Chamber and committees

To clarify, as I set out in my response to S6W-35785, NatureScot had intended for the draft species licensing review to undergo an external review in April 2025 before being submitted to Ministers at a later date.

The external review has been delayed slightly and NatureScot anticipate that it will now take place over the coming weeks. Following completion of the external review, the species licensing review will then be presented to Ministers for consideration prior to being published.

As referred to in the Royal College of Nursing’s report, The Nursing Workforce in Scotland 2025, published on 6 May 2025, the Scottish Government published the Ministerial Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce report in February 2025.

The report includes 44 recommendations to tackle all barriers to recruitment and retention of nursing and midwifery staff, beyond pay, terms and conditions. Phase 2 has commenced and a Ministerial Oversight and Implementation Group have been established to develop a detailed workplan which will be agreed shortly to take forward the agreed recommendations. Members of the Taskforce acknowledged that implementation will take time and investment to ensure genuine change for our nursing and midwifery staff.

Historically, a range of factors, including newly devolved responsibilities such as establishing Social Security, EU Exit, and our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, are behind the growth in the workforce.

UK Civil Service grew its directly employed FTE by 7.4% between March 2022 and December 2024 in comparison to the Scottish Government permanent civil service growing by 5.6%.

In comparison to the UK Civil Service the growth in the equivalent grades (Grades 6 and 7) was the same as it was in the Scottish Government between 2020 and 2024 at 47%.

The Scottish Government has reduced its workforce in the last two financial years, by 0.4% in 2022-3 and 3% in 2023-24 and from March 2022 to December 2024, the total workforce has reduced by 4%. To achieve this it has prioritised the reduction of expensive contingent workers in making these reductions, in partnership with our Trade Unions. The number of contingent workers is now 46% lower than in March 2022.

Scottish Government workforce numbers are regularly and carefully reviewed to ensure efficient and effective delivery for the people of Scotland and recruitment controls remain in place. The Budget has set a commitment to continuing reductions in the workforce in this financial year.

It is the statutory responsibility of local authorities to manage their school estate, therefore, the Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Schools do not generally fall into high-risk to persons from fire, due to their numbers of access and egress points, familiarity of occupants, regular training and drills, and ordinarily users are non-sleeping.

However, if there were concerns raised to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) regarding perceived high levels of risk to life from fire, the SFRS would undertake an urgent audit and, if necessary, could prohibit the use, or parts, of a school until the situation was satisfactorily rectified.

The latest published workforce statistics show 9,349 Staff within SG Core as at December 2024 Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot. 85 staff of the total 9,349 have a home working contract.

However, in a number of cases this may be because of a reasonable adjustment in accordance with equalities legislation, or for other role-related reasons. In either case, we do not record what proportion of time is spent working exclusively from home and in practice most staff with homeworking contracts will likely still attend an SG workplace from time to time or work with stakeholders in communities.

This response relates to Scottish Government Core workforce.

Historically, a range of factors, including newly devolved responsibilities such as establishing Social Security, EU Exit, and our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, are behind the growth in the workforce. Like many organisations, the Scottish Government has also needed to respond to the cost of living crisis that has led to increases in pay across the labour market.

The Scottish Government is proactively addressing the need to control workforce size to remain fiscally sustainable.

The Scottish Government has reduced its total workforce by 4% from March 2022 to December 2024. It has achieved this through recruitment controls and prioritised the reduction of expensive contingent workers in making these reductions, in partnership with our Trade Unions. The number of contingent workers is now 46% lower than in March 2022.

Scottish Government workforce numbers are regularly and carefully reviewed to ensure efficient and effective delivery for the people of Scotland and recruitment controls remain in place. The Budget has set a commitment to continuing to reduce the workforce in this financial year.

This information is not routinely collected by Scottish Government. Information on patients receiving home dialysis is held by NHS Boards.

The way in which the resilience fund will operate is being finalised. Information on the routes and/or islands that will be covered, eligibility criteria, application process and payment rates will be shared soon, including with eligible communities.

Since May 2021 Naturescot have invested nearly £4 million in rainforest restoration activities through the Nature Restoration Fund: £3,933,357 capital and £381,291 resource.

Scottish Forestry (SF) are not able to give the precise breakdown of funding as requested in the time frame required. This is because the data for grant support is not in a format that allows us to spatially analyse it quickly against the Atlantic Rainforest zone. However, since 2015 SF have committed £6 million of Forestry Grant Scheme funding for the management of existing native woodlands within the rainforest zone, with £1 million made available in 2023. This is all resource spending.

Forestry and Land Scotland have invested £6.14 million in rainforest restoration since 2022: £1,899,000 resource and £4,241,000.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The SPS and the Scottish Government worked directly with Victim Support Organisations including Victim Support Scotland ahead of automatic early release under the Prisoners (early Release) (Scotland) Act 2025, to raise awareness and encourage those who were eligible to sign up to the Victim Notification Scheme (VNS).

Temporary expediated systems of registration were also introduced for both the Victim Information Scheme (VIS) and VNS, which were live throughout the tranche releases and ran to 30 April 2025. These systems meant the normal registration process was streamlined to enable victims who were not currently registered, to register quicker and find out the release date of an offender. These temporary expediated systems were agreed by SPS with the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

When victims were registered, they were notified by SPS if there was a change to the release date of the offender, ahead of the offender’s release from SPS custody.