Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is in the early stages of considering afresh the purpose and potential benefits a unique learner number could bring including the role, if any, of existing reference numbers held on data sources.

It is not yet possible to say if legislation is required.

The pathways in place across the country for people with problem alcohol use are developed and implemented by local services based on local needs assessments. The services necessary are commissioned on the advice of local Alcohol and Drugs Partnerships. The Scottish Government provides funding for those services and asks ADPs to report on progress against their own local strategies.

The Scottish Government has committed to providing guidance to ADPs through the development of a national Service Specification and follow-up national Standards for Alcohol and Drug treatment. This will be informed by the forthcoming UK Clinical Guidelines for Alcohol Treatment and the recently published Public Health Scotland review into Alcohol Brief Interventions as well as key independent reports such as Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP) paper on alcohol use disorder in the justice system.

To support work with refugees, people seeking asylum and local communities, the Scottish Government provides funding to organisations such as the Scottish Refugee Council to ensure that all people seeking refugee protection in Scotland are welcome, where women, children and men are protected, find safety and support, have their human rights and dignity respected and are able to achieve their full potential.

The following table contains a list of the funding the Scottish Government has provided to the Scottish Refugee Council since March 2020. It is a condition of all Scottish Government grants that recipients deliver the objectives set out in the grant offer letter. The funding below has been assessed through a combination of written and financial reporting and deemed to be effective.

Scotland’s partnership with Pakistan is long-standing, with a highly active diaspora, and Pakistan being the 4th largest international student community in our own universities. Our commitment for the Scotland Pakistan Scholarships for Young Women and Girls has been to provide £400,000 a year, through British Council Pakistan who manage the scholarships, though we have provided further financing in year 2022 to support women and girls affected by floods, and year in 2023-24 and 2024-25 because the high level of demand on the scheme.

This is in a country with significant gender disparities in education ranking 145 out of 146 countries on the Gender Parity Index for literacy and educational attainment (in 2018 that was 146 out of 148 countries). Pakistan has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children with an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5-16 not attending school, close to 60% of which are girls. Pakistan has one of the highest amount of out of school girls. Only about 22% of the workforce are women while women's representation in professional and managerial positions remains low, with only 7.4% of STEM professionals being female.

Inspired by a courageous campaign for better education for girls in Pakistan led by Malala Yousafzai, a young female education activist and the youngest Nobel laureate who was shot by the Taliban, the Scottish Government set up the Scotland Pakistan Scholarships for Young Women and Girls to support equality for women and girls in Pakistan. Since 2013, I am proud to say that Scottish Government has supported over 20,000 women and girls to get Secondary education and a further 2,000 to attend University education including at postgraduate level (16300 for secondary education and 1,200 for University in the last 5 years).

The Scottish Government has increased the Affordable Housing Supply Budget by £211.8 million for 2025-26 when compared to 2024-25. This will bring the investment in housing in 2025-26 to £768 million, which will enable delivery of more than 8,000 homes in Scotland. In 2024-25, we targeted £42 million of funding to the local authorities with the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures. To date, this has supported local authorities to bring 1,000 homes back into use through acquisitions and reduced the number of empty social homes. We have also worked with utility providers on energy supply issues to social rented homes to reduce the turnaround time for void properties.

1.Acquiring larger properties suitable for families will help to reduce the number of households, including families with children, in temporary accommodation. The targeted funding of £42 million will help to increase the supply of social housing of the right type and size where it is needed most. Our most recent statistics show that 20 councils have reduced the number of children in temporary accommodation as at 30 September 2024.

2.All local authorities should ensure that the temporary accommodation they provide to fulfil their duty to accommodate homeless households meets the temporary accommodation standards framework, published by the Scottish Government in 2023. The Scottish Government will provide record funding of more than £15 billion to councils in 2025-26 to support the delivery of a range of services, including homelessness services – an increase of £1,008 million on 2024-25. The Scottish Government allows local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently, and local authorities are best placed to identify and respond to local needs and priorities.

