Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is investing £1.9 billion through the Regional Growth Deal programme over the next 10 years to stimulate economic growth at a local and regional level. These strategic partnerships are designed to align long term funding behind shared visions for regional economies, leverage additional investment, create new jobs and accelerate inclusive economic growth.

The Scottish Government is also investing up to £90 million in 2026-27, delivering employability support to people of all ages facing barriers to the labour market. Through the No One Left Behind approach, person-centred employability services are available in every local authority area, helping people progress towards and into sustainable, fair work.

Support is also available to help people find and sustain employment throughout their working lives. Careers support is available across Scotland through Skills Development Scotland, with advisers based in schools and communities. Colleges and universities also provide career support services to help young people and adults find and sustain employment.

Alongside this, our Fair Work approach seeks to help provide the conditions to enable people from all backgrounds to remain in and progress in work.

We are committed to making Scotland the best place in the world for BSL users to live, work, visit and learn and will deliver on this through our BSL National Plan 2023-2029. The current National Plan 2023-2029 is ongoing, and Scottish Government will publish a midpoint Progress Report at the end of this year, which will include an overview of achievements and ongoing work.

Action 28 within the BSL National Plan recognises that hard-of-hearing and deafened people should have tools for them to communicate, including learning BSL.

There is currently no specific financial assistance available for hard of hearing and deafened people, funded directly by Scottish Government, to undertake accredited BSL learning.

Additionally, the Equalities, Human Rights, and Civil Justice Committee’s Report on the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015 made recommendations, which Scottish Government has either fully or partially accepted. One of which was in relation to exploring the establishment of BSL courses. Work is in progress to scope this recommendation further.

We continue to work with and engage with our partners and stakeholders such as the Implementation Advisory Group (IAG) of the BSL National Plan to better understand the issues impacting on BSL users and their families and to address these issues.

In Scotland, the existing additional support for learning framework is well established and considered the right approach for our children.

Scottish Ministers remain fully committed to transparency regarding which (a) individuals, (b) organisations and (c) other entities receive public subsidies for (i) forestry, (ii) farming, (iii) nature restoration and (iv) other land use and the quality of the outputs generated by these subsidies.

The management, collection, evaluation, monitoring and publication of data has already been identified as a critical and vital element of the current Agricultural Reform Programme that will implement the Vision of Agriculture and ensure that successful outcomes are achieved all in terms of the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 ( the ARC Act) as approved and passed by Parliament.

The ARC Act does provide discretionary powers for Scottish Ministers to address transparency. For example, where there are complex ownership structures such as holding companies or trusts or where a person has significant control over a beneficiary of support under the ARC Act, Scottish Ministers may be able to publish the details of any person who owns or controls the recipient of that support. But that would need consultation with the Information Commissioner, satisfactory conclusion of data protection and other impact assessment work and such consultation as is required in terms of the ARC Act.

The ARC Act powers will enable Scottish Ministers to consider those improvements that should be addressed to provide new improved schemes under the ARC Act.

The Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 provides for an offence of abuse of a partner or ex-partner which criminalises psychological, as well as physical, abuse. The Act defines abuse as behaviour which a reasonable person would consider likely to cause the victim to suffer physical or psychological harm where the accused either intends to cause such harm or else is reckless as to whether their behaviour would be likely to result in such harm.

The Act provides an illustrative definition of abusive behaviour which includes behaviour which is abusive and which has as its purpose, or which a reasonable person would think would be likely to have the effect of:

• isolating the victim from friends, relatives or other sources of support;
• frightening, humiliating, degrading or punishment the victim.

As such, depending on the facts and circumstances of the case, the offence can be used to prosecute someone who engages in smear campaigns or reputational abuse of their partner or ex-partner. In other cases, it may be possible to prosecute such behaviour using offences such as threatening or abusive behaviour with a domestic abuse aggravation where the offence is committed by the victim's partner or ex-partner.

Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) are operationally independent of the Scottish Ministers and are responsible for any guidance in place for police and prosecutors.

Victim support organisations have long-standing experience in dealing with victims who have suffered different forms of coercive and controlling behaviour and can tailor their approaches in offering support depending on the specific circumstances of any given case.

The Scottish Government recognises how vital childcare and family support services are in rural and island areas, both in relation to giving children the best start in life and supporting families to work. We also understand that childcare and wider wraparound provision can look different in rural and island communities, where geography, population density and travel distances can create particular delivery challenges.

