Chamber and committees

Food insecurity is driven by insufficient and insecure household income and no one should have to compromise on food or other essentials. Helping people with the cost of living is a top priority of this government and we’re investing around £3.5 billion in 2026-27 to support this, including reducing the costs of travel and helping people find and stay in work. This offers the most comprehensive cost of living support package in the UK while strengthening our public services.

Advice services are critical to Scotland’s communities, maximising incomes and helping to reduce poverty, which is why in 2026-27 we have allocated more than £18 million for the provision of free income maximisation support, welfare and debt advice.

On 4 September 2023, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) provided the Scottish Government with details of institutions where reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) had been identified. Edinburgh Napier University was reported as having RAAC in one building on its Merchiston Campus, with its removal planned as part of the university’s wider campus redevelopment programme.

Responsibility for the management, maintenance and safety of university buildings rests with the institution as the owner of the estate. As part of its outcomes framework and assurance model the SFC engages directly with institutions on estate matters and has maintained oversight of issues relating to RAAC across the tertiary education sector.

The Scottish Government launched the Scottish Emergency Heating Oil Scheme within a matter of weeks in response to the spiralling prices caused by the Iran conflict and wider instability undermining energy security across Europe.

As at the end of 26 July 2026, 3,418 households have met the eligibility requirements, with the first payments being made within 24 hours of the Scheme launching on 1 April 2026.

Each award is for £300 and therefore £1,024,500 has been paid out thus far to ensure the most vulnerable households are supported during the cost of living crisis, which includes households on means-tested benefits but also those in financial hardship and at risk of self-rationing fuel who have unavoidable heating needs.

Local Authorities are legally required to set a balanced budget for each upcoming financial year and all 32 councils agreed balanced budgets for 2026-27, ahead of the statutory deadline of 11 March 2026.

The Scottish Government recognise the pressures facing Local Government and that is why the Local Government Settlement provided record funding of £15.7 billion for 2026-27, including a quarter of a billion pounds of unrestricted General Revenue Grant and full flexibility on council tax.

Decisions on future Local Government Settlements will be the subject of negotiations with COSLA on behalf of all 32 Local Authorities and announced as part of the outcome of future Scottish Budgets.

The Scottish Government is committed to reducing the need to practice restraint and seclusion in secure care. The wellbeing and safety of children and young people is paramount. The Scottish Government is clear that restraint should only be used in exceptional circumstances.

The use of restraint was a focus of the joint inspection carried out by the Care Inspectorate and the Mental Welfare Commission in August 2025. St Mary’s Kenmure has undertaken efforts to improve the experiences and outcomes for young people in its care since the inspection, including improved governance around practice, ensuring that the use of restraint and seclusion is more visible and subject to greater scrutiny by the Board of Trustees.

In November 2025 St Mary's Kenmure reported that it had achieved an 85% reduction in the use of restrictive practices and an 80% reduction in the use of restraint over the previous year.

There are appropriate channels where issues and complaints can be raised and addressed independently, both through St Mary's Kenmure’s internal complaints process and complaints raised directly with either a placing authority, or the Care Inspectorate.

The care manager for the child must be notified immediately when a formal complaint has been raised in any aspect of the child's care.

Independent advocacy is also provided to every child residing at St Mary's to enable them to express views, raise issues, make complaints or representations to ensure that their rights are promoted and upheld.

St Mary's, like all secure centres, is inspected at least once a year on an unannounced basis. The Care Inspectorate has a responsibility to ensure that the service is upholding, protecting and promoting the rights of children. The Care Inspectorate inspectors are responsible for working alongside the secure providers to ensure that children get the care and support they need while living in secure.

As work is undertaken to enhance secure care in Scotland, consideration of the CPT’s findings – including those on children’s confidence in internal complaints processes – alongside a range of other evidence will be taken into account.

