Chamber and committees

Australian Council for Educational Research International UK (ACER UK) were awarded a contract to support the Scottish Government, in consultation with its partner country Governments, to provide a needs analysis in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda to inform the design of our new Inclusive Education programmes, with a focus on improving access to education for the most marginalised – particularly girls and learners with disabilities. The total amount paid to ACER UK for their services in FY2023-24 was £54,172.

Support from the Scottish Government for Inclusive Education was a specific ask during discussions with all three partner countries of Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda, and is provided in line with commitments made in Scotland’s International Strategy: Delivering for Scotland and the Programme for Government in 2023.

In 2020-21, the Scottish Government carried out a review of its approach to International Development in light of COVID-19 which deepened pre-existing inequalities, exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems. The results of that Review were announced to the Scottish Parliament through a Ministerial Statement on 3 March 2021 which included agreeing priority focus areas for future international development programming, ensuring SG is supporting its partners to address the impacts of COVID-19; education was one of the priority areas.

Scottish local authorities use a diverse portfolio of temporary accommodation and there is a wide variety of legislation that caters for physical standards across these types of accommodation. These include the tolerable standard, which is a basic level of repair that applies to all property to make it habitable; the Scottish Housing Quality Standard, which applies to social rented sector properties; Houses in Multiple Occupation licensing for bed and breakfast accommodation and hostels; and the repairing standard in the private rented sector.

All local authorities should ensure that the temporary accommodation they provide to fulfil their duty to accommodate homeless households meets the temporary accommodation standards framework, published by the Scottish Government in 2023. The framework sets out the physical, location, service and management standards to ensure that temporary accommodation is of good quality and is safe, warm and affordable. Although consultation is required before the framework can be legally enforced, the framework was developed to ensure consistency in standards across all local authority areas.

The Scottish Housing Regulator assesses the compliance of all social landlords in meeting the tolerable standard and Scottish Housing Quality Standard, and would be obliged to assess landlords’ performance on meeting the temporary accommodation standards framework once it is enforced. Work is required to develop indicators to enable the Scottish Housing Regulator to assess local authority performance against the framework. In the meantime, social landlords should ensure that their temporary accommodation meets these standards.

NHS Boards have reporting systems to capture data on violence and aggression - including sexual assault. I strongly encourage staff to report any and all instances of violent and aggressive behaviour.

Health Improvement Scotland are working with all NHS boards and partner organisations to standardise the reporting of adverse events, and have developed a national framework which was published in February.

This details the importance of national standards of reporting and the requirement for monitoring and publishing of data. This will facilitate the collation of accurate data nationally.

The courts have extensive powers to deal robustly with sexual offending. All instances of such behaviour should be reported and escalated to Police Scotland as quickly as possible for consideration of necessary action.

We encourage all businesses to report any instances of criminality to Police Scotland. As well as enabling the perpetrators to be caught and being prevented from committing further crimes, such reports also ensure Police Scotland has the best possible intelligence on incidents in particular areas. The Scottish Government would also urge retailers to engage with the Scottish Partnership Against Acquisitive Crime (SPAACE) in order to help safeguard their business and the people that work there. The SPAACE Strategy outlines a partnership approach to the prevention, deterrence, and enforcement around a range of crimes including housebreaking and theft.

Alongside the draft budget published 4 December 2024, there was accompanying documents that set out level 4 funding - (https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.scot%2Fbinaries%2Fcontent%2Fdocuments%2Fgovscot%2Fpublications%2Fcorporate-report%2F2024%2F12%2Fscottish-budget-2025-2026%2Fdocuments%2F2025-26-level-4-budget-tables%2F2025-26-level-4-budget-tables%2Fgovscot%253Adocument%2F2025-26-level-4-budget-tables.xlsx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK).

Within the Health & Social Care tab the direct Mental Health programme spend is broken down along with a summary of what it is used for. This only refers to the direct programme budget and not wider government spend on mental health.

The direct programme budget for Mental Health will increase by 1.2% (to £270.5m) in 2025-26, and in the last five years has more than doubled, from £117.1m in 2020-21 to £270.5m in 2025-26.

