Chamber and committees

Annex C of the Infrastructure Investment Plan (IIP), published February 2021, used a taxonomy approach to assess planned infrastructure spend into low, neutral and high carbon categories, drawing on the annual carbon assessment of the capital budget. The 2022-23 annual IIP progress report, published June 2023, considers Major Capital Projects within the IIP in the context of the climate change targets.

Scottish Ministers accept that the IIP material published to date falls short of the requirement on Ministers in section 94A of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, where they publish an Infrastructure Investment Plan, to also publish “an assessment of the extent to which investment in accordance with the plan is expected to contribute to the meeting of the emissions reduction targets”. Urgent work is underway to ensure that the duty is discharged in full and as soon as possible. The Scottish Government is also working with Environmental Standards Scotland to resolve this issue.

The regulation of the energy sector is reserved to the UK Government.

Planning enforcement powers are held by local authorities. Planning authorities can take action to issue a fixed penalty notice or seek prosecution through the Scottish courts. Local authorities are required to keep a publicly available register of enforcement notices.

We are unaware of any fines issued by the Scottish Government to power companies in the last five years; and the Scottish Government does not hold any relevant data relating to our agencies.

Tackling poverty and protecting people from harm is one of three critical and interdependent missions for the government – alongside our focus on the economy and strengthening public services. We recognise that families with a child under the age of one are more likely to live in poverty and, as set out in Best Start, Bright Futures, our second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, are taking forward a range of action to help.

We have already significantly strengthened support through devolved social security. The Scottish Child Payment is worth £25 per eligible child per week with 316,000 children benefiting as of 30 June 2023. Programme for Government 2023-24 commits to further increasing the value of the Scottish Child Payment in line with inflation next year and to introducing regulations that remove income thresholds from Best Start Foods from February 2024, supporting an additional 20,000 people.

In addition we have delivered over a quarter of a million Baby Boxes to expectant parents – providing them with more than £400 worth of essential items for their newborn – and are committed to investing £500 million in Whole Family Wellbeing to improve holistic family support so that families get the right support, in the right way and at the right time.

Over 11,000 families have benefited from the Family Nurse Partnership since it began in 2010 and we have committed to further expansion over the next two years to reach more young mothers and fathers.

We have also implemented the Universal Health Visitor Pathway across Scotland, to ensure that all families get a minimum of 11 home visits – eight in the first year of life and three child health reviews up to age 5 – and we are supporting health visitors to have more meaningful conversations around financial inclusion through piloting dedicated training to increase their skills and confidence in discussing money worries and provide related guidance.

Between 2019 and 2023, we have invested £26 million in the development of perinatal and infant mental health services across Scotland.

Additionally, we have led work in Scotland to raise awareness of the unique nutritional needs of infants, and engaged a wide range of stakeholders to take action to develop Emergency pathways on Infant Food Insecurity, integrated into wider, locally directed and holistic income maximisation and food insecurity supports.

As set out in our Programme for Government, we will continue to invest in primary prevention from pre-birth through the earliest years and have set out ambitious plans to expand access to funded childcare for 13,000 more children and families by the end of this Parliament

It is estimated that 90,000 fewer children will live in relative and absolute poverty this year as a result of this Government’s policies, with poverty levels 9% points lower that they would have otherwise been. This includes lifting an estimated 50,000 children out of relative poverty through our Scottish Child Payment.

The Scottish Government will continue to do everything within the scope of our powers and budget in order to tackle and reduce child poverty, including for families with a child under the age of one.

Prior to establishing the framework for delivering counselling services, officials engaged with professional counselling bodies who advised that therapeutic counselling is not appropriate for younger pupils. In light of this advice, our commitment is specifically to make counselling available to secondary, primary and special school pupils aged 10 and over.

School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools may have in place to support the health and wellbeing of children and young people. We provide local authorities with £15 million per annum to fund community-based mental health and wellbeing supports for children, young people and their families.

We have also supported school staff to understand and recognise the range of mental health and wellbeing concerns that young people may experience in a new professional learning resource introduced in June 2021.

The Scottish Government continues to keep Preference Waiver Payments (PWP) under review through the Teacher Induction Scheme Ongoing Review Group, and the Strategic Board for Teacher Education will also consider this issue as part of its wider work on teacher recruitment and retention.

However, it is worth highlighting the original intent of the scheme, which is to incentivise teachers to undertake their probation in those parts of Scotland where recruitment and retention is the greatest challenge. We know that those pressures are generally felt more in secondary schools than they are in primary schools.

The “live” aspect of the National e-Learning Offer (NeLO), which includes interactive, online classes and study support from early years to senior phase, is evaluated via Annual Evidence of Impact Reports published by e-Sgoil. The latest report which covers academic year 2022/23 was published in June 2023, and is available at: https://www.e-sgoil.com/downloads/e-sgoil_Impact_Report_2023.pdf

Key highlights from that report included the following:

19,000 webinar registrations for evening study support

16,100 webinar registrations for Easter Study support

44,915 learner attendances at “Developing the Young Workforce Live” sessions

170 “interrupted learners” who are unable to attend school onboarded and engaging with live, interactive programmes of learning.

The “recorded lessons” offer from NeLO is hosted by West Online School (West OS) and their reports are available at: https://www.westpartnership.co.uk/evaluating-and-reporting/ . In 2022-23, 90% of schools and over 40,000 learners accessed WestOS recorded lessons, podcasts and masterclasses.

The “supported” offer is hosted by Education Scotland in the form of a repository of online resources with a single search tool and usage is captured as part of Education Scotland’s own reporting.

NeLO partners continue to gather learner and educator feedback through focus groups and questionnaires.

In line with the National Standard for providers of funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC), it is a requirement that “children have daily access to outdoor play and they regularly experience outdoor play in a natural environment as part of their funded ELC offer ” .

The Home Energy Scotland (HES) Grant and Loan Scheme was launched in December 2022 and offers homeowners in Scotland a grant, interest free loan or a combination of both to support the installation of zero direct emission heating systems and energy efficiency measures.

The scheme is open to all domestic homeowners in Scotland who live in the property they own.

Further information regarding scheme requirements is available on the Home Energy Scotland website: https://www.homeenergyscotland.org/funding/grants-loans/detail/

Transport Scotland are working with support from external specialist commercial and technical advisors Turner and Townsend, to progress development of the next CHFS contract. Work is underway to the develop the next CHFS3 contract including stakeholder engagement to support this process.

Whilst there is an expectation that Educational Psychologist trainees make every reasonable effort to secure employment within a Scottish educational psychology service, this does not preclude seeking other employment if it is not possible to secure local authority employment.