imaging equipment held by NHS Boards. As holding bodies, NHS Boards are responsible for the management of their infrastructure assets and for identifying maintenance requirements. Maintenance costs are usually met from Boards’ delegated budgets.

This is an operational matter for Police Scotland. They have confirmed that incidents involving the theft of a pet are recorded on Police IT systems as a ‘theft’. However, the Police Scotland IT system can record details of the nature of a theft and it may be information is available in this area direct from Police Scotland.

In terms of data held by the Scottish Government, recent engagement has taken place with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) in relation to the issue of pet theft generally. This would include but not be limited to dog theft.

The COPFS advised they had used their internal operational database to assess the nature of general offences of theft so as to seek to identity when theft related to pets. The information they provided is not guaranteed to be completely accurate given the limitations of their ability to search using certain key words (e.g. dog, cat etc.). However, the data does give a broad indication of level of relevant offences over a considerable period.

Within this context, COPFS advise that 335 “pet theft” charges were reported to them during the eleven year period April 2014 to March 2024. This equates to an average of 30 charges a year over this period for pet theft.

Whilst data from 1999 is not held by Scottish Government, the Improvement Service’s annual Instrumental Music Survey of local authorities contains data on the number of pupils that participated in instrumental music lessons from academic year 2013-2014 to 2023-24.

The most recent Instrumental Music survey published in January 2025 confirmed that uptake in 2023-24 was the highest proportion of the school roll participating in IMS since 2017. Page 9 of the document contains a table with the number of instrumental music pupils per authority from 2016-17 until 2023-24.

In order to access data from 2012-13 you can access the 2021 Instrumental Music survey report.

To keep The Promise requires a whole systems approach to connect the different strands of policy work, new and ongoing commitments and financial programmes across Government that can impact on the lives of care experienced children, young people and their families.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-35713 on 27 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 is committed to supporting and growing our childminding sector, which is why we launched the Programme for Scotland’s Childminding Future in June 2024, in partnership with the Scottish Childminding Association (SCMA). The programme is supporting the recruitment of new professional childminders across Scotland, offering a package of funded support and training in addition to a £750 start-up grant, providing everything needed to establish a new childminding business from home.

The programme also includes a range of pilot measures to address the retention of the childminding workforce, and to encourage more childminders to deliver funded early learning and childcare. This includes trials of a mentoring scheme and ‘funded time off the floor’ designed to deliver more practical support to ensure our existing professionals are supported with their workloads and professional development.

The recruitment support is available across 19 local authorities during year 1 (2024-25), and 12 local authorities are currently participating in the retention pilots.