Chamber and committees

Contingency planning in the event of industrial action is a matter for individual local authorities.

In previous years, the Scottish Government has worked collaboratively with Local Government when needed to act in order to prevent industrial action.

The Scottish Government remains committed to tackling school violence and supporting staff wellbeing.

In 2025-26, we are providing over £2m to implement the Violence Prevention Framework, delivering actions including addressing youth violence, the carrying of weapons and violence in and around schools.

The 2025-26 budget also sets out an additional £29 million of investment for Additional Support Needs (ASN). This will include an allocation for both local and national programmes to support the recruitment and retention of the ASN workforce, with £28 million directed to local government and £1 million retained for national work. This investment will continue to be a joint endeavour with local authorities, who retain the statutory responsibility for the delivery of education in Scotland.

An agreement reached with COSLA will see local government and the Scottish Government working together to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels in 2025, freeze learning hours, and make meaningful progress on reducing class contact time for teachers. To support this, we are providing £186.5 million to local authorities in 2025/26 to restore overall teacher numbers across the country to 2023 levels and maximise the number of teaching posts available.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-38196 on 17 June 2025. 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

Responsibility for developing Skills Investment Plans currently sits with Skills Development Scotland (SDS). We are exploring an approach for skills planning in collaboration with SDS and the Scottish Funding Council as part of the Post School Education and Skills Reform Programme, which will clarify how these processes are run in future.

The following table shows the number of crimes involving the illegal use of an air weapon, by Local Authority, split by main perpetrator age (where identified). This is sourced from the Crimes and offences involving a firearm Official Statistics, for which the latest published year is 2021-22. Future updates will follow the conclusion of a review by analysts from Scottish Government and Police Scotland into the methodology for producing this data. Unlike other crime-based official statistics, the current approach relies on the manual review of crime records to identify relevant cases, which is resource intensive and requires significant time to complete. An update on the outcome of this work is planned for early Autumn, and users can register for this through the SCOTSTAT network.

Crimes involving illegal use of an air weapon 2018-19 to 2021-22

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37806 on 4 June 2025.

The Care Inspectorate report data publicly on their Data Store which may be able to assist with this question or alternatively the Care Inspectorate could be approached directly for a response.

Assessing the total economic impact of cybercrime losses on households in Scotland is challenging, as a significant proportion of these crimes are not reported to the police. In recognising the value of improving the evidence base on this topic, new questions were added to the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) for 2023-24 onwards. New headline findings were then published on the 10th June 2025 (Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2023/24 - gov.scot).

Further analysis of the survey shows that 2.2% of adults (aged 16+) living in private households in 2023-24 lost money as victims of a cyber-enabled fraud or computer misuse crime. The vast majority of these crimes were fraud. The median amount lost was £103 per crime, though a minority lost significantly more with 9% of crimes above £1,000. In around half of all cases (48%), the ultimate direct economic impact on the household was limited, as they received a full or partial refund (most often from a bank or building society).

As committed to in our Biodiversity Delivery Plan, we are revising the Scottish Biodiversity List of species and habitats. A process involving stakeholders is already underway to produce a revised list by the end of 2025. This summer, NatureScot and Scottish Government officials will be working with a range of stakeholders to prioritise habitats and species which are of principle importance for the conservation of biodiversity in Scotland and provide advice to Ministers. Workshops to consider these lists are planned for August and early September. The importance that species-rich grasslands have for biodiversity both as habitats, and for supporting species dependent on them, will form part of this exercise.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the work required to research, analyse and collate the data for each requested year would quickly breach the PQ cost threshold.

Some of the information is available on the Scottish Government website in the annual Budget documents, which will include budget allocations for some public bodies. Links to these are included below. The information only goes back to 2015-16 when Scottish Government revised its approach to provide greater transparency. Prior to this, spend on public bodies was generally amalgamated into portfolio budgets.

