Chamber and committees

Delivery of healthcare and the NHS is devolved and therefore work on the safety of and continuous improvement in maternity services in Scotland is the responsibility of the Scottish Government. The National Maternity Safety Ambition was launched in 2015 by the Department of Health and Social Care and applies to maternity services in England only. Officials and professional advisors meet regularly with colleagues across the UK, including from the Department of Health and Social Care in England, to discuss priorities across the UK, such as the Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK (MBRRACE-UK) and to better understand work underway across each of the four nations.

The Biodiversity Strategy Delivery Plan 2024-2030 includes specific action to implement Scotland’s Strategic Approach for Scotland’s Rainforest which aims to improve its condition and health so that it can regenerate and expand whilst providing benefits to communities. There are a number of actions that protect our wider native woodlands including a commitment to landscape restoration areas with a significant woodland element, a register of ancient woodland, ensuring mechanisms are in place for restoration of ancient woodlands, establishing a programme to bring protected woodlands into favourable condition, best practice guidance for upland restoration, and actions on deer and grazing management.

The Delivery Plan also contains the key action to develop an invasive non-native species (INNS) Action Plan to support the protection and restoration of native habitats. The Plan will include actions to be taken to ensure new potential INNS are detected early to prevent establishment and spread. The Action Plan will also seek to better focus resources and effort to control or eradicate established INNS, where possible working at a landscape scale. Scottish Government are currently working with our stakeholders to develop the Action Plan, with a view to publication in summer 2025.

Scottish Forestry continues to target support for Rhododendron control through the forestry grant scheme at the priority areas in our Strategic Approach to Scotland’s Rainforest.

Keeping children safe from online abuse and exploitation and tackling misogyny in our society are key priorities for the Scottish Government. We are committed to ensuring that robust measures are in place across Scotland to ensure our services can identify and support victims of online harm, including children and young people.

While regulation of the internet remains a reserved matter, we have engaged with both the previous and current UK Government administrations to strengthen the protections for children in the Online Safety Act. The Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise and I met with the online safety regulator Ofcom in August to discuss their strategy for online safety in Scotland. We await Ofcom’s draft guidance on protecting women and girls online, due to be published next year, and will reflect on its recent research which has highlighted the increased risk and concerns teenage girls and women face in relation to misogynistic content.

The Scottish Government also works closely with operational partners to tackle cyber-crime including Police Scotland, the National Cyber Security Centre and Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland. These agencies link to international partnership working, and we will continue to identify opportunities for international engagement as we develop our approach to the global threat of online harm and radicalism.

As part of our existing approach, we support victims of abuse linked to misogyny, including through the provision of Our Delivering Equally Safe fund. This includes an award of over £110,000 to the South West Grid for Learning to deliver advice to victims of intimate image abuse and to improve awareness of sexual exploitation – or ‘Revenge Porn’ across Scotland. The Safer Scotland website was updated earlier this year to provide information, links to support and advice for victims on reporting intimate image abuse and our ParentClub website provides information on online harms including specific advice on misogynistic content.

The Scottish Government has also established an internal policy group on Technology-Facilitated Violence against Women and Girls, in recognition of the cross-cutting nature of this issue. This work will look to coordinate and accelerate the Scottish Government’s strategic approach to tackling technology-facilitated violence against women and girls, including how we further strengthen our approach to addressing online misogyny.

The National Maternity Safety Ambition in England was launched in 2015. Delivery of healthcare and the NHS is devolved and the Sottish Government is committed to continuous improvement in maternity safety across Scotland, working in partnership with NHS Boards and clinicians and service users, to deliver the best and safest care for mothers and babies. The Scottish Government’s Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) Perinatal strand (formerly MCQIC), part of Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS), was established in 2009 to improve outcomes and reduce variation in maternity services by providing safe, high-quality care for all. The aims of the programme are to reduce stillbirths; understand variation in caesarean birth rates; improve the recognition, response and review of the deteriorating woman, and to reduce neonatal mortality and morbidity.

The Scottish Government has also commissioned HIS to develop standards for maternity services, to support consistency of service design and delivery across Scotland. We continue to work with NHS Boards, clinical leaders, the third sector and national partners to develop our approach in the Scottish context.

