Chamber and committees

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The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all children and young people receive at least two hours of physical education per school week in primary schools, and at least two 50-minute periods of physical education per week in secondary schools - between secondaries 1 and 4.

Under the provisions of Curriculum for Excellence, schools and education authorities have the flexibility to decide upon the content of their lessons at the local level by taking into account the needs and circumstances of all children and young people in attendance. This includes taking decisions locally about the content of their PE lessons, where they can offer swimming lessons to their pupils if they wish to do so.

However, I recognise the importance of ensuring that all children can have equal opportunities to access swimming lessons, regardless of their families' social or economic circumstances. Therefore, we have been working with Scottish Swimming, Education Scotland, sportScotland and Scottish Water to pilot bespoke interventions and approaches within local areas to provide opportunities for more children to become confident, safer and competent swimmers.

I have written to the Scottish Funding Council, copied to Colleges Scotland and Universities Scotland confirming an additional allocation of £2.205 million (for the period April to July 2023), on top of our allocation of £2.025 million announced last year (for the period August 2022 to March 2023). This makes a total 2022-23 AY allocation of £4.23 million.

This means that the total AY 2022-23 award would for Colleges is £2.424 million and Universities is £1.806 million. This is in line with last year’s award of £4.229 million and sector allocations. The Scottish Funding Council will prepare guidance on the additional allocation together with details of institutional awards.

The Scottish Budget for 2023-24 confirms funding of £4 million to deliver the Young Patients Family Fund.

The Fund's focus in 2023-24 will be on deploying £25 million in capital grants, as part of the £50 million multi-year programme that was announced last year.

Additionally, £25 million has been allocated to the Scottish National Investment Bank for 2023-24 to invest on a commercial basis, in line with the Bank's Investment Strategy.

Utilising the commercial investment expertise and experience of the Bank offers a key opportunity to unlock third party finance at the scale required to meet our ambitions for a just transition in North East and Moray.

In letters of 16 February 2023 and 27 March 2023, the Scottish Government offered the Church of Scotland the option of another meeting with Registers of Scotland and Scottish Government officials to discuss how they can work together to help achieve compliance. The Scottish Government has not yet received a response to that offer, however officials will be in touch with the Church of Scotland to follow up on this.

The Scottish Government and Registers of Scotland are working together to deliver an additional engagement plan to raise awareness and help support stakeholders through the process. This will include a programme of additional awareness raising and reviewing the existing guidance, however this will not include further legislative intervention or legal advice.

The shellfish industry is an increasingly important aquaculture and food sector, creating and sustaining employment opportunities in many of Scotland’s remote rural, island and coastal communities and which supplies healthy and delicious Scottish shellfish to domestic and international markets and businesses.

I was pleased to support the Association of Scottish Shellfish Growers conference held in Oban last year, in addition to the Shellfish Association of Great Britain conference to provide an update on progress across our priorities in Scotland, which of course is producing substantial amounts of the UK’s shellfish either through wild or farmed stocks. This year’s annual conference will be held in London in June and I was grateful to receive an invite to attend from David Jarrad, Chief Executive of the Shellfish Association of Great Britain.

Scottish Government officials are currently considering attendance at the event.

While the powers to take meaningful action in regard to energy pricing sit with the UK Government, we are doing everything we can to support households with high energy bills.

We recently tripled our Fuel Insecurity Fund to £30m for 2023-24, to support anyone at risk of self-disconnection, or self-rationing their energy use. That fund continues to provide a lifeline to households at risk of self-rationing or self-disconnecting their energy. We also made an additional £1.2 million available to help our advice services meet increasing demand last year.

Our new Winter Heating Payment replaces DWP’s Cold Weather Payment and provides a stable, reliable annual £55 which will help around 400,000 low-income individuals with their heating expenses each winter.

We have allocated £350m to heat, energy efficiency and fuel poverty measures in 2023/24, including £119m targeted at fuel poor households, while our £1.4m Islands Cost Crisis Emergency Fund is supporting those in our island communities who traditionally see higher costs for food and fuel.

We have called repeatedly on the UK Government to provide additional, targeted support for consumers in vulnerable circumstances. I am due to meet with the UK Government Minister for Energy Consumers later this month and will raise again the need for further action to support those who have been most affected by the ending of the Energy Bills Support Scheme ending as well as the need for a social tariff for energy consumers.

The Talent Attraction and Migration Service will be delivered through an online digital platform. Users will be able to access the service from anywhere in Scotland. The service will help employers navigate the UK’s immigration rules and provide reception support to people moving to Scotland. The service is still in the design stage, but we expect the service to help a wide range of employers across the Scottish economy and individuals moving to Scotland.

This Government wants Scotland to be at the forefront in the development of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles and the start of the CAVForth trial will really help the country establish its credentials on the world stage. We are excited to see how this technology can help to support our vision for a sustainable, inclusive, safe and accessible transport system.

Transport Scotland’s formal participation in the CAVForth project will cease at the end of July 2023, however the CAVForth service will continue to operate beyond that point, and is expected to include an extension of the service to Dunfermline.

We have no current plans for the introduction of further autonomous bus services, however Scotland is ‘open for business’ to test, demonstrate and pilot autonomous vehicle trials, and in line with our CAV Roadmap for Scotland my officials at Transport Scotland will continue to investigate and explore what future CAV opportunities there may be.

Work is continuing on the review of the policies and operating arrangements which underpin the Home Owners Support Fund (HOSF). We now expect this work to conclude later this year due to the additional timescales required for the modelling work to be completed. We will continue to take account of stakeholders’ views as recommendations for any changes to the existing arrangements are developed.