Chamber and committees

Working across Government and together with our partners, we continue to take action to address labour and skills shortages, including better aligning the education and skills system with the needs of employers and the economy.

We remain committed to supporting a high-quality post-school education, research and skills system with over £2.4 billion investment, including more than £133 million of this investment focused on Modern Apprenticeships. There is also significant progress being made to reform and improve key areas of the post-school learning system covered by James Withers’ review Fit for the Future, including on apprenticeships, skills planning and simplification of the funding body landscape.

I provided the latest update on progress in a letter to the Education, Children and Young People Committee on 27 March 2024, available at Update to Committee - Post school reform | Scottish Parliament Website . Other action includes Scotland’s Migration Service which was launched in March 2024. The new service provides information and offer individual appointments to help people with moving and settling into life in Scotland. It also supports businesses to navigate the immigration system, including advice from qualified advisors.

No One Left Behind is the Scottish Government’s shared approach to delivering an all-age, place-based, person-centred model of employability support in Scotland. It sees Scottish and Local Government working together, with partners from the third, private and wider public sectors to support both individuals and employers with their labour market needs.

In setting out the four key priorities for the Scottish Government, the First Minister has been clear in emphasising the need to focus on action and delivery rather than additional strategies.

The National Strategy for Economic Transformation was published in 2022 and is a 10-year strategy. The strategy set out our long-term vision to build a fairer, wealthier and greener economy based on the principles of prosperity, equality, sustainability and resilience.

The strategy’s Fairer and More Equal Society programme aims to reorient our economy towards wellbeing and fair work, to deliver higher rates of employment and wage growth. The Skilled Workforce programme seeks to ensure that people have the skills they need at every stage of life to have rewarding careers and meet the demands of an ever-changing economy and society, and that employers invest in the skilled employees they need to grow their businesses.

Engagement with business, enterprise and industry stakeholders was a critical part of developing the strategy. We continue to work with partners to deliver the labour market interventions that will have the greatest impact on achieving our ambition of growing an economy that is fair and green and we will be setting out the next phase of our approach in the forthcoming Programme for Government.

The Scottish Government is keen to promote a culture of entrepreneurship.

Scottish Government business support is provided by our enterprise agencies, utilising a range of support mechanisms. Scottish Enterprise provide business support in the area which includes the Edinburgh Eastern Constituency.

Scottish Enterprise systems do not hold tags for UK or Scottish parliamentary constituencies. Accordingly, as a proxy, the postcodes for the Edinburgh Eastern constituency were used to identify businesses in that constituency to which payments were made. It is also not possible for Scottish Enterprise to break down the payments according to size of business as they do not hold company size in our finance system

The Scottish Government are in regular discussions with the Scottish Funding Council about the financial sustainability of the university sector. These discussions consider sector risks and plans and seek to strengthen our collective approach.

Additionally, I last met with University Chairs on 5 March 2024 at which a range of topics of importance to the sector were discussed. In addition to regular meetings with Universities Scotland (US), I met with US, the Scottish Funding Council and PriceWaterhouseCoopers on 29 May to discuss the short to medium term financial sustainability of universities in Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question PQ S6W-27235 on 17 May 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at - https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The Scottish Government has announced it will consult on whether the prosecution and government functions of the law officers should be separated.

As stated in the answer to question S6W-27820 on 11 June 2024, I can confirm the Digitisation of records is an operational responsibility of individual Health Boards GP practices and Local Authorities, and their partner organisations commissioned to deliver care. At a national level and building on the existing use of electronic record systems, we are focussed on allowing records to be stored, linked, and shared securely.

Our national work recognises, however, that we need to improve the way this works for people across Scotland in a nationally consistent manner. As set out in our integrated health & social care record and a digital front door so that we can introduce a national approach to improving the process for accessing care records for care experienced people, and those around them.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The Scottish Government has already introduced a national smartcard that can be used across all modes of public transport. The National Entitlement Card ( saltire card) is available to any Scottish resident and, since 2019, can be used across Scotland for any operator that provides a compatible smart ticket. This platform is also used for the national concessionary travel schemes, with approximately 170m smart journeys taken each year.

Our refreshed Smart Delivery Strategy will be published in summer 2024, outlining our programme of work in the coming years. This includes exploring development of options for a new national integrated ticketing system to reflect passenger desire for progression to integrated contactless and digital ticketing. We will encourage operators across all modes to participate in these options for a new system that could offer multi-modal fare capping, removing the need to think about a ticket for each leg of the journey, potentially building on the five regional integrated ticketing schemes that are available in Scotland, led by operators and local transport authorities.

The strategy aligns with the work of the National Smart Ticketing Advisory Board (NTSAB), established in November 2023, to advise on national technological ticketing standards that will support a new integrated system, as well as delivery of smart ticketing measures from the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019. With NSTAB’s advice, a business case will be developed, which will consider the timescales and costs of delivering a national integrated ticketing system.

The Scottish Government was approached by NHS Lothian, the City of Edinburgh Council and Public Health Scotland to make it aware of issues regarding Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) procedures taking place in Edinburgh.

The Scottish Government invited an environmental health officer from the City of Edinburgh Council to the Scottish Cosmetic Interventions Expert Group meeting on 25 March 2024 to provide the group with further details.

The decision to issue a public warning regarding these procedures rested with, and was made by, the City of Edinburgh Council.

The consultation on the detail of proposed regulations to restrict promotions of food and drink high in fat, sugar or salt closed on 21 May 2024.

Work is underway to procure an independent analysis of the consultation feedback. The feedback received will be used as part of the policy decision-making process, alongside a range of other available information and evidence. It is anticipated that the final report will be available for publication in late autumn.