Chamber and committees

Since the introduction of Best Start Foods, 107,428 Best Start Foods cards have been issued across Scotland. Of these cards, 3,545 have been issued to clients in Aberdeen City area.

These figures include each new card from August 2019 to the 10 January 2025 and include all cards issued. These include re-issues to the same client if required due to lost, damaged, or expired cards.

Best Start Food card volumes are not featured in our regular Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods publication. These figures have been compiled in response to this request and include dates not yet covered in our latest statistics.

The next Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods publication, covering the period to 31 December 2024, will be published on 25 February 2025.

Social Security Scotland routinely releases information on Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods applications and payments.

Since the introduction of the Pregnancy and Baby Payment in December 2018, 97,685 payments with a combined value of £43,041,145 were paid to eligible clients throughout Scotland by 30 September 2024.

Whilst the latest statistics do not contain the number of payments issued broken down by local authority area, the total value of payments issued to clients in Aberdeen City was £1,371,294 over the same period.

The next Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods publication, covering the period to the end of December 2024, will be published on 25 February 2025.

Social Security Scotland routinely releases information on Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods applications and payments.

Since the introduction of the Early Learning Payment in April 2019, 126,840 payments with a combined value of £34,465,468 were paid to eligible clients throughout Scotland by 30 September 2024.

Whilst the latest statistics do not contain the number of payments issued broken down by local authority area, the total value of payments issued to clients in Aberdeen City was £1,099,329 over the same period.

The next Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods publication, covering the period to the end of December 2024, will be published on 25 February 2025.

The diverse nature of the third sector means that the impacts of the increase to employers National Insurance contributions will vary by size and industry sector. However, SCVO has estimated that the cost to voluntary sector employers in Scotland is in the region of £75 million per year, plus inflation.

We will continue to work with His Majesty’s Treasury, portfolios and the sector to support an evidence-based approach and will update Parliament when new information is available.

Scottish Ministers continue to amplify the concerns of the third sector to the UK Government regarding the change to Employer National Insurance Contributions.

Social Security Scotland routinely publishes information on Scottish Child Payment applications, payments and the number of children actively in receipt of the payment by local authority area.

While the latest statistics do not currently include information on the total number of children who have benefitted from Scottish Child Payment, they show that for Scotland, as of 30 September 2024, 325,790 children aged 0-15 years were actively benefitting from Scottish Child Payment. Of those children, 10,335 resided in Aberdeen City.

The next Scottish Child Payment publication, covering the period to the end of December 2024, will be published on 25 February 2025.

The Scottish Government recognises the pressure on household budgets which is why in 2024-25 we continued to allocate around £3bn a year to policies which tackle poverty and help with the cost of living for households.  This includes providing free bus travel for over 2 million people and continuing to invest in discretionary housing payments with £90.5m being made available in 2024-25.

Additionally in November we announced a £41 million package of support for people struggling with energy costs this winter. This includes: an additional £20 million which will be provided for the Scottish Welfare Fund, to enable councils to provide more vital support to people in crisis; an additional £20 million for the Warmer Homes Scotland Scheme, which helps people install energy efficiency measures and more efficient heating systems, saving on average around £300 per year in household energy bills, and making £1 million of grant-funding available to registered social landlords to fund work to help sustain tenancies.

The Scottish Government believes that a social tariff is the best way to ensure that energy consumers are protected against high costs and can afford all of their energy needs. The powers to implement a social tariff remain with the UK Government and we are committed to working closely with them to advocate for the delivery of a social tariff across Great Britain. We established a Social Tariff Working Group in November, bringing together stakeholders to co-design a deliverable social tariff policy, and will share the outputs from the group with UK Government as soon as possible.

Registration opened on 15 June 2017, and delivery of Baby Boxes nationwide began on 15 August 2017 for all babies born and resident in Scotland.

The total number of Baby Boxes issued since the introduction of the Baby Box programme up to 3 January 2025 is 324,968. We are unable to provide the number of Baby Boxes delivered in the Aberdeen area as we only record the number of Baby Boxes distributed by Health Board area. Since the start of the programme 35,278 Baby Boxes have been issued in NHS Grampian.

The Scottish Government has instructed ScotRail to procure replacement trains for the current fleet, known as the High Speed Trains (HST) fleet, 25 of which operate on its InterCity routes between Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Inverness.

These routes are strategically important for Scotland: 35% of Scotland’s population are served by the rail corridor to Aberdeen. Inverness provides long distance connectivity to the rest of the UK for approximately 250,000 people: it is the gateway to the Highlands and Islands and the Far North.

Replacing the fleet aims to provide a high quality, more consistent, reliable, comfortable, accessible and family-friendly experience for passengers on the InterCity routes, helping to encourage more people to choose to travel by train on these routes rather than by car.

Replacement will ensure the reliability of InterCity routes for the long-term, reduce emissions from Intercity services and will be another step on our journey towards the full decarbonisation of ScotRail services. It will also reduce ScotRail’s operating costs by being more energy efficient.

The decision to replace the trains followed a process of appraisal. The appraisal took into consideration the available options to transition from diesel power to electric trains, the time necessary to deliver electrification infrastructure, the availability of funding and the affordability challenges.

ScotRail will run the procurement in a fair and transparent manner, enabling Scottish suppliers to provide their services to potential bidders. In the meantime, the HSTs remain safe to run until a replacement fleet is ready; they are needed for the capacity required by ScotRail to deliver an appropriate service level. As the replacement trains arrive, the HSTs will be withdrawn.

This decision will also contribute to the refresh of the Scottish Government’s Rail Services Decarbonisation Action Plan (the DAP), which will be informed by the response to this procurement. The first DAP, published in 2020, was stated to be dynamic and subject to continuous improvement, to be updated and refined as progress is delivered and the funding environment changes. Accordingly, it is being revised.

The original target date of 2035 for complete removal of diesel passenger trains from the Scottish network can no longer be met, due to constrained budgets and logistical requirements impacting adversely on the delivery programme.

The physical delivery of electrification works needs to be staged to reduce the impact on passengers as much as is practicable. Undertaking too much disruptive engineering work across the Network at the same time would have significant farebox revenue impacts and would significantly diminish the attractiveness of rail travel for the public.

Delivering electrification over a longer period of time reduces passenger disruption from engineering works. It also allows for other associated works, such as bridge replacements, to be undertaken in a more phased manner, reducing road traffic impacts.

The revised DAP will demonstrate phased full decarbonisation by 2045. The refreshed plan is now expected to be published in Spring 2025. The refreshed plan will show a staged approach to creating a decarbonised rail system by 2045 and increasing from the current 75% of rail journeys which are already decarbonised.

A contract notice will be published today on Public Contracts Scotland with a more detailed delivery timeline available at the point of contract award.