Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government supports a range of SCQF-accredited courses and recognises the important role that many, like the ones referenced, play in supporting interdisciplinary learning. Such courses offer learners the opportunity to apply disciplinary knowledge and develop key skills in relation to complex, real world challenges and are relevant to future employment opportunities.

In 2022-23 the Scottish Government provided SCQF with total funding of £44,000, and then a further £30,000 in 2023-24 to deliver its small scale Learning for Sustainability (LfS) grant fund to ensure there is a better offer on LfS-related qualifications for learners. In both financial years SCQF then allocated funding from this pot to individual projects within the overall funding amount – proposals were invited and then assessed and decided by an assessment panel involving officials and run by SCQF, based on agreed criteria. Ministers were not involved in final funding decisions to applicants.

In 2023-24 the International Sustainability Diploma, developed by the Futures Institute at Dollar Academy (FIDA), was successful in securing £6,030 of funding to support its accreditation at SCQF Level 6 and the course’s promotion to other schools and centres. The course is being piloted in approximately seven schools this year with the intention to scale it up further following this initial pilot phase.

Most recently, in 2024-25 the Scottish Government awarded the established Powering Futures programme £250,000 through the Entrepreneurial Education Pathways Fund, which aims to create an entrepreneurial overlay to their current academic qualification, allowing it to be more explicit around entrepreneurial understanding and attributes. Powering Futures supports learners to develop crucial skills for the workplace as well as gaining an understanding of sustainability.

Both qualifications focus on sustainability but differ in a number of ways. In particular, the FIDA qualification offers 24 SCQF Credit points at Level 6, while Powering Futures is awarded at 8 SCQF Credit points at Level 6.

The awards made through the Bus Partnership Fund to date were the first step towards delivering long term investment in bus priority infrastructure, beyond the course of the parliament. To date £20.5 million has been spent through the Bus Partnership and with a Bus Infrastructure Fund announced for 2025-26 this will enable the delivery of further bus priority and other supporting measures.

The Scottish Government recognises the important role that grandparents have in many families bringing up children, particularly following parental separation.

When the Children (Scotland) Bill (now the Children (Scotland) Act 2020 (the 2020 Act)) was introduced, the Scottish Government considered whether to include a presumption or right for grandchildren to have contact with their grandparents.

However, no such provision was included.A presumption in favour of a particular group of adults could cut across the driving principle of the legislation that the welfare of the child must be the paramount consideration in any contact or residence case.

We have no plans to change the law in this area at the present time.It remains possible for any person with an interest in a child, including a grandparent, to apply to the court to seek an order under section 11 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 (the 1995 Act), which is the key provision in relation to contact and residence.

Section 16 of the 2020 Act sets out additional factors that the court must consider when deciding whether or not to make an order under section 11 of the 1995 Act.It provides that the court must consider the effect the order might have on the child’s important relationships with other people.This could include the child’s grandparents. Section 16 is not yet in force but the Scottish Government will consider in 2025 which further sections of the 2020 Act could be commenced.

The Scottish Government has produced the Charter for Grandchildren as part of the Your Parenting Plan. The Charter sets out that grandchildren can expect to maintain contact with their wider family except in very exceptional circumstances.

We are currently scoping our approach to a review of the Scottish Biodiversity List and will engage with stakeholders on the review. However, our initial view is that public consultation on a revised list would provide limited additional input on what is a fairly technical matter, and is not therefore necessary. Public consultation is not obligated under the relevant legislation and we do not consider that it will add meaningfully to the planned policy development.

The Scottish Government is committed to its ambition of delivering 5GW of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen production by 2030, as outlined in our Hydrogen Action Plan. This target harnesses Scotland’s renewable energy potential to produce green hydrogen, supporting domestic decarbonisation and positioning Scotland as a leading exporter.

We are committed to tackling all forms of violence against women and girls, including economic abuse, which as a tactic of coercive control and abuse can have lifelong impacts on victims.

It is the responsibility of individual public bodies to develop debt-recovery policies. However, the Scottish Government and COLSA recognise that there are opportunities to improve collection practices in Council Tax. The ‘Joint Working Group on Council Tax Reform’, which is co-chaired by COSLA, is undertaking work to encourage better practices in debt collection. This includes ensuring that councils are furnished with the information they need to improve practices, and identify those in need of support.

In addition, Social Security Scotland is committed to delivering a debt management service that is responsive to clients’ needs while protecting the public purse. This includes an approach for vulnerable clients that includes training debt officers to identify and sensitively handle potential hardship and vulnerable clients, as well as signposting them to support and advocacy groups.

Through our Delivering Equally Safe fund, we are providing approximately £600,000 over three-and-a-half years to GEMAP for their Financially Included project. This focuses on improving responses to economic abuse across the money advice and gender-based violence sectors through development and delivery of training and toolkit resources and provision of financial advice. Additionally, Financially Included use their learning to raise awareness of economic abuse and the economic impact of all forms of male violence against women and girls.

The Scottish Government annual surveys continue to gather data, in order to support future assessments on microplastics in surface water. Although there is currently no internationally agreed baseline for microplastics in surface water, as referenced in S6W-24509, all our marine litter data contributes to regional monitoring across the North East Atlantic, through OSPAR (the Oslo-Paris Convention), and would contribute to any baseline developed in the future.

Further to the answers to questions S6W-01058 on 13 July 2021, S6W-23231 on 16 January 2024, S6W-23886 12 January 2024, S6W-23887 on 9 January 2024, S6W-24462 on 16 January 2024, and S6W-24509 on 23 January 2024, our microplastics monitoring programme began in the winter of 2013, and has continued to undertake annual surveys since that time.

Data from this monitoring programme enabled the initial assessment for microplastics in surface water to be conducted. This was published in Scotland’s Marine Assessment 2020, which can be viewed at Microplastics in surface water | Scotland's Marine Assessment 2020.

Data from the most recently completed collection season, 2023-24, has been published, alongside data from all previous years in this series. This can be viewed at Dataset for Sources, sinks and hazards of micro-plastics in Scotland’s seas 2013-present | Marine Scotland Data Publications. The current data collection season runs from November 2024 to the end of January 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.