Chamber and committees

Officials are involved in the UK Government’s Cross-Government Working Group on RAAC. Recent meetings have confirmed that the Institution of Structural Engineers' guidance on RAAC remains a valid approach to the assessment of RAAC. This has also been confirmed in discussions with the Health & Safety Executive, the UK-wide regulator for health and safety.

Officials also regularly attend meetings of UK education departments convened by the UK Department for Education to consider RAAC.

The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills spoke to Baroness Barran, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Education on 31 August regarding RAAC in schools and there has been subsequent correspondence between the Cabinet Secretary and Gillian Keegan, Secretary of State for Education.

On 16 August, the Deputy First Minister wrote to UK Treasury seeking clarity on new capital funding to deal with RAAC. On the same day, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice wrote to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities recommending a collaborative approach between administrations. Dialogue continues on both these issues.

Pupil Equity Funding is allocated directly to schools with headteachers having the discretion to make decisions about which particular interventions or approaches will be most effective at raising attainment and achievement and widening opportunities for children affected by poverty in their schools and communities. Although we expect schools to provide plans detailing their use of Pupil Equity Funding through existing planning procedures e.g. through School Improvement Plans and Standards and Quality reports, details of the particular interventions each school has implemented using Pupil Equity Funding are not held centrally.

Individuals are not eligible to apply directly to the Just Transition Fund. Workers in the north east region are supported through our £50 million multi-year capital grant programme, announced in 2022-23.

To date no Scotland Innovates funds have been spent to develop submissions received via the service. We do not hold data on monies spent by other parts of the public sector who have assessed submissions.

Supplementary note “The vast majority of Scotland Innovates submissions are from SME’s and are either “at or near market ready”.

There have been a total of 95 submissions received by the Scotland Innovates service. 66 were received during the 2022-23 FY and 29 have been received so far during the 2023-24 FY.

Police Scotland has concluded that a stand-alone portal is not the optimum route to create the capability for digital media submissions to be submitted by members of the public.

However, Police Scotland plan to utilise the Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC) Programme, currently in pilot in Dundee, to build on the Scottish Government’s investment and make it easier to report poor road user behaviour, in support of making Scotland’s roads safer for all – especially for pedestrians and cyclists.

Timescales will be determined by the national rollout of DESC, which is expected to be complete during 2025. My officials remain in discussion with Police Scotland on this matter, as we look to implement this important road safety initiative.

So far, the Just Transition Fund has allocated £75 million to date, supporting a cross-sector portfolio of projects ranging across sectors like energy, agriculture, digital innovation and construction while also supporting communities across the North East and Moray to create jobs, support innovation, and secure the highly skilled workforce of the future.

Individuals are not eligible to apply directly to the Just Transition Fund, however through our £50 million multi-year capital grant programme we are providing support to the current and future offshore energy workforce, including oil and gas workers, as they transition to net zero.

For example, this year we are funding 400 free pilot training courses in energy transition skills. We are also sponsoring the development of an Offshore Energy Skills Passport which, once complete, will aim to support any member of the UK offshore energy workforce to transition between offshore energy sectors.

Through our Supply Chain Pathway and Energy Transition Challenge Fund project we are supporting energy supply chain companies currently servicing the oil and gas markets to transition to new opportunities in green energy across Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, and Moray. In Year 1 we supported 11 local businesses and over the Fund’s 4-year lifetime we will deliver £10 million in grant support to companies in the region.

The Scottish Government does not recognise the term 'school hardship fund' and it is not part of Free School Meals legislation. Local authorities have powers to provide financial or other support to any child in need under section 22 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995. Additionally, section 12 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 enables the provision of assistance to adults, including provision of cash, in relation to emergencies. Both of these powers have been utilised in past to enable the provision of direct payments in lieu of free school meals. The latter are usually referred to as crisis grants.

Although school meal debt is a matter for councils, the Scottish Government will do everything that we can to support families, and we will consider all the options that are available to us to ensure that families do not find themselves punished for struggling during a cost of living crisis.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all children and young people who require free school meals receive these. Education authorities have duties to provide free school meals to those who are eligible in primary 6 to S6 and the Scottish Government has already expanded universal free school meal provision to those in primary 1 to 5 and special schools. We are currently working with Local Authorities on the next stages of expansion of Free School Meals to those in receipt of Scottish Child Payment in P6 and P7. In addition, Local Authorities have the powers to provide discretionary free school meals who they believe require them. These meals meet high nutritional standards as set out in The Nutritional Requirements for Food and Drink (Scotland) Regulations 2020 ensuring that school lunches contain an appropriate amount of energy and nutrients to support healthy growth and development’.

The Scottish Government works closely with the university sector to ensure that we secure economic advantage from innovative research. Our recently published Innovation Strategy highlighted work to deliver a step change in the commercialisation of this research with a focus on facilitating even greater collaboration between industry and academia, supporting the creation of more scalable spin-outs and ensuring that we have the necessary infrastructure to retain more of these spin-outs in Scotland over the longer term. In this specific case, officials from both the Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise are making contact with the university to discuss what support is required to realise the full economic potential of this exceptional discovery.