Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is willing to consider any steps that might usefully and proportionately allow us to improve the data collected about primary care services and which could be used to improve those services. Any consideration of steps would be done in collaboration with the representative bodies of our contractor groups.

The Scottish Government‘s forthcoming Natural Capital Markets Framework will set out the actions we will take to deliver our market vision for private investment in natural capital, including in relation to transparency and integrity.

Scottish Government is currently assessing alternative spending models for nature restoration that will seek to encourage greater responsible private investment.

The Scottish Government has not set a target ratio of public to private investment or established a maximum limit that the public purse should pay of any investment with regards to incentivising nature recovery.

Scottish Government’s approach will focus on maximising the value of public spending to achieve the greatest amount of nature restoration and positive environmental outcomes while ensuring communities benefit from this investment.

There are no immediate plans to ask Public Health Scotland (PHS) to expand the content within their Accident and Emergency publications.

Due to data quality and completeness issues, PHS do not publish information on the full list of data items in the A&E dataset, including patient triage category as it would not provide an accurate national picture or meaningful comparisons between NHS Boards.

We continue to work with PHS to ensure that A&E reporting guidance can be applied as consistently as possible across NHS Scotland and publication of data is subject to the necessary data quality and completeness standards being met.

Scotland is the only part of the UK that already offers 30 hours per week, in term time, of funded ELC to all 3 and 4-year-olds regardless of whether their parents are working or not. We also make 1140 hours available to around a quarter of 2 year olds and to all children whose entry to primary school is deferred.

It is far from clear that a universal system of government funded childcare would deliver either value for money for the Scottish taxpayer or the best outcomes for our children and young people.

Before turning to the detail, I think it is important to recognise the financial context that the Scottish Government is currently having to work within. As the Cabinet Secretary for Finance outlined in the fiscal statement on 3 September, we cannot shy away from the fact that Scotland continues to face one of the most difficult public spending environments that this devolved Parliament has ever seen.

That is why we have committed in this year’s Programme for Government to work with local authorities to maximise uptake of funded early learning and childcare for eligible two-year-olds, with a particular focus on families most at risk of poverty and areas with some of the lowest uptake rates.

Over the next two years we are also investing £16 million within six early adopter communities to continue our work to understand what it takes to design and deliver local childcare systems that support those families most at risk of living in poverty.

The engagement and targeted delivery that takes place for younger children in our six EACs will be a key element of our developing evidence base to inform future delivery.

We are continuing to support the ‘Extra Time’ Programme, investing £4 million in a partnership with the Scottish Football Association to deliver before, after school and breakfast clubs, providing 3,000 targeted free places each week for children and their families. We have also invested close to £1 million to deliver free or subsidised school age childcare services through our Access to Childcare projects. These projects consider specific challenges for families, including remote and rural childcare provision, and specialist provision for children with disabilities or complex additional support needs.

We remain committed to expanding funded ELC to reach more young children and to building a system of School Age Childcare, and we are going as far and as fast as budgets allow to deliver that.

Scottish Government welcomes the mid-year 2023 population estimates, which show inward migration driving the biggest single-year increase in Scotland’s population since the 1940s. Scotland continues to be an attractive and welcoming country which people from across the UK and internationally are choosing to call home.

With deaths continuing to outnumber births, these statistics underline the importance of delivering our Population Strategy’s ambition to make Scotland as family friendly as possible, and for collaboration between the Scottish and UK Governments to deliver tailored migration approaches which meet Scotland’s needs, including our Rural Visa Pilot proposal.

Allowing sufficient time to support the meaningful engagement and participation of those the Strategy will affect, including robust analysis of their views, and ensuring that it can be published alongside a range of accessible formats to meet the needs of those it aims to support has remained of central importance to the Scottish Government throughout the Strategy’s development.

This was reiterated during a recent meeting of the External Strategic Working Group who reviewed the aim of publishing the Strategy by the end of 2024 and concluded that publication in Spring 2025 presents a more favourable timeline to achieving this.

This is an operational matter for ScotRail and Network Rail who manage railway stations in Scotland. ScotRail advises there are currently 18 stations with ticket gates.

The Scottish Government published an Action Plan in June 2023 to deliver improvements to the Scottish Welfare Fund. The actions committed to are being progressed in conjunction with stakeholders through our Practitioners’ Forum and Statutory Guidance Review Committee.

As well as stakeholders on these forums, officials have met with organisations including Engender to discuss the work that is being progressed on the back of the independent review recommendations and action plan and have discussed clarifying the Scottish Welfare Fund statutory guidance to support marginalised women.

In the Ending Destitution Together strategy, published in 2021, the strategy is clear that there are limits on the action that can be taken by the Scottish Government to support women with the condition of No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF). This is because immigration and nationality, including the NRPF policy, are reserved to the UK Parliament. There is an ask of the UK Government to remove the Scottish Welfare Fund from the list of restricted public funds set out under paragraph 6 of the immigration rules. If successful, this would enable Crisis and Community Care Grants to be provided from the Scottish Welfare Fund to people subject to NRPF, where they are eligible, on the same basis as anyone else.

We are proud that we have the Scottish Welfare Fund providing emergency support and a lifeline to people in need, through Crisis Grants to help meet immediate short-term needs arising from exceptional circumstances and Community Care Grants to help eligible people establish or maintain a home. We have protected investment in the fund of £41 million this year.

This work related to a new duty related to inclusive communication in Scotland made under the Equality Act 2010. This means that the legislation could only relate to communities who have protected characteristics set out in that Act.

However, the Scottish Government’s policy understanding of inclusive communication, is as follows: “Inclusive communication is giving information in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible. It ensures people can receive information and express themselves in ways that best meet each individual’s needs.” Therefore we anticipate that many communities could benefit from activities to enhance the use and understanding of inclusive communication across the public sector.