Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has adopted a professions model. All our jobs are now aligned to profession and related job family and job type. We are starting to apply related expectations into how we design jobs and recruit people for jobs. For some professions and job types this will include professional membership and accreditation requirements that either need to be achieved on entry or once in the job - e.g. Finance, Procurement. For a few professions, professional memberships are mandatory to be able to practice - e.g. Law. Our Heads of Profession oversee these expectations and standards.

A Scotland wide Avian Influenza Prevention Zone was introduced covering the whole of Scotland at 12:00 hrs on 25 January 2025. The Scottish Government takes account of information provided though surveillance and the latest advice from a broad range of relevant experts and is ready to respond immediately and appropriately to any change in risk from avian influenza that may impact Scottish bird keepers.

In terms of part (a), statistics on police recorded crimes of weapon possession within a school are available in the following table. Information is available from 2017-18 onwards, the first year that data was collected separately for school settings. The fall in 2020-21 will reflect the closure of schools due to the Covid pandemic. Information is not held centrally on the age of the perpetrator, so whilst it is likely the majority of these crimes in a school involve a child or young person, it is not necessarily the case for every incident.

The Familial Breast Cancer pathway which is hosted by the Scottish Cancer Network’s Clinical Management Pathway website is a consensus document which is not a rigid constraint on clinical practice, but a concept of good practice against which the needs of the individual patient can be considered by health care professionals.

Surveillance for high-risk breast cancer is the responsibility of NHS Health Boards and are managed locally by health care professionals. The inclusion of a treatment or approach within a consensus document is not a guarantee of immediate access.

We have commissioned external evaluations to understand how the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) Programme is delivering on its purpose to enable the local transformational system change necessary to ensure that families are able to access holistic whole family support wrapped around their needs. Recognising that system change takes time, the Programme has identified a range of early, intermediate and long term outcomes. The experience of children, young people and families are covered in a range of intermediate outcomes which the evaluation of Years 3 and 4 will focus on.

In the Year 1 evaluation (2022-23) (https://www.gov.scot/publications/whole-family-wellbeing-funding-wfwf-year-1-process-evaluation-final-report/pages/2/ ) IFF Research (our external evaluator), interviewed 12 children and young people, along with 18 parents and carers about their experiences with whole family support. As the WFWF programme had only just begun, the evaluation’s focus was largely on how CSPPs were setting up their WFWF activity. These interviews highlighted some valuable insights from children and families at a very early stage of the programme. Children and young people described being involved in activities to support the design of family support services and expressed appreciation towards trustworthy and friendly practitioners. Parents and carers explained how some initial activities they had done as an entire family they as part of the support they received had helped strengthen bonds between members.

During the Year 2 evaluation (2023-24), IFF continued to speak with children, young people and families about the relevance of, accessibility, timeliness, satisfaction with, process for providing feedback on, and outcomes of family support. Additionally, young people with experience of family support were invited to participate in a ‘Young People’s Panel’ to directly contribute to the design, delivery, and outputs of the Year 2 evaluation. This evaluation report will include the experiences of children and families who have benefited from the enhanced family support provided through the WFWF programme. We intend to publish the results of our evaluation in due course.

In addition the link to a case study on East Lothians’ Families Together programme gives some insight into experiences through WFWF : https://stories.celcis.org/families-together-programme/

The Scottish Government has no direct control over pricing at public electric vehicle (EV) charge points and regulation of EV chargers is reserved to the UK Government. The tariffs on the Scottish Government funded ChargePlace Scotland (CPS) EV charging network, which now represents less than half of Scotland’s public charging network, are set by the 400 individual charge point owners, including all of Scotland’s local authorities.

There are several different factors that shape the cost of public EV charging including wholesale electricity prices, a higher rate of VAT (20%) on public EV charging than domestic electricity (5%), the cost of purchasing or leasing the land on which public charge points are located, the cost of network connections and supply upgrades, and the cost of installing, operating and maintaining the charge points. Higher powered rapid chargers tend to cost around 50% more to install and operate than slower chargers and this is reflected in the higher tariffs for energy from these charge points.

The Scottish Government’s vision for the future of public EV charging was published in June 2023 and it sets out the expectation that pricing across the entire public charging network is fair, sustainable and allows for the ongoing growth and maintenance of the public charging network. However, both VAT and energy market policy remain reserved to the UK Government, therefore the Scottish Government cannot take all of the action it would like to in order to support Scottish consumers.

The Scottish Government is currently awaiting the UK Government’s proposals on introducing new child criminal exploitation (CCE) offence as part of the upcoming Crime and Policing Bill in England and Wales.

My officials are in regular contact with Home Office officials on the progress of these plans, and when the finalised proposals are made available, we will be in the position to assess the potential to extend this measure to Scotland through the Legislative Consent process.

The results and key findings report from the 2023 Scottish House Condition Survey (SHCS) were published at 9:30am on Tuesday 28 January 2025 and will be available on the SHCS homepage at: Scottish House Condition Survey - gov.scot.

A 12 month calendar of forthcoming official statistical publications is available in spreadsheet format at Official statistics: forthcoming publications - gov.scot.

The Scottish Government supports local authorities to manage ash dieback and replace lost trees with appropriate species through Scottish Forestry working in partnership with The Tree Council. This collaboration produced an ash dieback toolkit, first published in 2022, to help local authorities to manage ash dieback effectively. This covers:

• Raising awareness of ash dieback

• Preparing an Ash Dieback Action Plan

• Taking action and responding to ash dieback

• Recovery and adaptation

Ongoing support for local authorities provides help to develop Ash Dieback Action Plans and facilitates joint working and sharing of experience and best practice across local authorities. Guidance is provided to help those with responsibility for ash trees in Scotland, including local authorities, to make informed management decisions. This includes identifying and monitoring affected ash trees and managing them accordingly, taking a risk-based approach considering tree condition and location. Guidance is also provided to assist with decisions about replacing lost ash trees. This covers both advice on encouraging natural regeneration of alternative native species where possible, and information on appropriate replacement tree species for ash in different habitat types in Scotland in cases where planting is necessary.

Scotland’s screening policy relies on recommendations from the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent scientific body that provides advice on screening policy to all four UK nations. To date, the UK NSC has not recommended Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) screening through the existing newborn blood spot test, and has stated it requires further evidence before a decision can be made.

The UK NSC continues to monitor and review the rapidly developing evidence base regarding SMA screening. Most recently, in November 2024, the interim results of a new modelling study into SMA screening for the UK context were presented at a workshop to stakeholders. The findings of this study, in conjunction with the proposed In Service Evaluation of SMA screening in some areas of England, will inform the UK NSC’s considerations regarding whether SMA screening should be recommended.

The UK NSC updates on significant developments regarding potential and existing screening programmes on their blog. This can be found at UK National Screening Committee – News and updates from the UK National Screening Committee