Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government were aware of concerns that the link between health professionals and Police Scotland has not always been clear when victims of spiking present to emergency departments.

Through the collaborative work of the multi-agency Spiking Roundtable, the Scottish Government has been exploring a range of initiatives with partners from policing, victims organisations and COPFS, as well as representatives from colleges and universities, community safety groups, and the night-time economy sector to ensure our response is robust and effective.

To address these concerns it was recently announced here: Public urged to be vigilant against spiking ahead of summer events on 11 July 2025 that the Scottish Government, in collaboration with NHS 24 and Police Scotland, has developed a consistent narrative for health professionals. The guidance ensures that victims receive clear and uniform advice regarding the roles of health professionals and the police when they report incidents of spiking. This approach has been endorsed by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.

As part of this multi-agency national response, Scotland’s 111 service has also been updated to include spiking-related guidance, helping to better identify and support victims.

Additionally, the NHS are introducing changes to their digital system which will allow recording of those who present to emergency departments as potential victims of spiking. This will provide invaluable data on previously unrecorded incidents and will allow for a better understanding of the extent to which these lead on to formal police reporting.

The Forum, established as part of our Equally Safe Delivery Plan commitment to develop a collaborative programme of support to enable local and national partners to adopt a public health approach to preventing violence against women and girls (VAWG), has met twice to date, with a third meeting scheduled for October 2025.

The Forum is facilitated by the Improvement Service and seeks to enable collaboration between local and national partners to identify ways of embedding a public health approach in practice, identifying and overcoming barriers to implementation, sharing local experience, and supporting its wider application.

With the purpose of the Forum being identifying and overcoming barriers to implementation, sharing local experience and supporting its wider application, no formal recommendations have been issued. However, early learning from the Forum includes recognition of the challenges in shifting resources towards prevention, the importance of engaging a broad range of policy areas, and the value of identifying tangible, evidence-based actions that stakeholders can take within their own services.

The Forum continues to provide a collaborative space for peer support and shared learning, helping to embed a public health approach to ending VAWG across systems and sectors.

There are 360 secondary schools in Scotland recorded in the 2024 school census. The following is a table of how many of these are currently signed up to ESAS, broken down by local authority area.

Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of postgraduate places that have been offered at Scottish universities.

Information on the number of students enrolled on postgraduate courses is published by the Scottish Funding Council annually. Latest publication: Higher Education Students and Qualifiers at Scottish Institutions 2023-24 - Scottish Funding Council.

The Scottish Government recognises that Scotland’s world class university research and its key outputs of new knowledge and insights, including the researchers who contribute to this excellence, are fundamental to Scottish society, economy and the environment.

We have prioritised funding to continue to support high-quality research and innovation across Scotland, increasing the investment in HE core funding for research by £11.3m (3.6%) for Academic Year 2025-26 to £328.5m to maintain and strengthen our research excellence. This includes investing £39.1m (increase of 3.1%) in the form of the Research Postgraduate Grant, providing an underpinning of support for institutions to attract, develop and nurture the next generation of world-class research talent in Scotland. Universities can use this grant to:

• Invest in a collaborative environment for research training and development that values positive culture, inclusivity and exposure to high-quality research as central to the postgraduate research experience; and
• Secure a pipeline of skilled postgraduate researchers, including at doctoral level, and support their career development in a way that meets the needs of academia, industry and society.

We are also investing money to support a critical mass of excellence by investing in a series of Alliances for Research Challenges, Innovation Centres, Interface and Converge, providing long-term support to the research sector in driving industry engagement, leveraging investment and promoting research skills development/ career development.

At this time the Scottish Government has no plans to review or revise our funding model for doctoral level study.

The Scottish Government does not provide Scottish domiciled students with doctoral research loans.

Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of Scottish domiciled students accessing doctoral loans for universities out with Scotland.

Relationships, sexual health and parenthood (RSHP) education is an integral part of the health and wellbeing area of the school curriculum in Scotland. RSHP education focuses on equipping children and young people with the knowledge, skills and values to make informed and positive choices about forming relationships. This includes understanding of issues like consent, appropriate relationships and boundaries.

RSHP teaching guidance is specific about the need for children and young people to gain knowledge appropriate to their age and stage of education. The curriculum in Scotland is not statutory and therefore it is for teachers to decide the on the development and implementation of the curriculum. As such, teachers in Scotland have the flexibility to include content on non-fatal strangulation, for example as part of learning about abuse in relationships or on the impact of pornography, as part of RSHP lessons.

We are also funding Time for Inclusive Education’s Digital Discourse Initiative, which provides training for teachers and educators to address the effects of online hate and disinformation on children and young people.

In addition, the 2025-26 Programme for Government committed the Scottish Government to carrying out a comprehensive assessment of the law in relation to non-fatal strangulation to determine if there is further action that needs to be taken beyond existing provisions in law that could be used to tackle this issue.

While, this is an operational matter for train operating companies, the Scottish Government expects that all operators in Scotland provide best possible assistance to all passengers, as appropriate.

For ScotRail specifically, the Scottish Government continues to specify a requirement that all its services should have a second staff member on board to assist passengers. This may include embarking or alighting from a train for passengers with mobility issues. This applies to all journeys at any time of day, evening and night.

The Scottish Land Commission has not incurred any expenditure on diversity, equality and inclusion officers in any year since 2021.

The Scottish Land Commission has not incurred any expenditure on diversity, equality and inclusion training in any year since 2021, with the exception of 2024-2025 when £59.40 was incurred.

The Scottish Government meets with the Scottish Ambulance Service regularly in the form of Operational Meetings, Mid Year and Annual Reviews where performance is discussed. The Scottish Government also receives weekly performance reports which are analysed and if performance is a concern, it is escalated to the Scottish Ambulance Service executive team.