Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government support the Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) model which can help leverage local investment, encourage innovation, unlock opportunities, and deliver sustainable change and improvement for local places.

We fund Scotland’s Improvement Districts (SIDs) as the National Centre for Improvement Districts in Scotland to provide advice and governance support for BIDs in Scotland. We also provide seedcorn grant funding to support the initial development of new BIDs, subject to budget availability.

We have received a reply from the Secretary of State for Scotland. This reply gives in-principle agreement to the proposed section 104 Order.

Scotland Office has asked for further information on what the Order could cover. The Scottish Government will write to Scotland Office accordingly and will also work with them to agree a timetable.

It may still take some time for the work on the Order to be completed. Scottish Government officials will keep people who have expressed an interest updated on developments.

Local Government funding allocations are routinely published in Local Government Finance Circulars. The allocations in question are available at:

2013-14 - Circular 2/2013

2014-15 - Circular 2/2014

2015-16 - Circular 2/2015

2016-17 - Circular 1/2016

2017-18 - Circular 1/2017

2018-19 - Circular 4/2018

2019-20 - Circular 2/2019

2020-21 - Circular 4/2020

2021-22 - Circular 5/2021

2022-23 - Circular 1/2022

2023-24 - Circular 3/2023

2024-25 - Circular 2/2024

2025-26 - Circular 1/2025

Public bodies and organisations operating in Scotland can be affected by a wide range of law in both devolved and reserved areas, with differing statutory mechanisms for enforcement. The Scottish Ministers may, in some cases, be subject to statutory duties to issue guidance to affected organisations and groups. However, other public bodies will have a statutory roles in regulating enforcement and issuing guidance about areas of law, including those reserved to the UK Parliament.

For payments made by the Scottish Government to public bodies and publicly funded organisations in Scotland, the Scottish Government expects those bodies to comply with the full range of legal obligations imposed on them by all relevant legislation. This includes duties under the Equality Act 2010, where key provisions on matters such as discrimination and the various protected characteristics, including sex, are reserved, or under health and safety workplace regulations, which are also reserved.

Comparing the figures published in Local Government Finance Circular 2/2013 with those in Local Government Finance Circular 1/2025, the total Local Government finance settlement has increased by over £5 billion or 49.7% since 2013-14, that’s a real terms increase of 8.4%.

The Scottish Government does not hold all data in a way that can meet this request. The Scottish Government can provide you with a breakdown of its annual spend on contingent workers by Directorate, but is unable to provide this by Project and/or Contract name as it cannot be consistently categorised in this way.

The table containing the breakdown of expenditure by Directorate on contingent workers was too large to be incorporated into the PQ response. This has therefore been recorded as bib 65692 held in The Scottish Parliament Information Centre. To note, this data has been extracted from a different system to that which retains records on contingent worker numbers and cannot be viewed as inter-related, due to the dependency on different hierarchical structures and definitions of contingent worker. This data does not provide a comparable view of the costs attributable to the contingent workforce listed Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot

The Scottish Government implemented an Oracle Cloud enterprise resource planning system in Autumn 2024, replacing our legacy HR and Finance systems. Though the data capture of contingent workers remains an area requiring some further development, the implementation of a combined HR and Finance system will improve the data we hold on workforce costs.

The Scottish Government has prioritised a reduction in the contingent workforce such as contractors and consultants, as it has reduced its workforce size. This approach has been in partnership with recognised Trade Unions. The number of contingent workers is now 39% lower than in March 2022.

Social Security Scotland has the capacity to identify the number of distinct recipients removed from the client count for Adult Disability Payment in a given time frame. Social Security Scotland do not hold the breakdown of such data by cause of removal.

Social Security Scotland will continue to review and prioritise any new statistics produced and will take account of users’ needs when developing future publications, in line with Code of Practice for Statistics.

The latest Adult Disability Payment official statistics publication can be found at: Social Security Scotland - Statistics. The next release of Adult Disability Payment statistics, covering the period to the end of January 2025, is due to be published on 18 March 2025.

Delivering high quality endoscopy is a priority of the NHS Scotland clinical and service teams.

The Scottish Government commissioned the National Endoscopy Programme Team, with the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD), and Scottish Government officials routinely monitor Health Board performance against the eight key diagnostic tests, including upper endoscopy, lower endoscopy, colonoscopy, cystoscopy, which are used for the diagnosis and surveillance of gastrointestinal problems such as ulcerative colitis and intestinal polyps.

The National Endoscopy Programme Team also supports on-site visits to all Boards to identify local issues, offer Boards support to develop Demand, Capacity, Activity and Queue (DCAQ) information/capacity planning, and promote alternatives to traditional endoscopy such as CytoSCOT, where clinically appropriate.

In addition, CfSD’s Gastroenterology Specialty Delivery Group (SDG) is working to develop national pathway recommendations for gastroenterology diseases such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Irritable Bowel Disease. These pathways will reduce unwarranted variation by standardising service provision and pathways on a best-of-class and once-for-Scotland basis wherever possible.

Performance data relating to the number of waits for one of eight key diagnostic tests is published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) on a quarterly basis. The latest publication provides data up to 31 December 2024 and is available here: Diagnostic waiting times - Waits for key diagnostic tests 25 February 2025 - NHS waiting times - diagnostics - Publications - Public Health Scotland

The Scottish Government is taking action to create jobs and boost employability in our coalfields communities. We are investing over £900 million in Growth Deals for Ayrshire, Glasgow (including North and South Lanarkshire), and Edinburgh and South East Scotland which includes Fife. This funding is creating thousands of new jobs and maintaining existing jobs across these areas. The UK Government is providing match funding.

No One Left Behind is a Scotland-wide strategy delivering employability support to those eligible and furthest from the labour market. It is a collaboration between the Scottish Government and local authorities, and aligns and integrates services in each local area to offer an all-round, holistic approach.

Regeneration programmes such as Regeneration Capital Grant Fund, Investing in Communities Fund and Strengthening Communities Programme are supporting job creation, training, and employability skills. In addition we have provided over £29 million in funding to CRT since 1999 to invest in improving outcomes for former coalfield communities.

The SPCB is open to discussions with organisations that may provide a practical improvement to the processes we already have in place.  Already, we have embarked on several ways to reduce single use products including disposable cups usage across the Scottish Parliament.  The cup levy has been in place since 2019 which has significantly reduced the use of disposables.  We actively monitor the usage of disposable cups with our service partner and are working to reduce this further through positive consumer behaviour.  We are in the process of installing a customer operated appliance that rinses and dries reusable cups efficiently and hygienically. This will support customers further with using reusables on a return basis assisting us with the goal of disposable reduction. We have also ordered a stock of reuseable cups to be available when personal cups are forgotten or not available.