Eradicating child poverty is a national mission and the top priority of this Government. We remain firmly focused on supporting the six priority family types identified as being at a higher risk of poverty within our first Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, which includes families with a child under one.

The first 12 months of a child’s life are an absolutely crucial time and we have taken action to ensure there is wide-ranging support for parents of babies and young children. Our Universal Health Visiting Pathway directs Health Visitors to enquire about family finances and signpost families to appropriate support services. The Family Nurse Partnership also offers intensive support for young, first time mothers in up to 4,000 families a year. In addition, we are increasing perinatal and infant health services in Scotland leading to new or expanded Community Perinatal Mental Health Services, Infant Mental Health Services and Maternity and Neonatal Psychological Intervention Services.

We are also providing financial support to families on low incomes through our five family payments, which include our three Best Start Grant payments, Best Start Foods and Scottish Child Payment. For eligible families with a child under one, support includes the Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment, which provides £754.65 for a first child and £377.35 for all subsequent children, support through Best Start Foods which is worth £42.40 every four weeks for each child from birth until they’re one year old, as well as the ‘game-changing’ Scottish Child Payment of £26.70 per eligible child per week. To ensure investment in our benefits is protected, we will amend the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 to ensure all benefits are increased each year to reflect inflation, giving financial certainty to households.

We are absolutely committed to meeting the 2030 child poverty targets, and will continue to do everything within the scope of our powers and budget to deliver the change needed including for families with a baby.

The Scottish Government will publish the third Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan by the end of March 2026, covering the period 2026-31, which will set out the actions we will take as a Government to meet the ambitious child poverty targets set for 2030.

Petroineos first approached the Scottish Government in early 2024 to seek support for Project Willow. The Scottish Government has supported this with £799,000 of funding and has successfully leveraged the UK Government to do the same.

The Project Willow cross site study is examining the enablers and blockers to deploying low carbon technologies at Grangemouth that will support our commitment to secure a long term and sustainable future for the industrial cluster. Petroineos has contracted Ernst & Young Parthenon (Ernst & Young) to undertake this study which commenced in August and is due to report early in the New Year.

The Scottish Government, UK Government, Scottish Enterprise, Petroineos and INEOS have a joint governance function for the study and Unite the Union engage via regular standing committee meetings.

The programme of work has undertaken extensive stakeholder engagement including businesses, sector specialists, the local community, and the public sector.

Consideration was given to over 80 technologies at different levels of readiness before developing a shorter list of viable alternatives - including sustainable aviation fuel, e-fuels, and low carbon hydrogen - which are now being scrutinised through the following lenses: technical; economic; commercial; regulatory; climate/environmental; community; and skills. Feedstock availability and scalability are two of several key criteria being considered by Ernst & Young.

The Scottish Government will provide an update to Parliament on the findings of Project Willow upon its conclusion.

To support the development of, ‘A Trading Nation: Realising Scotland's Hydrogen Potential - A Plan for Exports’, Scottish Government officials engaged extensively with stakeholders, including key policy leads within the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

The UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021 (‘the Continuity Act’) provides Scottish Ministers with a power to help meet the Scottish Government’s commitment to align with future developments in EU law, where it is appropriate and meaningful to do so. This is important to maintain and advance regulatory standards in Scotland.

HMRC undertakes an on-going programme of activities to ensure Scottish taxpayers are accurately identified. Scottish Government scrutinise this work through a joint quarterly income tax board.

This work includes, comparing PAYE submissions with HMRC’s own records to identify cases where employers are not correctly applying Scottish tax codes and checking address data against third party sources. Individuals who complete a tax return come under greater scrutiny and are required to confirm address details annually.

HMRC view the risks associated with Scottish-specific non-compliance as being small, whilst we are reassured with this assessment - we are not complacent and continue to focus on scrutinising HMRC performance in identifying the Scottish tax base.

Provisions to introduce a licensing scheme for certain wildlife traps and provisions relating to glue traps have not yet been implemented. We will be commencing these provisions over the coming months, with stakeholders given sufficient time to make any necessary changes.

Provisions relating to the licensing of muirburn and the Muirburn Code are expected to be brought in ahead of the next muirburn season in autumn 2025.