Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has been monitoring UCAS figures, which exclude Open University and Honours programmes, and we thank our Higher Education Institutions who have worked hard to promote their programmes by visiting schools, attending careers fairs and promoting the range of opportunities via their social media channels.

The attraction and retention of students into nursing remains a key focus for the Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce - not everyone will begin their career by participating in an undergraduate programme and these are not the sole solution to filling workforce vacancies. That is why we are already considering alternative career pathways, such as apprenticeships and ‘earn as you learn’ routes, that can attract candidates and encourage existing staff to join supported education programmes that enable them to reach registration with the relevant professional bodies.

As set out in our Health and Social Care: National Workforce Strategy we are committed to taking all the appropriate steps to support staffing levels across our Health and Social Care settings.

Since October 2021 we have provided c. £18m funding to Health Boards to recruit 1,250 international nurses, midwives and AHPs by the end of this financial year with over 1,000 successfully recruited thus far.

However, we are not complacent, that is why we have convened the Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce to co-produce tangible and realistic recommended action with its members, including the RCN, to address areas for improvement identified by the nursing and midwifery professions. The Taskforce’s Listening Project is now well underway to gather the views of staff to help shape those recommendations.

The Scottish Government knows that Changing Places Toilets make a real difference to disabled people and their families. We are committed to investing in Changing Places Toilets during this parliamentary term, in order to increase the provision of these fundamental facilities across Scotland.

We will look to make a new £10 million fund available across the financial years 2024-25 and 2025-26. We will undertake the necessary development work, alongside key stakeholders, to open the fund by the beginning of 2025.

The draft budget for 2024-25 was announced in Scottish Parliament on 19 December 2023 and stated that the direct programme budget for Mental Health will be £290.2 million. Allocations from this budget, including for the Changing Places Toilets fund, are under consideration and will be confirmed once the budget has been approved by Parliament.

The economic impacts of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill, which contains provisions to licence the activity of grouse shooting, are set out in the Financial Memorandum to the Bill, and in the Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment

The Scottish Government has no plans to start publishing monthly Affordable Housing Supply Programme finance, approval, starts or completion statistics.

The Scottish Government regularly publishes financial information at Autumn and Spring Budget revisions, Provisional Outturn, Final Outturn and Final Accounts. When annual financial year expenditure is concluded and finalised we publish an Affordable Housing Supply Programme annual out-turn report. This reports actual spend compared to original resource planning assumptions alongside wider programme performance information.

The Scottish Government publishes figures relating to the supply of affordable homes across Scotland, on a quarterly basis, which can be found online at:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/housing-statistics-for-scotland-new-house-building/

Given the wider impact of GEOAmey’s contract performance, all relevant partners (Scottish Prison Service, Police Scotland, Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and senior Scottish Government officials) met in September 2023 and October 2023 to discuss options to mitigate the impact of GEO Amey’s staffing issues. They also had an initial discussion regarding the future model for prisoner transport services.

The Scottish Government have already confirmed plans to bring forward the review of the target from 2026-27 to 2024, with a focus on the timeline for delivery of 110,000 affordable homes. And in parallel we will accelerate work with the financial community in Scotland and elsewhere to boost private sector investment in Scotland year on year, and help deliver more homes. This work will help to inform the assessment of the investment required to deliver the 110,000 affordable homes target.

The UK Government did not inflation-proof their Capital Budget which has resulted in a 9.8% real terms fall in our UK capital funding over the medium term between 2023-24 and 2027-28. Scottish Government will invest more than half a billion pounds in affordable housing across Scotland next year, and we will be continuing our funding support for the demand-led Rural and Islands Housing Fund. We will work with partners to continue to deliver more affordable homes across Scotland, the majority of which will be for social rent, including supporting acquisitions of existing properties and the demand led Rural Affordable Homes for Key Workers Fund.

We have been supporting Scottish Prison Services and other partners in delivering an improvement in the contract. This has resulted in some progress, with a slowdown in staff attrition, which is down by 40%. Prisoner Custody Officer (PCO) staffing levels have increased by around 40 officers in the last 3 months with another 20 currently in officer training, with them operationally deployable during January 2024. Steps have also been taken to help reduce future demand for service.

SPS is continuing to monitor the performance of the contract carefully to ensure target thresholds are met, so we can have a level of service which meets the needs of our Justice system.

Complaints made to Creative Scotland are handled in line with their published Complaints Handling Procedure , which is available to download on Creative Scotland’s website. In 2023, six formal complaints were made and all have been successfully resolved in line with their published procedure.