Chamber and committees

Whilst the issue raised is a commercial matter for Wood Group and any prospective partner, the Scottish Government and Enterprise Agencies aim to work with businesses in Scotland, domestic and overseas owned, to ensure Scottish operations are not only secured here but opportunities for growth are pursued.

Growing the economy has been identified as one of the Scottish Government’s four strategic priorities. Our approach to growing Scotland’s economy requires balance. It is important that we focus on both strengthening Scotland’s domestic industries and ensuring our economy is open and internationally focused.

It must also be noted that the powers required to legislate in respect of company acquisition between private sector organisations are reserved to the UK Parliament.

It is a matter for the Scottish Funding Council to allocate funding to individual institutions, including whether there is a need to apply any conditions as part of this process.

The member may be interested to know that the Scottish Funding Council wrote to the Convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee on 20 March outlining the conditions applied to the liquidity support for the University of Dundee. A link to the letter is as follows:

Letter from the Scottish Funding Council to the Convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee on 20 March 2025

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-36866 on 6 May 2025. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-36866 on 6 May 2025. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Where Ministers have agreed that an appointee should be remunerated, the Daily Fee Framework for Chairs, Board Members and Public Appointments must be used to determine the appropriate Daily Fee. The framework does not mandate that a fee be paid.

It is open to the Sponsor Team to decide whether a payment need be made. Remuneration may be proposed where it is particularly important to have representation from as wide and diverse a range of candidates as possible, or where there is specific need for appointees to be drawn from otherwise under-represented groups.

Any remuneration payable is not intended to meet the market rate that could be commanded by the individuals concerned.

The relevant Scottish Government approval must be obtained prior to implementing any daily fee and prior to advertising, negotiating a remuneration package or confirmation of appointment.

The Care Inspectorate does not hold data on unmet demand for childcare.

The Care Inspectorate publishes a detailed list of registered services every month. The latest version can be found here: https://www.careinspectorate.com/index.php/publications-statistics/93-public/datastore.

This includes all services providing a day care of children or childminding service and includes details of the registered places in those services.

The Care Inspectorate publishes a statistical report about early learning and childcare every year. This includes summaries of numbers of registered services, places in those services, children registered. The latest publication can be found here:

https://www.careinspectorate.com/images/documents/7759/2023%20Early%20learning%20and%20Childcare%20Statistics.pdf

Recent and ongoing global events show the fragility of food security, and we are taking action to improve Scotland’s food resilience and strengthen our supply chains. The Scottish Government has created a Food Security Unit, to monitor risks or threats to the supply chain and help mitigate future shocks and impacts on food security.

For further details, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-36866 on 6 May 2025. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Government is providing £23.4 million of funding in 2025-26, to the Regional Transport Partnerships and their local authority partners through the Active Travel People and Place programme. One of the key areas of investment in this programme is “Schools and Young People”, which targets investment in behaviour change initiatives to encourage more children and young people to use active travel as a way of travelling to school. The aim of this programme is to make sustainable travel choices the most desirable way to travel for young people and families by providing the necessary interventions and adaptations that make active travel more attractive.

This year, we will also increase our funding (to £2.5m) for Bikeability Scotland, the national cycle training programme for school aged children. Bikeability Scotland provides the next generation of cyclists with the skills and confidence they need to ride safely on our roads. In 2023-24, the last period for which data is available, more than 54,039 children received cycle training. We expect that figure to rise to 70,000 this year.

We allocated over £100 million across a number of infrastructure programmes to develop and deliver walking, wheeling and cycling infrastructure in 2024-25. This includes funding through the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund (ATIF), our primary vehicle for supporting infrastructure projects.

Through the ATIF, Transport Scotland directly funded 16 local authorities and one Regional Transport Partnership for projects that are: improving routes and junctions at various locations to ensure children can cross safely; addressing missing links; supporting safer routes to school; and enhancing safety by improving lighting.

The funding support provided through the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund will continue in 2025-26, giving local authorities the autonomy to support the design, development, and delivery of active travel infrastructure measures according to their individual local priorities.

The Scottish Government does not hold the information requested.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37086 on 6 May 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers