Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is engaging with ScotRail, British Transport Police, Network Rail and Transport Focus and I will advise Parliament when a decision is reached, as previously informed.

Please see below the funding that has been provided to Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS) in each financial year since 2020-21. Please note for 2023-24, we have provided the total committed spend for the current financial year, which may change by April 2024.

We cannot confirm the amount of funding which will be provided to RCS for the financial year 2024-25 at this time. However, we can confirm that RCS will receive funding through the Children, Young People and Families Intervention and Adult Learning and Empowering Communities fund, through ‘100 days’ funding and the Delivering Equally Safe fund amongst others in 2024-25.

Please note that, in addition to funds provided to Rape Crisis Scotland, we also provide funding to local Rape Crisis Centres through the Delivering Equally Safe fund. Additionally, some of the funds provided to Rape Crisis Scotland are distributed by them to local Rape Crisis Centres.

Financial Year 2020-21 - £3,342,646

Financial Year 2021-22 - £5,654,322

Financial Year 2022-23 - £4,587,738

Financial Year 2023-24 - £4,557,276* (committed spend for financial year)

The Scottish Government has not undertaken any targeted work to assess if the welfare of brachycephalic breeds has improved following the introduction of The Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 (the 2021 regulations), however this is something that we do intend to investigate further with local authorities and relevant stakeholders.

Meantime, the Scottish Government continues to engage regularly with local authorities on the enforcement of the 2021 regulations and work with key stakeholders to promote and encourage ethical and responsible breeding of dogs.

The Scottish Government continues to work with the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to see how the application of new technology might help minimise the cost of producing transcripts for all those who wish to access them.

Funding to support place-based regeneration programmes has been set at £45.8 million for 2024-2025, of which £23 million is required to meet contractual commitments for existing Regeneration Capital Grant Fund (RCGF) and Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme (VDLIP) projects.

Ministers are considering options for distribution of the remaining regeneration capital budget allocation for 2024-2025 and we will clarify how this will be allocated in due course.

Officials have been engaging with COSLA on partnership development of this strategy and are jointly planning stakeholder engagement which is expected to commence in the coming weeks.

The commitment to develop a new digital strategy for education was made in the 2023 Programme for Government and is expected to complete by Autumn 2024.

The following figures, drawn from the Scottish Government’s annual school census show both the number of primary and secondary Gaelic medium teachers that have been employed in each year since 2016 and the number that would be able to teach through the medium of Gaelic.

Primary school teachers by ability to teach through Gaelic medium

The results of the 2024 Scottish Cancer Patient Experience Survey will be published in September 2024. The exact time and day of publication will be preannounced at least 4 weeks before publication.

The Scottish Government commissioned the Scottish Cancer Network in August 2022 to review oncology capacity and demand and consider development of a national plan. This work was completed in January 2023.