Chamber and committees

Scotland’s valued and highly skilled oil and gas workers must be at the heart of a just energy transition, and the Scottish Government is supporting the workforce with the powers available to us.

In its first two years our Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray has allocated £9.7m to support a package of skills interventions, including development of the Energy Transition Skills Hub in Aberdeen, a pilot scheme with the National Energy Skills Accelerator to determine the skills required for an energy transition and support for the industry-led development of an Energy Skills Passport. More widely, we will invest a further £8.5m of capital funding through the Fund this year, on projects with a focus on jobs, skills and economic opportunities to continue to support our transition in the region.

The Scottish Government, in partnership with the UK Government, has recently launched a new Oil and Gas Transition Training Fund to help support offshore workers transition to roles in sustainable energy sectors.

We have also funded, alongside the UK Government, a targeted Skills intervention for workers facing redundancy as a result of the closure of the Grangemouth refinery. While the scheme is still ongoing, workers are already successfully progressing into good quality jobs, including in low-carbon industries.

In the unfortunate event of any employees facing redundancy, the Scottish Government will also always offer and provide support through Partnership Action for Continuing Employment, PACE. By providing skills development and employability support, PACE aims to minimise the time individuals are affected by redundancy are out of work.

The Scottish Government is supporting work to encourage young people to develop good financial habits and increase engagement with credit unions. This includes collaboration with partners on initiatives aimed at improving financial education in schools and helping young people access suitable financial products.

Current work focuses on piloting approaches in selected areas to test how best to increase account ownership among school leavers and reduce financial exclusion, with progress being monitored to inform future policy and potential wider rollout.

Broadcast rights are ultimately a matter for the event owner, Amaury Sports Organisation, but the Scottish Government will continue to work collaboratively with all partners to develop opportunities to maximise exposure of the event, and ensure it can be enjoyed by as many people as possible.

As scholarships in Scotland are primarily funded and managed by institutions themselves, the Scottish Government does not hold all the information that has been requested.

The Scottish Government has however provided funding towards a number of scholarship programmes for foreign nationals, between 2016 and 2025 including:

In 2023, Mossmorran’s natural gas liquids plant produced around 0.1MtCO2e, or around 1.5% of Scotland’s industrial emissions. Scotland’s pathway to net-zero will require all polluting businesses to decarbonise over the next two decades where feasible. For Mossmorran’s natural gas liquids plant, carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be a crucial enabling decarbonisation technology. This hugely depends on the development of the Acorn CCS project, which is still waiting on a final decision and the full funding package from the UK Government.

On 24 June 2025, Scottish Ministers issued a Minute of Appointment, setting out their instructions to the independent Reporter, about how the appeal in respect of Lomond Banks should proceed.

The Scottish Government provides various forms of support to Scotland’s abattoirs, including those in remote and island areas.

We remain committed to supporting small producers, and empowering them to help deliver our Vision for Agriculture. One way we are realising this is by supporting the ecosystem that our Small Producers rely upon, and so last year, through the Small Producers Pilot Fund, we provided over £300,000 in Private Kill Abattoir grant funding. This support was directed to organisations including Quality Meat Scotland (QMS), SAOS, Munro’s of Dingwall, and facilities in Shetland, Wishaw, Mull, Barra, and Orkney.

This year, we’re going further – we are delivering up to £1 million in resource funding to support a range of targeted actions. This includes investment in the Small Producer Practical Training Fund, which is designed to help small producers build resilient, sustainable businesses for the future. Applications for the 2025–26 financial year have already been received from private kill abattoirs, in Shetland, Shotts, Mull, Wishaw, and Stornoway.

Officials have also had some initial engagement with those organising the Boreray sheep slaughter facility on the Orkney Islands - the ‘Tiny Trailer Abattoir’ - and we expect further engagement with them, including their application in due course. I am also aware that Food Standards Scotland have been working with them on the establishment of the abattoir, which would enable processing specifically of Boreray and North Ronaldsay sheep.

Abattoirs across Scotland have also benefited from a Ministerial discount scheme that has been applied by Scottish Ministers for Official Veterinarian charges since 2015, amounting to £1.07 million. This was supplemented in 2024/25 with an additional £500,000, helping to further reduce costs for abattoirs.

In addition, the Scottish Government commissioned a report, published in March 2020, entitled ‘Assessing the Viability and Sustainability of Mobile Abattoirs in Scotland.’ The research provides details of what would be required to operate mobile abattoirs in Scotland, including the regulatory framework, and offers a cost-benefit analysis of possible operational models. Whilst the report found support for fixed or mobile abattoirs, there was some concern amongst existing island abattoirs that support for MSUs could result in the diversion of animals and income streams that could otherwise be channelled to their businesses.

The Scottish Government is responsible for setting the strategic policy direction for NHS Scotland and its workforce, including interventional neuroradiologists.

Operational matters, including the staffing of individual services, are the responsibility of each NHS Scotland Health Board. At a local level, the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 places duties on Health Boards to ensure that suitably qualified and competent individuals are working in such numbers as are appropriate for the health, wellbeing and safety of patients, the provision of high-quality care and the wellbeing of staff.

It should be noted that the North of Scotland thrombectomy service utilises Interventional Radiologists, whereas the West and East of Scotland services utilise Interventional Neuroradiologists.

Workforce statistics across NHS Scotland, can be found at: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Scotland’s Adoption Register (SAR) publishes quarterly statistics and annual reports on the number of matches of children and young people with adoptive parents through SAR on their website.

Their Annual Report for 2024-2025, shows that, through SAR, there were 81 matches of children and young people with adoptive parents in 2020-2021, 71 matches in 2021-2022, 61 matches in 2022-2023, 62 matches in 2023-2024, and 35 matches in 2024-2025. SAR does not publish data on matches by age group.

The number of credit unions in Scotland is publicly available through the Bank of England’s annual statistics, which are published online.