2023-24: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2023-24/documents/
2022-23: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2022-23/documents/
2021-22: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2021-22/documents/
2020-21: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2020-21/documents/
2019-20: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2019-20/documents/
2018-19: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-draft-budget-2018-19/documents/
2017-18: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-budget-draft-budget-2017-18/documents/
2016-17: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-finances-key-facts-figures/documents/
2015-16: https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/id/eprint/21090/1/00460440.pdf

Further information may also be found on some public bodies’ funding in their published audited accounts, which can be found online on their websites. Links to these is provided in the National public bodies directory (https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-public-bodies-directory/).

The Scottish Government announced on 17 December 2024, that the use of WhatsApp and similar mobile messaging applications in Scottish Government would end.

I am pleased to confirm the new Policy and Guidance on Mobile Messaging Applications will be introduced as of 20 June 2025.

The Policy and Guidance now reflects that the use of Mobile Messaging Applications such as WhatsApp is not permitted.

The guidance sets out the approved corporate channels of communication and the scenarios that they are to be used in. The guidance also sets out the responsibilities and actions to be taken in exceptional circumstances when corporate devices and services become unavailable.

A time bound and limited transition period until the end of 2025 has been requested to allow a small number of agencies and parts of the organisation to continue to use mobile messaging. These areas currently have no practical alternative that can be used immediately to provide communication in existing or emergent circumstances such as:

• For the purpose of multi-agency communication to work with others effectively in situations like responding to wildfires
• For communicating with media in the transfer of high-quality large audio or video files
• For overseas operational tasks with local contacts and stakeholders who use mobile messaging as standard or where connectivity may be impacted
• Matters of overseas staff safety and security.

The number of staff identified to have a transition phase has been carefully scrutinised. The agencies are as follows: Forestry and Land Scotland, Science Advice for Scottish Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Agency, Food Standards Scotland. In Scottish Government, the areas are Rural Payments and Inspection Directorate, Communication staff (News staff only) for communications purposes, Culture and External Affairs Directorate, EU Directorate and the Directorate of International Trade and Investment.

On 13 June 2025, I represented the Scottish Government at the summit meeting of the British-Irish Council hosted by the Northern Ireland Executive and jointly chaired by the First Minister – Michelle O’Neill and the deputy First Minister – Emma Little-Pengelly. The meeting was attended by Ministers from all eight of the BIC Member Administrations.

The theme of the summit focussed on “The role of AI in reform and transformation” which offered the opportunity to share and learn from the range of initiatives being taken across these islands to maximise the benefits presented by this rapidly evolving technology.

On the Latest Political Developments item, the Council reflected on international issues including the situation in Gaza as well as the concerning escalation of conflict between Israel and Iran. I also welcomed the recent trade deals with the European Union and the United States and called for better engagement with the UK Government to ensure that the deals take Scotland’s needs into account.

During the summit, I held bilateral meetings with the Taoiseach, the Tnaiste, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Northern Ireland First Minister and deputy First Minister, the First Minister of Wales and the Chief Minister of the Isle of Man.

The Communiqué that was issued by the British-Irish Council after the meeting can be found on its website at:www.britishirishcouncil.org/resources/

43rd British-Irish Council Summit

Newcastle, County Down, 13 June 2025

Communiqué

The British-Irish Council (BIC) held its 43rd Summit meeting today, Friday 13 June 2025, hosted by the Northern Ireland Executive in Newcastle, County Down.

The Summit meeting had a thematic focus on The Role of AI in Reform and Transformation and was co-chaired by First Minister, Michelle O’Neill MLA and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly MLA.

The Role of AI in Reform and Transformation

The Council discussed the approaches of the British-Irish Council’s Member Administrations to harnessing AI technologies for public sector reform and transformation in the provision of public services across these islands.

The Council discussed the potential benefits, and the associated challenges, of the more widespread and scaled-up use of AI technologies in public administration.

Latest Political Developments

Council members reflected on significant recent developments within their administrations and discussed a number of domestic and international topics of mutual interest.

Next Summit Meeting

The Council noted that the next BIC Summit will be hosted by the Welsh Government in late 2025.

BIC Secretariat

13 June 2025

Plenary Participants