The population in secure care can change at least daily, due in part to the short-term nature of some placements, and in part due to an active approach towards minimising the time that children spend under a care regime that requires the deprivation of liberty. Real time data on the make-up of the population in secure that identifies the reasons for which they have been placed there is not held centrally.

All of Scotland’s secure accommodation services offer an integrated model of delivery, usually caring for children together regardless of the route via which they have been placed in secure accommodation. This is consistent with Scotland’s approach to The Promise, GIRFEC and the Kilbrandon ethos - namely that both children who have been offended against and children who have committed offences are all to be seen, understood, and responded to, as children in need. The Kilbrandon report states “in terms of the child's actual needs, the legal distinction between juvenile offenders and children in need of care or protection was-looking to the underlying realities-very often of little practical significance”. These matters were directly considered by Parliament during scrutiny of the Bills that became the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024 and the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning (Scotland) Act 2026.

While the Scottish Government has not undertaken an assessment of food bank use in Scotland, an evaluation of our Five Family Payments, published 4 Sept 2025, shows that The Scottish Child Payment and Best Start Foods have helped reduce food insecurity.

We set out our ambition for a Scotland without the need for food banks in the “Cash-First: Towards ending the need for food banks in Scotland” Plan. This Plan outlined nine actions to be delivered over the period 2023–2026 to improve responses to financial crisis, with a focus on increasing access to cash support so that fewer people need to rely on emergency food provision. This included a new Cash-First Programme (the Programme) to improve urgent access to cash in a crisis.

We invested over £1.5 million in the Programme, which concluded on 31 March 2026, to provide funding and practical assistance to eight area-based Partnerships to improve urgent access to cash in a crisis alongside wider support.

An interim evaluation of the Programme, was published July 2025. The final evaluation will be published later this summer and while there are no plans at present to extend the Programme, the learning will allow us to better understand the needs and priorities of households and communities to strengthen rights-based action on food insecurity across Scotland at both local and national level.

St Mary's Kenmure was jointly inspected by the Care Inspectorate and Mental Welfare Commission in August 2025. The service was evaluated as 3 - adequate. St Mary’s Kenmure took immediate action to respond to the report’s four recommendations, within the timescales stipulated by the Care Inspectorate.

A follow-up unannounced inspection took place in March 2026 to examine progress. The inspection found that St Mary's had successfully met three of the four requirements. The fourth requirement would be further assessed at the next full inspection, this year.

Findings included:

• The service had taken positive action to ensure the safety and security of young people and staff.
• Staff were knowledgeable and confident regarding authorisation for restrictive practices.
• The detail and quality of the information recorded within incident reports varied, and this would continue to be a focus of the next inspection.
• The service demonstrated a comprehensive approach to staff recruitment.
• Care planning documents were reflective of the individual needs of young people.
• Young people's experiences could be evaluated through effective quality assurance systems

The full report from the most recent annual inspections at St Mary’s and the other three secure centres can be found on the Care Inspectorate website.

Our commitment to the university sector is clear. Our overall 2026-27 investment will exceed £1.4bn, which includes a combined increase of over £55m in resource and capital funding for universities via the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) - equivalent to a 5% uplift on last year’s budget. We also continue our collaborative project between Scottish Government and Universities Scotland on the Framework for Sustainability and Success of Scotland’s Universities launched in December 2025. This will explore options that will ensure our universities are sustainable and well positioned to respond to current and future challenges. I am grateful to cross-party colleagues for their engagement in this work, which I hope will continue as we consider these complex long-term issues.

The Scottish Government position on the responsibility for addressing the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) has not changed. RAAC is primarily a building maintenance issue and responsibility lies with the owner of the building.

The SFC continues to engage with colleges and universities on estate-related matters, including issues relating to RAAC, and keeps the Scottish Government informed of significant sector-wide developments. Institutions are expected to take a risk-based approach to identifying, managing and mitigating any risks associated with RAAC, taking account of relevant professional guidance. The Scottish Government remains in regular contact with the SFC regarding estate-related risks affecting the tertiary education sector and will continue to monitor the position.