Chamber and committees

Paragraph 12.1 of the Scottish Ministerial Code (Scottish Ministerial Code: 2024 Edition - gov.scot) requires former Ministers intending to publish their memoirs to submit the draft manuscript in good time before publication to the Permanent Secretary and to conform to the principles set out in the Radcliffe Report of 1976. On receipt of any such manuscript the Permanent Secretary, supported as necessary by other senior Scottish Government officials, will conduct a review in accordance with that arrangement.

The Scottish Government has in place a Notifiable Scottish Public Sector Cyber Incidents Procedure. This is a voluntary process which encourages Scottish Public Sector bodies to report cyber incidents to the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre. The process also encourages reporting of cyber incidents to the UK Government National Cyber Security Centre and Police Scotland where appropriate.

The Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre (SC3) provides a centrally coordinated, multi-agency response capability and expertise in national incident response and to support any Public Sector organisation which is victim to a cyber security incident.

Since 2022, the Scottish Government has been notified of 38 cyber incidents under our Notifiable Scottish Public Sector Cyber Incidents Procedure. This is a voluntary notification procedure. The National Cyber Security Centre advises government departments to withhold specific information that may provide insight into the likelihood of successful attacks, and the Scottish Government follows this advice. The Scottish Government will therefore not provide further details as this may cause substantial harm to the effective conduct of public affairs and the security of our public services.

Please see FOI response below detailing the paid-for media marketing campaigns that were approved to be developed and had incurred costs before the decision was taken not to proceed to launch - between 2019 and the present.

Advertising and public information campaign queries: FOI release - gov.scot

Business Analysts operate across both our directly employed and contingent workforce. Within our directly employed workforce, they operate across two of our Professional groups (Professions); the Digital Profession and the Operational Delivery Profession. A definition of a Business Analyst role can be found here Business analyst - Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework

A breakdown of the expenditure on the directly employed staff in Business Analyst roles can be found here Breakdown of Scottish Government spend on Lawyers and Business Analyst roles: FOI release - gov.scot

There may also be some Business Analysts working in a temporary capacity in our contingent workforce, however our data on contingent workers is not captured at a job title level and this may not adhere fully to the definition provided above.

Scottish Government expenditure on consultants is publicly available and can be found here. Business Consultant is not a commonly applied definition in the Scottish Government.

2023 to 2024 - Government expenditure - gov.scot

Government expenditure: 2016 to 2023 - gov.scot

The Scottish Government is committed to public service reform to enhance the sustainability of public services and improve their effectiveness. The Scottish Government has invited bids from local government as part of the Invest to Save Fund, and an announcement of successful bids will be issued in due course.

Local authorities are responsible for considering their own options for reform and transformation. The Improvement Service supports councils to develop capability and capacity for improvement to enhance the delivery of high quality, efficient local services.

As I have set out in my statement to Parliament earlier today, we intend to introduce a Heat in Buildings Bill in Year 5 of this Parliamentary session. In this statement I set out government’s rationale for the format of the Bill. We will continue to engage with stakeholders from all sectors as we do so, building on the discussions that began with our consultation and have been continuing since then.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes quarterly data on the length of time patients wait to be seen as a new outpatient or admitted for treatment as an inpatient or day case. The latest statistics represent all patients covered by the national standards for these stages of treatment to 31 December 2024. Individual patients are counted more than once if they are waiting to attend more than one scheduled hospital appointment or admission, so the official statistics shown here do not reflect the actual number of individuals involved but the number of waits.

Table 1. sets out the number of ongoing waits over 2 years for a Gynaecology inpatient or day-case admission as of 31 December 2024:

Table 1.

The Scottish Government has created a webpage on www.gov.scot dedicated to documents relating to Ferguson Marine (https://www.gov.scot/collections/ferguson-marine-documents/). This webpage contains links to consultancy documents produced when Ferguson Marine became a state-owned shipyard in 2019 and the ‘Ferguson Marine: Commercial advice information pack’ which was published in February 2025.

The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), along with other children's and youth organisations, supports the Scottish Government, local authorities and other public bodies to fulfil their legal obligations to promote and protect the human rights of children and young people. The SYP is the democratic voice of Scotland’s young people. Their vision for Scotland is of a nation that actively listens to and values the meaningful participation of its young people. Their goal is to make this vision a reality, in order to ensure young people in Scotland grow up loved, safe and respected, and able to realise their full potential.

The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) champions and promotes diversity and inclusion within their organisation to ensure it has broad representation that reflects the demographics of young people living in Scotland. The current membership includes, MSYPs from a wide variety of backgrounds including minority ethnic backgrounds, with experience of care, from rural and low Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) areas, who are young carers, who are neurodiverse, and from LGBTQIA+ backgrounds.

SYP also aims to ensure the voices of young people whose rights are most at risk are at the centre of their programme. It has a particular focus on women’s empowerment and anti-racism.

These lived experiences help to inform an intersectional representation of young people in Scotland. After each SYP election the organisation publishes a summary of the diversity data. The 2024 data can be found in this document: https://syp.org.uk/members/our-diversity/