The Scottish Government worked with key partners to convene a roundtable event on 25 March 2026, that sought to gather learning from across communities, sectors, regulators and government to identify practical actions to help increase the accessibility and sustainability of childcare provision across rural areas. This roundtable event helped enhance the learning we continue to gather through our Early Adopter Communities, Access to Childcare Fund projects, and Extra Time Programme on identifying models of delivery that support access to childcare in our rural and island communities.

Recently, the Scottish Government has also committed to introducing a universally accessible breakfast club offer in primary schools across Scotland by August 2027, and announced investment of a further £2.5 million to expand free after-school activity clubs. This funding will help us understand how activities and regulated childcare services can work together to improve access to after-school childcare, including in rural and island areas.

The Scottish Government has committed to expanding childcare support to children from nine months through to the end of primary school over the course of this Parliament. As this work progresses, we will take into account the needs of families across Scotland, and decisions will be informed by learning gathered through the delivery of our projects and programmes, and direct engagement with rural and island stakeholders.

Scotland’s education system is designed to be inclusive for all children and young people, with or without additional support needs(ASNs).

All children and young people should receive the support that they need to reach their full potential. Education authorities are under a statutory duty to identify, provide for, and to review the support that they provide for pupils with additional support needs, including those who are deaf. They also have duties to employ teachers of deaf children and young people where support for a pupil is required.

The Scottish Government continues to invest in the school workforce and the provision of additional support for learning. The 2026-27 Budget provides £186.5 million of additional resource to councils. This includes £28 million investment in the ASL workforce and builds on the £15 million each year for pupil support assistants. Councils have the flexibility to use this funding to increase the number of teachers of deaf children and young people in their area and provide other specialist support such as BSL Tutors and Communication Support Workers. Councils have also continued their record investment in additional support for learning, with almost £1.1 billion spent in 2024-25.

In addition to postgraduate qualifications in deaf education, professional learning opportunities in supporting children and young people with sensory needs are available via the Scottish Sensory Centre, Education Scotland and CALL Scotland.

Notwithstanding the support that the Scottish Government already provides to schools we recognise the need to go further and we have already committed to expanding the provision of BSL training for teachers and to ensuring that a pool of specialist teachers to support those children who are blind, partially sighted, deaf or deafblind. I will update Parliament on these plans in due course.

The Education (Scotland) Act 2025 ensures that the Qualifications Scotland and HMIE will have due regard to the specific needs and interests of those receiving BSL learner education or BSL medium education.

The Scottish Government recognises the significant impact of liver disease, which affects at least two million people across the UK and is often associated with harmful alcohol consumption and poor diet. Improving population health, tackling health inequalities and increasing healthy life expectancy remain key priorities, and we are committed to taking forward a range of evidence-based actions to address health harms associated with alcohol and less healthy food products.

Scotland's Alcohol & Drugs Strategic Plan, published in March 2026, included a commitment to publish an Alcohol Harm Prevention Plan, which will set out the next steps to address alcohol-related harm in Scotland.

Alongside preventative measures, the Scottish Government is working with Alcohol and Drug Partnerships and NHS Boards to develop a nationwide model for the early detection of alcohol-related liver disease. This builds on the learning from the innovative intelligent Liver Function Testing (iLFT) pilot pioneered by NHS Tayside. In addition, through the Centre for Sustainable Delivery, we have established a Specialty Delivery Group for Liver Disease to support improvements in care and outcomes.

The Food (Promotion and Placement) (Scotland) Regulations 2025 will come into force on 1 October 2026 to restrict volume price and location promotions of food and drink high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS), both in-store and online. The Regulations deliver a key action under the Population Health Framework and seek to make the balance of products on promotion healthier, reduce overconsumption of HFSS foods, and contribute to reducing population levels of overweight and obesity and their consequent health harms.

Scottish Government also recognises the link between liver disease and an increased risk of liver cancer. Cancer remains a national priority, and the forthcoming ten-year Cancer Strategy will place a strong emphasis on prevention, including action on cancers with poorer survival rates, such as liver cancer. Supported by an initial three-year action plan, the strategy will take a comprehensive approach to improving outcomes, from prevention and diagnosis through to treatment and post-treatment care.

I refer the member to the answer to question S7W-01913 on 3 August 2026. 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