Chamber and committees

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

The use of contractors in SG is largely accounted for by resourcing requirements to strengthen key professional skills such as expanding our digital capabilities. Employing temporary and agency workers provides the flexibility required to meet immediate business and access specialist and other skills quickly.

Having grown the workforce to respond to the Covid-19 epidemic, the Scottish Government reviewed its workforce plans at the beginning of the 2022-23 financial year and the Resource Spending Review. Recruitment controls were introduced in 2022 and the Scottish Government has continued to prioritise reductions in contingent workers as an initial means of reducing the workforce size and cost. This approach has been in partnership with recognised Trade Unions. The number of contingent workers is now 39% lower than in March 2022.

One of the areas in which this was delivered was the Digital Directorate within DG Corporate. A number of roles were identified that would be needed on a long term basis which were currently occupied by contingent workers. An intentional cost saving strategy was implemented to replace some posts being held by contingent workers with directly employed staff. It is estimated that this process has saved Scottish Government £3.2m.

The delivery of domestic launch capability would close the last link in the end-to-end space value chain. This would allow the manufacture, launch and exploitation of small satellite data all to take place in Scotland and give the sector a unique offering to the global market.

This is something long recognised by the Scottish Government and is why we worked in collaboration with industry and academia to develop the jointly owned “A Strategy for Space in Scotland”. Published in 2021, this document sets out the ambitions for the sector regarding delivery of launch capability and facilitating wider growth of the Scottish space eco-system.

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.

There is a requirement for Health Boards to maintain accurate and up to date information on PACS Tier Two requests. The Scottish Government does not hold validated data on the number of PACS applications that Health Boards have received from clinicians. This information would need to be requested from Health Boards directly.

Health Boards are required to capture and share data as retrospective “in confidence” summary reports with the Scottish Government on a quarterly basis. The data received by Scottish Government is retained for internal management purposes only and is not formally validated.

Notably, the majority of collated PACS Tier Two requests are for fewer than five medicines; and data for numbers fewer than five are deemed to be patient identifiable and cannot be published.

Since the November 2023 publication of the Scottish Government’s position paper, Taking a Feminist Approach to International Relations, officials have taken forward a range of activities as part of our commitment to mainstream a feminist approach across key policy areas, including international development, climate justice, trade, and peace & security.

This includes working to embed gender equality throughout our international development work as well as developing specific gender equality programmes. In seeking to equalise power in our international development activities, we work directly with organisations in our partner countries of Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia and have established a Global South Advisory Panel. On trade, the Scottish Government is committed to addressing the gender export gap in Scotland, confirmed by the findings in the recent Gender Export Gap research report. We will be working with our delivery agencies and stakeholders in implementing the report’s recommendations, providing tailored advice, assistance, and international market access opportunities to help women-led businesses succeed on the global stage.

Through its International Development Fund, the Scottish Government has over the last year, following work with our partner countries, launched new programmes with a heavier focus on investment in health, education, equalities, and renewables, underpinned by and guided by our core Principles. We also launched two new major Climate Justice Fund programmes in 2023.

The Scottish Government separately provides funding to support Human Rights Defenders. The Scottish Government established the Scottish Human Rights Defender Fellowship in 2018 as a temporary relocation programme to support international human rights defenders at risk as a direct result of their work. The Fellowship – and Scotland – has welcomed 19 human rights defenders from 16 different countries, two of whom have been from our partner countries Malawi and Zambia.

Scottish Government ministers regularly discuss human rights issues with international partners, including individual cases. We do not keep statistics on how often these issues are raised.

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.

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.