Chamber and committees

While the term National Challenge Competition is very broad, there are a range of policy initiatives which publicly seek new ideas and/or issue funding on a competitive basis. Funds and initiatives of this kind exist across the Scottish Government and it is therefore difficult to provide a comprehensive list without further clarification. However, examples of such initiatives include:

• The work of the Chief Scientist for Health, whose office periodically launches open innovation calls focussed on health challenges facing the Scottish population. Examples of such challenges include drugs deaths and mental health.
• The Civtech programme, which, on an ongoing basis, supports new, small and medium size companies to win public sector contracts by solving key innovation challenges.
• Other forms of pre-commercial procurement in which public bodies contract for services to develop new and innovative solutions.
• Entrepreneurship policy, where funding is regularly issued on a competitive basis. Examples include the recently launched Ecosystem Fund, focussed on backing organisations who support and mentor start-up founders and the Entrepreneurial Education Fund, which invests in projects focussed on embedding entrepreneurial thinking across the Scottish education system.

The Scottish Government has committed through its 2024 Programme for Government to review the way the culture sector is supported. This ongoing culture sector support programme will, amongst other things, explore alternative and additional funding mechanisms to grow the overall funding pot for culture in Scotland. A Percentage for the Arts scheme is one of the mechanisms that will be considered as part of this programme.

The Young Person’s Guarantee last and final update report was published in March 2023 and outlines the outcomes and opportunities provided by the funding from the Young Person’s Guarantee.

A joint implementation evaluation of No one Left Behind and Young Person’s Guarantee was published in Autumn 2023 which explores how well they had been implemented, the experiences of service providers and service users, and lessons from early delivery.

Since April 2023, the Young Person’s Guarantee has been mainstreamed across Government, with activity across education, skills and employability supporting young people into opportunities.

We are unable to provide specific information on expenditure that exclusively supported new jobs. Successive budgets within the current parliamentary session have prioritised expenditure to support economic growth, including business growth and the jobs they generate.

In terms of ensuring people have the skills for jobs of the future, our 2025-26 Scottish budget allocates over £2 billion for colleges, universities, and the wider skills system, prioritizing support for students and ensuring access to education. We are focussing on maximising high-quality apprenticeships with an investment of over £185m to deliver 25,500 new Modern Apprentices, 5,000 Foundation Apprentices and 1,200 Graduate Apprentices, while continuing to support around 38,000 apprentices already in training.

Through the Just Transition Fund we've also spend £9.7 million on a package of skills interventions, including a digital offshore energy skills passport and the Energy Transition Skills Hub.

As part of the Falkirk and Grangemouth Growth Deal, we have committed £4 million for a Skills Transition Centre at Forth Valley College – to ensure that people can get the training they need for jobs in new and emerging sectors, including at the Grangemouth site. We have also allocated of up to £450k to support those workers who have been made redundant at the Grangemouth Refinery into new in-demand jobs. We are committed to ensuring that those highly skilled people continue to contribute to businesses in Grangemouth and the wider Scottish economy.

The support referenced about is not exhaustive. A diverse array of national, regional, and local support services are available across the public and private sectors, making a comprehensive overview impractical and information not all held by SG.

Our current Infrastructure Investment Plan (IIP) which was published alongside the last Capital Spending Review, estimated that annually, around 45,000 construction and maintenance jobs would be supported through the associated total capital investment. This information is not centrally monitored, however as part our annual reporting on the progress of the IIP, we include information on major capital projects and their contribution to local economic development.

Our annual IIP Progress Reports are published on the Scottish Government website and can be found by way of the following link www.gov.scot/infrastructure-investment-plan

This Government is committed to building a vibrant, sustainable, and inclusive rural economy.

We are widening participation in entrepreneurship, giving more people the opportunity to start, grow and scale their business. To date we have supported a range of programmes, including the South of Scotland Enterprise regional Pathways Pre-Start programme and the Pathways Funds. We are investing a record £6 million to support further Pathways implementation in the current financial year, transforming the number of women who start and scale businesses and widening participation in entrepreneurship.

Alongside this, we are supporting rural entrepreneurs through our Ecosystem Fund, which has invested a total of £2.6 million across 75 innovative projects since 2021, through our Techscaler network, through our wider support for our enterprise agencies, and through delivery of our National Innovation Strategy.

The Rural Entrepreneur Fund was a 2021-22 Programme for Government commitment to invest £20 million over the lifetime of the current parliament. However, in light of the challenging financial environment, the Scottish Resource Spending Review prioritised investment plans to ensure that they were deliverable, impactful and affordable. Consequently, there has been no money invested in the Rural Entrepreneur Fund to date.

The Scottish Government is committed to advancing women’s entrepreneurship and fostering an inclusive business environment, through implementation of the recommendations of the Pathways report on women in entrepreneurship, which consulted extensively to identify impactful measures that would address the gender gap.

To date we have supported a range of programmes including the South of Scotland Enterprise regional Pathways Pre-Start programme and the Pathways Funds. We are investing a record £6 million to support further Pathways implementation in the current financial year, transforming the number of women who start and scale businesses and widening participation in entrepreneurship.

The Scottish Government has set the goal of establishing Scotland as one of Europe's leading start-up economies, fostering an environment where innovation and high-growth businesses flourish. Within this parliamentary term it has spent over £60 million to aide these ambitions with at least a further £23 million committed by the end of the Parliamentary term.

These figures do not include spend from our Enterprise Agencies or Entrepreneurial Education. In addition this does not include spend for financial year 2026-27 due to our single year budgeting process.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes an annual report on Research and Development (R&D) expenditure by government departments. The latest report was published on 9 April 2025 and can be found at: Research and development expenditure by the UK government - Office for National Statistics. Please see Table 14 for data on Scottish Government purchased R&D (or funding provided for R&D) by receiving organisation for the 2023 financial year.

Comparable data for the 2022 financial year and the 2021 financial year are available at the following links. Earlier years data are not strictly comparable due to the reclassification of a research performing organisation.

2022 data:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/researchanddevelopmentexpenditure/datasets/scienceengineeringandtechnologystatisticsreferencetables/current/previous/v11/goverd2022.xlsx

2021 data:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/researchanddevelopmentexpenditure/datasets/scienceengineeringandtechnologystatisticsreferencetables/current/previous/v10/rftgoverd2021.xlsx