Chamber and committees

Supporting cyber resilience in local authorities is a priority for the Scottish Government. We provide a range of measures to support both immediate incidents as well as helping strengthen local authorities’ cyber resilience in the longer term.

The Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre’s (SC3) core function is to work with the Scottish public sector to help them improve their preparedness, reduce vulnerabilities and learn from best practice. SC3 has 24/7 on-call arrangements to immediately engage multi-agency response, where necessary, for any public sector organisation who is subject to a cyber attack. When the cyber incidents occurred in Glasgow City and West Lothian councils, the SC3 quickly stood up a multi-agency response to support the councils.

SC3 provides several important services including:

• sharing of relevant threat intelligence and early warnings,
• liaising with partners such as NCSC and Police Scotland,
• advising on consequence and data leak management, and
• guiding on Cyber Incident Response support options.

Specific post-incident lessons learned are shared in appropriate channels. These continue to feed into scenario-based exercising through the Exercising Workstream to improve organisational preparedness. The SC3 has worked with the Digital Office CISO to deliver strategic level cyber exercising to several local authorities with more planned for later this year. Under the Standards & Insights Workstream, SC3 has also initiated two pieces of research targeted at the most common lessons from ransomware incidents, to provide additional guidance for organisations on legacy technology and multi-factor authentication.

We recognise the crucial role that councils and their employees play in communities across Scotland. That’s why the Scottish Government has made a record £15.1 billion available for local authorities for 2025-26, a real terms increase of 5.5% compared with last year.

It should be noted that local authorities are entirely separate entities from the Scottish Government. Their powers are set out in statute, and it is up to each local authority to manage its day-to-day business, including the management of its IT systems. The Verity House Agreement reinforces this principle of local autonomy, while also encouraging collaboration and shared learning across the sector.

The Scottish Government has commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to develop a set of maternity standards designed to drive improvements in care at a local level, expected to publish in Spring 2026. Further to this, HIS introduced its Safe Delivery of Care in acute settings maternity inspection programme in January 2025. These inspections provide independent assessments of maternity services and can provide reassurance to all parents and families, as well as identifying opportunities for improvement and learning for NHS Boards.

In parallel, our Scottish Patient Safety Perinatal Improvement Programme continues to work with maternity services across Scotland to drive improvements in care for mothers and babies. The Programme supports NHS Boards to improve outcomes in a number of ways, including a focus on reducing stillbirth, neonatal mortality and morbidity.

In the last 20 years, our infant mortality rate has fallen by 28%, our neonatal death rate by 22% and our stillbirth rate by nearly 40%. We recognise that there is always more we can do, however, and the Scottish Government remains committed to continuous improvement in maternity services and to learning from adverse events and outcomes. We expect all NHS Boards in Scotland to use the Perinatal Mortality Review Tool (PMRT) to review all stillbirths and neonatal deaths. Undertaking robust, high quality reviews in a timely manner, in line with the standardised approach laid out in the Maternity and Neonatal (Perinatal) Adverse Event Review Process for Scotland will improve understanding at a local and national level of where improvements in care need to be made.

Scotland is guided by the recommendations of the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent expert advisory group which advises all four nations of the United Kingdom on screening policy. Following their last review in 2017, the UK NSC currently does not recommend introducing a screening programme for GBS. However, they are closely monitoring the GBS3 trial, which is investigating whether testing pregnant women for GBS reduces the risk of infection in newborn babies compared to the current strategy in place in the UK. Results are expected towards the end of 2025 with a review of recommendations.

All pregnant women in Scotland are provided with a copy of Ready, Steady, Baby! in the antenatal period through their midwifery care and can choose to access the information online, if they prefer. This is a comprehensive guide to pregnancy, labour, birth and early parenthood up to eight weeks and contains specific information for women on Group B Strep (GBS). The Scottish Government has also provided funding to Group B Strep Support (GBSS) through our Improving Health and Wellbeing grant scheme in 2023-24 and 2024-25 to support the development of an online learning module on GBS for health professionals and GBSS’s public awareness and education campaign.

More broadly, the Scottish Government has commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to develop a set of maternity standards for Scotland, designed to drive improvements in care at a local level, which are expected to publish in Spring 2026. We also welcomed the introduction of the HIS Safe Delivery of Care in acute settings maternity inspection programme in January 2025. These provide independent assessments of maternity services in acute settings and can provide reassurance to all parents and families, as well as identifying areas for improvement.

The Scottish Government remains committed to reducing alcohol-related harm, and notes the recommendations in, Spin the Bottle: How the UK alcohol industry twists the facts on harm and responsibility.

The Scottish Government continues to progress work to reduce alcohol harm that aligns with the recommendations in the report including the increase and continuation of Minimum Unit Pricing and progressing work on protecting children and young people from exposure to alcohol marketing.

Regarding engagement with the alcohol industry, it is crucial that we prevent and reduce alcohol-related harms, but that aim has to be balanced with careful consideration of the impact restrictions may have on businesses, consumers and local economies. The Scottish Government does not engage with the alcohol industry on the development of public health policy or public health science, but will continue to engage on potential effects and impact of public health interventions on business.

The Alcohol Framework published in 2018 sets out the Scottish Government’s approach to engaging with the alcohol industry in relation to public health policy.

The Scottish Government does not work with the alcohol industry on the development of health policy but engages on the potential impacts, effects and implementation of alcohol harm prevention policy, where appropriate.

The Scottish Parliament’s Lobbying Register (Home - Lobbying Register) contains details of regulated lobbying of Scottish Government Ministers undertaken since March 2018.

The Scottish Government is aware of the judgment in this case. We consider that the advice on determining planning applications contained in Planning Circular 3/2022: Development Management Procedures is consistent with the judgment.

In determining any application or appeal, it is for the planning authority, or as the case may be the Scottish Ministers, who are considering the proposed development to decide what matters are material to their consideration on a case by case basis.

It is also for the decision maker to consider what weight to give to each material consideration in determining the application. Any planning application is required to be determined in accordance with the development plan unless there are material planning considerations that individually or collectively justify a departure from the development plan.

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.

As part of its budget for 2025-26, the Scottish Government is making an additional £3 million available for Police Scotland to work with the sector to tackle retail crime.

While the deployment of police officers is an operational matter for the Chief Constable, it is for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) to undertake risk assessments to identify and mitigate any potential risks to court users, court staff, Judiciary and justice partners. I can confirm that Police Scotland and SCTS to work in partnership to ensure that court security is maintained, whilst making best use of resources.

The Scottish Government have no current plans to change the fine balance of rights and responsibilities in relation to access which was agreed by the Parliament and is set out in the Scottish Outdoor Access Code. NatureScot work with the National Access Forum (NAF) to address access issues that do arise though providing new guidance, resources and advice.

All information relating to determinations made by Scottish Ministers under the Electricity Act 1989, including any conditions, are publicly available on our Energy Consents website: https://www.energyconsents.scot/ApplicationSearch.aspx

NPF4 is a material consideration in the determination of applications, and it is read and applied as a whole. It is for the decision maker to determine what weight to attach to policies within NPF4 on a case-by-case basis. The weight to be applied to all material considerations and the need for conditions to be attached to any consent is a matter for the Minister taking the decision to consider on a case-by-case basis.