Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government continues to work closely with DAERA NI officials and key agencies through the Paws for Thought Puppy Trafficking Group to disrupt and target those involved in the smuggling of puppies into Scotland from Northern Ireland. The collaborative actions of this Group are delivering significant reductions in the number of pups being trafficked into Scotland, mainly as a consequence of intelligence-led targeting of known or flagged transporters. The Group also continues to raise awareness among ferry passengers of puppy smuggling through the use of flyers, posters and social media, with anyone seeing suspicious activity encouraged to immediately report it.

More widely, the Scottish Government continues to work with the multi-agency Pet Trade Taskforce to share intelligence and target those involved in the illegal breeding and smuggling of puppies for sale in Scotland.

The visual checking of all dogs entering Scotland via Cairnryan, would require deployment of additional human resource when there are already significant demands being placed on local authority and other enforcement agency staff.

Many commercial movements of animals are already inspected at Border Control Posts, and pet dogs travelling with their owners on ferries will often be checked by APHA trained ferry staff. The movements of concern, i.e. puppies being smuggled, happens under the radar, and is best addressed through intelligence-led targeted enforcement action.

The Scottish Government continues to support measures to restrict the transport of pregnant dogs into the UK, having obtained legislative consent from the Scottish Parliament for this to be taken forward under the UK Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill before this was withdrawn by the UK Government in May 2023, and having agreed in principle to seek legislative consent for the Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Bill before this fell due to the dissolution of the UK Parliament in May 2024.

The Scottish Government maintains that to ensure consistency of approach and the most effective outcomes, these measures would best be delivered by a UK Parliament bill. To this end, Scottish Government officials continue to engage with DEFRA on the possibility of legislation in the UK parliament to restrict the transport of pregnant dogs into the UK, along with other animal welfare measures relating to the transport of pets.

The Scottish Government has undertaken no such assessments. It is the responsibility of the enforcement agencies to plan and execute any stop and search of vehicles entering Scotland by ferry. On the call from the Dogs Trust for visual checks on all dogs entering Scotland, we consider this impractical, as it would require significant resources to be permanently deployed. Additionally, it should be recognised that it is a small minority of individuals that are involved in the smuggling of puppies from NI to Scotland and so visually inspecting every dog arriving in Scotland would be disproportionate. We consider intelligence-led, targeted checks to be the most effective approach.

The Scottish Government does not hold any such data.

The Attainment Scotland Fund has been providing funding to local authorities and schools since 2015 with the aim of using education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty, with a focus on tackling the poverty-related attainment gap.

The Scottish Attainment Challenge began in 2015, when funding was distributed to targeted local authorities through the Schools Programme and Challenge Authorities. In 2017, the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) was introduced, providing funding direct to schools. In 2018, the Care Experienced Children and Young People fund (CECYP) began, providing funding to local authorities to enable them to target initiatives, activities, and resources that will improve the educational outcomes of this group of young people.

In 2022, the Scottish Attainment Challenge was refreshed, and the ‘Schools Programme and ‘Challenge Authorities’ funds were replaced by Strategic Equity Funding (SEF) which provided grants to all 32 local authorities.

The total amount provided to each local authority within these funding programmes in each financial year* since 2015-16 are as follows:

Details are as follows:

The Scottish Government policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of capital funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on flood protection, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities. Individual local authorities hold information on spending in this area.

The Scottish Government does not collect information on the type of employee as part of the Public Sector Employment data collection.

Some of the trend information on headcount can be obtained from the data sources below:

NHS Scotland Workforce data: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence

Scottish Government Workforce data: Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Police Officer numbers: Police officer quarterly strength statistics: 30 June 2024 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Please note that the statistics on Police Officer numbers are provided in terms of Full-Time Equivalent, not headcount.

The freeze on public sector marketing expenditure was part of a wider exercise to introduce the necessary emergency spending controls to achieve a balanced budget. Cabinet Secretaries were given a directive to freeze all marketing expenditure with immediate effect, with any spend deemed essential then requiring to be assessed accordingly in line with individual policy priorities and outcomes, and approved by the First Minister before proceeding. Many campaigns have gone ahead.

Further details on this process are set out in the answer to question S6W-30726 on 20 November 2024, alongside the now approved public health campaigns listed in the answer to question S6W-30729 on 20 November 2024. 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.