Chamber and committees

This Government has delivered the highest school spending, and has more teachers per pupil, than any other UK nation. Our pupil teacher ratio is just 13.2 – its lowest level since 2009 - compared to 18 in England and 18.5 in Wales.

In our Budget we have sought to protect Councils by providing over £13.2 billion in the Local Government Settlement for 2023-24. This funding package represents a real terms increase compared with 2022-23 and enables the continued delivery of high quality education for our children. As part of this, we will continue to provide local authorities with specific funding of £145.5 million per year to support the school workforce.

The Scottish Government remains committed to introducing a high quality and clinically safe thrombectomy service in Scotland. As a result of the Emergency Budget Review, the thrombectomy service was not reduced, rather the expansion of the service was paused.

The budget for thrombectomy and development of a refreshed stroke improvement plan has been increased from £8.6 million for 2022-23 to £12.5 million in 2023-24. Prior to the 2023/24 budget announcement, the delivery of a national thrombectomy service had already received over £16 million of investment.

Work is ongoing to establish the most effective means of further expanding access to thrombectomy, including how the increased budget will be best used in recruiting staff to maximise the number of patients able to benefit from this treatment.

We are also in discussions with National Services Division, to ensure that decisions taken on potential expansions of the thrombectomy service consider the wider access requirements of patients across Scotland and ensure access is as equitable as possible.

The first cohort of ScotGEM students graduated from the four-year course in June 2022. These graduates must now undertake two years of Foundation training before they are eligible to apply for specialty training posts. We therefore will not know how many ScotGEM students have entered General Practice Speciality Training until 2024.

There is no specific annual target for take up of the Home Energy Scotland (HES) Grant and Loan scheme in the Highlands and Islands region. The scheme is demand-led and the number of households which can be supported is linked to the annual budget. The budget allocation across the HES loan/cashback scheme and replacement grant and loan scheme together in 2022-23 is £42 million, double the level for 2021-22. The budget for 2023-24 will be set in due course. The budget for the scheme forms part of at least £1.8bn which we have committed to allocating over the course of this Parliament to accelerate deployment of heat and energy efficiency measures and to support those least able to pay.

The new scheme introduces an increased grant level for households in rural areas, compared to other parts of Scotland. An uplift of £1,500 applies to both the heat pump and energy efficiency grants. This uplift increases the heat pump grant flat rate and the maximum limit of the energy efficiency grant to £9,000 respectively. The uplift is in recognition of the higher costs faced by rural households associated with the installation of measures (such as increased transportation costs, possible accommodation costs for installers, housing type amongst other reasons) and aims to support with these additional costs.

Under The Strategic Framework for a Cyber Resilient Scotland , the Scottish Government works closely with our delivery partners to improve the cyber resilience of Scottish businesses.

Between January 2021 and July 2022, 3,410 businesses that received the Scottish Government Business Gateway Digital Boost Programme funding undertook a Cyber Health Check, where qualified assessors performed a pre-assessment of their critical technical controls, in line with Cyber Essentials (considered a national standard by the National Cyber Security Centre).

In 2022, the Scottish Government was notified of 12 cyber incidents under our Notifiable Scottish Public Sector Cyber Incidents Policy and Procedure.

The Scottish Government will not provide further details as this would likely cause substantial harm to the effective conduct of public affairs and the secure delivery of our public services.

This, combined with other publicly available information, would likely allow identification of the organisations that reported cyber incidents under the procedure. It would therefore undermine the confidentiality of the policy procedure and adversely affect the trust and openness with which organisations currently report incidents and participate in the reporting process.Making further information on the timing of past cyber incidents publicly available would have a negative impact on the cyber security and resilience of the public sector.

52 students graduated from the ScotGEM course in June 2022. This is the first cohort of students that have graduated since the course commenced in 2018.

Replacing the previous cashback arrangements with a standalone grant was a key commitment in the Programme for Government 2022-23 and will offer a more straightforward, flexible and accessible way to access funding for priority measures; particularly in our rural and island areas with additional funding support available through the rural uplift.

To access the grant, applicants must contact the Home Energy Scotland (HES) advice service, which acts as the gateway for this funding and other Scottish Government delivery schemes, including Warmer Homes Scotland. A wide range of marketing activity encourages individuals seeking advice or information on funding support for energy saving improvements to contact HES, including a national marketing campaign currently underway until late January 2023 across TV, radio, press and social media.

The launch of the HES Grant and Loan Scheme generated substantial media coverage across different platforms, including newspapers, radio and TV. It has also been covered on different Scottish Government platforms, including on the gov.scot website and Net Zero Scotland social media channels (Twitter and LinkedIn). Both of these platforms have substantial reach, with the Net Zero Scotland Twitter having over 20,000 thousand followers.

In addition, the Energy Saving Trust (EST) who deliver the HES advice service and the new grant on behalf of the Scottish Government have promoted the new scheme. Newsletters have been issued to installers to inform them of the changes and they have undertaken various media engagements to promote the new grant offer available.

The Scottish Government and its partners will continue to work together to raise awareness of the new HES Grant and Loan Scheme across Scotland, including in the Highlands and Islands region. This will include monitoring uptake of the new offer and tailoring marketing material to reflect the new offer available where necessary.

The Scottish Government does not currently hold this information.

Following the publication of Guidance on the provision of wheelchairs on short term loan in March 2021 ( https://www.gov.scot/publications/guidance-provision-wheelchairs-short-term-loan/ ) Scottish Government officials engaged with individual Health and Social Care Partnerships to initially gauge what progress had been made in implementing the guidance. However, due to the pressures of the pandemic, a full review was not carried out as planned.

That engagement established that there were nine services who were providing a short term wheelchair loan service in house. These were Fife, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde – Acute division.

Following a public consultation we plan to issue revised guidance on the provision of equipment and adaptations. Alongside short term wheelchair provision, this guidance includes extensive advice on the effective and timely provision of community equipment and housing adaptations. Accompanying the guidance is a range of good practice guides and self evaluation tools, which we will support services to utilise and evaluate how they are performing against the Key Actions contained in the guidance.