Australian Council for Educational Research International UK (ACER UK) were awarded a contract to support the Scottish Government, in consultation with its partner country Governments, to provide a needs analysis in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda to inform the design of our new Inclusive Education programmes, with a focus on improving access to education for the most marginalised – particularly girls and learners with disabilities. The total amount paid to ACER UK for their services in FY2023-24 was £54,172.

Support from the Scottish Government for Inclusive Education was a specific ask during discussions with all three partner countries of Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda, and is provided in line with commitments made in Scotland’s International Strategy: Delivering for Scotland and the Programme for Government in 2023.

In 2020-21, the Scottish Government carried out a review of its approach to International Development in light of COVID-19 which deepened pre-existing inequalities, exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems. The results of that Review were announced to the Scottish Parliament through a Ministerial Statement on 3 March 2021 which included agreeing priority focus areas for future international development programming, ensuring SG is supporting its partners to address the impacts of COVID-19; education was one of the priority areas.

The Scottish Government recognises the important role health services can play in helping to prevent homelessness, including for households with children. We will introduce new ask and act duties on named relevant bodies so that a wider range of services do more to prevent homelessness.

The relevant bodies include health boards, special health boards and integrated health boards. While GPs are not on the named bodies list, we anticipate that the duties on other health professionals, such as community link workers in GP practices, will ensure GPs and other practice staff are kept informed and involved in homelessness prevention.

We will work closely with stakeholders in health to ensure the regulations, guidance and training for the implementation of the new duties are fit for purpose and take into account the specific needs of particular households, including those with children. We will be funding a series of pilot projects in 2025-26 that will help inform the best approach to take.

We also know that there is good practice in preventing homelessness across Scotland and we would encourage health and other services to work together and in co-operation with other partners to prevent homelessness now rather than to wait for new homelessness prevention duties.

The Scottish Government’s new homelessness prevention measures will mean families at risk of homelessness get help earlier, and other relevant bodies do more to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place.

The Scottish Government provided funding to support the development of the Housing Options Training Toolkit, a learning and development, training and resource platform that supports local authorities to provide housing advice in Scotland.

We know some bodies will already be carrying out effective work to prevent homelessness and others will have mixed levels of knowledge about homelessness. We are making £4 million available for homelessness prevention pilots in 2025-26. This funding will enable relevant bodies and local partners to pilot and share learning on the steps, resources and services needed to resolve crises and effectively prevent homelessness.

Local authorities need to ensure that all temporary accommodation is of a high quality and meets the needs of the people that are living there. The Temporary Accommodation Standards Framework was published in 2023 and all local authorities are expected to work towards meeting these standards.

The ‘tolerable standard’, which applies to all dwellings in Scotland, is a basic level of repair that applies to all property to make it habitable. In addition, the Scottish Housing Quality Standard, also applies to social rented sector properties, was introduced in 2004 to ensure properties are energy efficient, safe and secure; are not seriously damaged; and have kitchens and bathrooms that are in good condition.

The Project Willow study has concluded and the publication of a “Public Information Document” is now available on Scottish Development International’s website. Ernst & Young Parthenon (EY) supplied the study to the Grangemouth Refinery owner Petroineos and the work was co-funded by the Scottish Government and the UK Government.

The Project Willow Public Information Document illustrates that a transformative future for the existing Grangemouth Refinery site is possible if the public and private sectors work together. It outlines nine low carbon projects that could be progressed at Grangemouth subject to public and private sector investment, and policy and regulatory changes.

Scottish Enterprise and the UK Office for Investment will now work together to identify and attract investors to support the deployment of the technologies highlighted in Project Willow.

The Public Information Document can be accessed here: https://www.sdi.co.uk/invest-in-scotland/invest-in-projects/project-willow-grangemouth.

Subject to the agreement of Parliament, I will make a statement to Parliament in due course on the conclusion of Project Willow and the next steps being taken by this government to secure a long term and sustainable future for Grangemouth.