Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government remains committed to progressing work on protecting children and young people from exposure to alcohol marketing.

Public Health Scotland has been commissioned to carry out a review of the evidence for potential regulation of alcohol advertising and marketing. Once that review concludes the Scottish Government will consider the potential areas of regulation that the evidence suggests may be effective in reducing alcohol harm.

If the evidence supports it a further public consultation will be undertaken on targeted proposals.

Our commitment to reform is not a single programme; it is a cross system approach with a focus on strategic priorities which we set out in the Budget. This work is being progressed through multiple and interconnected work-streams and requires a whole-of-government approach.

There are 5.8 civil servants working in the team that is leading the core public service reform programme.

The Scottish Government is committed to making savings by driving key efficiency programmes such as Scottish Single Estates, Commercial Value for Money (CVfM), Collaborative Procurement frameworks, Oracle Cloud implementation, the Intelligence Automation Centre of Excellence, Digital programme, and Revenue Raising. This work reflects our approach of building these key efficiency programmes into the overall PSR approach.

There has been strong progress across these programmes, with cashable savings delivered. Our Single Scottish Estate, National Collaborative Procurement, Commercial Value for Money and Digital programmes are collectively securing cost avoidance and cash releasing savings, expected to reach up to £280 million over a two-year period by the end of 2024-25, with further projected savings of nearly £300 million over the following two financial years to the end of 2026-27.

The Single Scottish Estate (SSE) will help us have a more efficient approach to public sector property management, optimising costs, enabling the delivery of excellent public services and providing staff with great places to work, recognising the shifts in working culture since the pandemic. The SSE engages with all parts of the public sector including health and local authorities as well as central government bodies. The programme is currently focused on the public sector administrative estate and is undertaking a number of location-based reviews and projects including across Perth, Edinburgh and Glasgow. We are estimating £50-80m total savings from now to 2028, with associated carbon reductions and improvements in service delivery to the public. An overall total of £36m of direct Single Scottish Estate benefits have been secured.

Collaborative procurement can help public bodies achieve better value for money, through consolidating volumes, driving efficiencies and social value and making better use of skills and resources. The Scottish Government establishes national collaborative procurement framework agreements on behalf of the whole Scottish public sector. There are opportunities to increase Scotland’s collaborative buying power by expanding the use of National Collaborative Frameworks across the Scottish public sector, leading to a significant increase in financial benefits delivered on a cross-sectoral basis via economies of scale. Building on current financial benefits delivered annually of around £130m, made up of both cost avoidance and cash savings, work is underway to scope the potential to scale up the service offered by the national collaborative procurement team.

The Commercial Value for Money programme (CVfM) is providing commercial expertise and support across all Scottish Government expenditure to support increased value for money through the delivery of monetary efficiencies and/or increased impactful policy outcomes. This includes work in areas such as grant alignment, commercial scrutiny of costs, development and implementation of performance monitoring and reporting to show the effectiveness of SG spend, development of novel funding approaches and increased leverage of SG spend. Almost £7m of cashable and £600k of non-cashable savings have already been delivered, with little or no impact on policy delivery. The CVfM programme is projected to save up to £50m over the next 5 years whilst also supporting other efficiency work.

Meanwhile, the Intelligent Automation Centre of Excellence has already been realised significant benefits within government and several core agencies. £3.9M in cost-avoidance benefits have been achieved to date with a projected £14.5M by 28-29.

As the PSR programme develops further, building on the data and capacity around savings, and the embedding of reform and efficiency in the budget process, we will look to drive and quantify other and future savings opportunities.

Social Security Scotland routinely publishes information on Adult Disability Payment applications and caseload, broken down by disability condition. No information on the number of indefinite awards made as a result of Adult Disability Payment applications is currently published.

From 21 March 2022 to 31 October 2024, there were 282,930 part 1 Adult Disability Payment applications received from new applicants, of which 86,275 had the primary disability condition “Mental and Behavioural Disorders”.

The latest Adult Disability Payment official statistics publication can be found at: https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/publications/statistics. The next release of Adult Disability Payment statistics which will cover the period to the end of January 2024, is due to be published on 18 March 2024.

The Scottish Government cannot deliver reform alone and is working with local government, public bodies, third sector and the private sector to build a consensus and common vision for achieving sustainable public services and establishing the infrastructure that enables us to collectively make progress.

The Scottish Government has not engaged any consultancies in developing or progressing the Public Service Reform Programme.

Every ‘scheduled’ award review carried out by Social Security Scotland is a light-touch review.

This means that Social Security Scotland do not require clients by default to provide information again that they already provided, that is not relevant to the changes they have reported, or that we can gather through other means.

Instead, Social Security Scotland will consider information they already hold about the client, where still relevant, and make use of appropriate decision-making tools, where needed, to reduce the need for further questions. They only ask for new supporting information in specific scenarios and take their usual supportive approach to gathering this information.

Our approach differs when a client’s circumstances or changes are more complex, or their reported level of need is unexpected. This is not light touch and Social Security Scotland will decide on a case-by-case basis what additional steps are required and appropriate to better understand the client’s needs, and to ensure they have the information needed to make a robust determination on the client’s entitlement.

Table 1 shows annual inflation as at September between 1999 and 2024 using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), as well as the annual change in the Basic, Intermediate and Higher Property Rates between 1999-2000 and 2025-2026. The rateable value threshold up to which different rates are charged has changed over time. In Scotland, there is no legislation linking the maximum possible uprating of the rates to inflation of the preceding year. Given that Scottish Ministers have chosen to set the Basic Property Rate in order to match or be below the Small Business Multiplier in England since 2007-2008, up until 2016-2017, September Retail Price Index (RPI) acted as a cap on inflationary increases in poundage in Scotland because in England, legislation used to link the maximum possible uprating of the Small Business Multiplier to September RPI of the preceding year. The independent Barclay Review of Non-Domestic Rates published in 2017 noted calls for increases in the poundage to be linked to the CPI rather than the RPI. Since 2017-18, annual changes in the rates in Scotland have been lower than the CPI increase. Revaluations are also typically designed to be revenue-neutral in real terms so both inflation and the growth in the tax base (taking into account expected appeals losses in that cycle) is taken into account when setting the rates.

Table 1: Annual CPI change as at Sept (1999-2024) and annual change to the Basic, Intermediate and Higher Property Rates (1999-2000 to 2025-26)

The Scottish Government keeps a range of measures under consideration as it develops and finalises its Budget. Final decisions are communicated with the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) as soon as is practicable. The Scottish Fiscal Commission is undertaking work to cost the proposal to mitigate the impact of the two-child cap in Scotland for 2026-27. The SFC plan to publish their supplementary costings on 7 January 2025.

The Scottish Government routinely increases the Local Government budget in-year, including through transfers from other portfolios. The anticipated transfers for 2025-25 are as shown in Table 4.12 of the Scottish Budget and indicate that at least £1,438.3 million of resource and £25 million of capital will be transferred into the General Revenue and General Capital grants at the 2025-26 Autumn or Spring Budget Revisions. Further funding outwith the Local Government Settlement is outlined in Table 4.15 and paid directly by the relevant portfolio.

As with all previous years, any unanticipated transfers in year will also be given effect at the relevant budget revision and processed in the Local Government Finance Order 2026-27.

As outlined in Tables 4.12 and 4.15, it is anticipated that most Scottish Government portfolios will transfer additional funding to Local Government in 2025-26.