Latest data published by Public Health Scotland on 25 February 2025 shows total spend on mental health in Scotland has increased by £179.6 million to £1.486 billion in 2023-24. That is 9.03% of total net NHS expenditure, up from 8.53% in 2022-23. Spend on child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) has increased by nearly £19.4 million to over £134 million. This is 0.82% of total spend, up from 0.75% in 2022-23.

The Scottish Government recognises the important role health services can play in helping to prevent homelessness, including for households with children. We will introduce new ask and act duties on named relevant bodies so that a wider range of services do more to prevent homelessness.

The relevant bodies include health boards, special health boards and integrated health boards. While GPs are not on the named bodies list, we anticipate that the duties on other health professionals, such as community link workers in GP practices, will ensure GPs and other practice staff are kept informed and involved in homelessness prevention.

We will work closely with stakeholders in health to ensure the regulations, guidance and training for the implementation of the new duties are fit for purpose and take into account the specific needs of particular households, including those with children. We will be funding a series of pilot projects in 2025-26 that will help inform the best approach to take.

We also know that there is good practice in preventing homelessness across Scotland and we would encourage health and other services to work together and in co-operation with other partners to prevent homelessness now rather than to wait for new homelessness prevention duties.

We have taken action to increase supply of social homes, with a focus on larger family homes, through increasing funding to local authorities for voids and acquisitions as set out in the answer to S6W-35453 on 19 March 2025.

We continue to support local authorities to transition to rapid rehousing, which is the best way to reduce the use of temporary accommodation in the longer term. Where temporary accommodation is required, it should meet the needs of the household.

Local authorities need to ensure that all temporary accommodation is of a high quality and meets the needs of the people that are living there. The Temporary Accommodation Standards Framework, published in 2023, sets out the physical, location, service and management standards to ensure consistency in standards across all local authority areas. All local authorities are expected to work towards meeting these standards to ensure that temporary accommodation is of good quality and is safe, warm and affordable.

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

Local authorities need to ensure that all temporary accommodation is of a high quality and meets the needs of the people that are living there. The Temporary Accommodation Standards Framework was published in 2023 and all local authorities are expected to work towards meeting these standards.

The ‘tolerable standard’, which applies to all dwellings in Scotland, is a basic level of repair that applies to all property to make it habitable. In addition, the Scottish Housing Quality Standard, also applies to social rented sector properties, was introduced in 2004 to ensure properties are energy efficient, safe and secure; are not seriously damaged; and have kitchens and bathrooms that are in good condition.

In November last year we published a plan setting out a suite of 20 actions being taken to improve GP recruitment and retention.

We have also reactivated the GP Sustainability loans scheme for GP premises and invested an additional £73.2 million in General Practice this financial year to provide a pay uplift for GPs and to support GP practices to retain and recruit key staff. The uplift includes £7.6 million to cover population growth.

Increasing housing supply is key to reducing levels of homelessness. In 2024-25, we made additional funding of £40 million available to local authorities, taking investment in affordable housing to almost £600 million. 80% of the additional funding has been targeted to areas with the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures to increase the supply of social and affordable homes through acquisitions and to bring long term empty social homes back into use. This will help to increase the supply of settled homes of the right type and size, including larger properties suitable for families.

The 2025-26 budget of £768 million represents a 38% increase when compared to the 2024-25 original published budget of £555.8 million – an increase of £181 million capital (44%) and an increase of £30.8 million (63%) in financial transactions. Supported by our guidance on the planning and delivery of the affordable housing supply programme, this investment is estimated to enable the delivery of approximately 8,000 homes while contributing towards our target of 110,000 affordable homes by 2032. This significant increase in our budget will allow us to prioritise proposals that aim to reduce the number of families with children in temporary accommodation. To the end of September 2024, 24,382 homes have been delivered towards this target, of which 18,539 (76%) are homes for social rent. And an estimated 2,776 households with children have been helped into affordable housing in the year to September 2024.

Our long term commitment of £100 million over several financial years for mid-market rent will, with institutional investment, grow to at least £500 million and will support the delivery of around 2,800 affordable homes.

Through our engagement with local authorities, we know that efforts are being made at a local level to help reduce the time between a household accepting an offer of settled housing and moving into their home.

However, the most effective way to reduce the flow of households into the homelessness system is to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place. The measures in the Housing (Scotland) Bill are designed to make the prevention of homelessness everybody’s business and to ensure that people get the help they need to prevent their homelessness earlier.