Chamber and committees

The Business Support Partnership (BSP) is a commitment from Scottish Government, Scotland’s Enterprise and Skills Agencies, Business Gateway, and Local Government to develop a streamlined, efficient, and effective business support system that drives collaboration at a local, regional, and national level. Partners are committed to including the voice of businesses and communities and delivering inclusive and fair support that is underpinned by shared research, aligned customer surveying and data.

In its Strategic Delivery Plan 2023-2026, the BSP sets out its goal to ensure that the business support system in Scotland is inclusive, accessible and responsive, and that it recognises underrepresented groups, targets priority areas and supports socio-economic growth in response to data and the views of customers.

This is a long term undertaking, but one that is central to closing the gap in entrepreneurial participation. Better collection and reporting of data will provide us with essential information, which will allow us to prioritise and target support to under-represented and under-supported groups and to measure our progress.

Alongside this work we continue to develop our response to the broader recommendations of the Pathways report with emphasis on the establishment of Pre-Start support, with the Pathways Pre-Start Fund awarding £1.3m in partner led programmes aimed at widening entrepreneurial participation in 2023-24.

The movement and management of fire crews at an operational incident is entirely a matter for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

The safety and wellbeing of firefighters is a priority for both the Scottish Government and for the fire service.

The information requested on how many NHS staff have worked within the HR function of the NHS in each of the last 10 years, also broken down by NHS board is not centrally available.

Information on Administrative Services staff in post in the last 10 years, broken down by NHS Board, can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at: 05 March 2024 Workforce | Turas Data Intelligence (nhs.scot)

Cancer remains a national priority, within the Scottish Government and across NHS Scotland, with urgent suspicion of cancer referrals continuing to be prioritised, this is reflected in the fact that more people with cancer have been treated on both the 62 and 31 day pathways this quarter alone, compared to the same time pre-pandemic. NHS Boards have provided 62 day performance improvement plans, detailing what is being done at local level to drive improvements backed by £11.3 m investment.

In addition we are committed to reducing inpatient and day-case waiting lists by an estimated 100,000 patients over the next three years, backed by planned investment of an extra £100 million annually, subject to the annual Scottish Budget process.

An initial investment of £30 million can now be funded and will target reductions to the national backlogs that built up throughout the pandemic, including orthopaedics treatments, diagnostics for cancer referrals and patients with the longest waits. This will enable NHS Scotland to maximise capacity, build greater resilience and deliver year-on-year reductions in the number of patients who have waited too long for treatment.

It is reassuring to note that once a decision to treat has been made people wait on average 5 days to receive treatment. However we continue to see an increasing number of eligible cancer referrals and our priority is to ensure these people receive cancer diagnosis and treatment safely and based on their clinical urgency.

While suspected cancer patients are always prioritised there are capacity pressures on diagnostic services. This is why we have published a £70m Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery & Renewal plan, which includes a commitment to develop a network of Urology Diagnostic Hubs which will help reduce waiting times for people with cancer.

We have also provided three permanent CT scanners to support core capacity within Boards, including a mobile CT pod. In addition, one further mobile CT and seven mobile MRI scanners are being used across multiple NHS Boards to provide additional capacity with plans underway to further increase activity.

The Scottish Government remains committed to improving the A96. This is despite stark challenges we face as a result of the severe budgetary restrictions imposed by the UK Government including an almost 9% cut in our capital budget.

The current plan is to fully dual the route and as part of this process we are undertaking a transparent, evidence-based review of the programme.

The significant interest in the review’s initial consultation, with nearly 4,600 responses, generated 11,000 options to improve the corridor. It is only right that it has taken more time than originally anticipated, in order to properly examine and fully appraise these.

It is expected that the draft outcomes from the Review will be consulted on in the coming months, before a final decision can be reached.

An Implementation Delivery Group has been set up which has held two meetings on 21 February and 20 March 2024, with a third meeting scheduled for the end of April.

Membership of the Implementation Delivery Group consists of representatives from clinical services, third sector and lived experience, under the chairmanship of Jim Miller, the Chief Executive of NHS 24.

All children and young people should receive the support that they need to reach their full potential. Local authorities are under a statutory duty to identify, provide for, and review the additional support needs of their pupils.

Spending on additional support for learning by local authorities has reached a record high of £926m in 2022-23. The Scottish Government has continued to invest £15m per year since 2019-20 to help authorities respond to the individual needs of pupils and provides over £11m of funding each year to directly support pupils with complex additional support needs and services to children and families.

It should be noted that between 2012-13 to 2022-23, the real terms average spend per pupil in both primary and secondary schools has increased from £6,170 and £8,349 respectively in 2012-13 to £7,075 and £8,766, respectively.

The number of pupils identified with additional support for learning needs has increased markedly since 2010 and there continue to be year on year increases. This is partly driven by a change to how ASN statistics were gathered in 2010.

It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on education, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the experience of the social work workforce to ensure it is more sustainable in the longer term.

Whilst the social work workforce is primarily employed by local authorities who have a statutory duty to maintain an adequate workforce to meet the needs of their population and to fulfil their statutory duties in respect of social work, the Scottish Government has introduced measures to help address the challenges facing the profession.

This includes working jointly with COSLA and other key stakeholders to address the acute recruitment and retention challenges facing the profession; forming a joint Social Care & Social Work/Services Workforce Taskforce to explore opportunities to deliver improvements for the adult and children's social care and social work workforce; and creating a National Social Work Agency to provide a single national body with oversight of social work education, training and professional development, and the improvement of social work services.

The Scottish Government does not hold the full level of information requested.

Each FIF partner was distinct in terms of their delivery and approach, which was often demand-driven through referral partner networks. We agreed an approach to monitoring and evaluation of support provided by delivery partners which sought to avoid excessive demands for data gathering and reporting, yet provides a level of robust quantitative and qualitative data, which ensured the FIF could be distributed to those most in need.

The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) support included funding for Registered Social Landlords and cooperatives, covering distribution across the 32 local authorities as set out in the following table: