Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has allocated the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service £412.2 million for 2025-26 to ensure it is properly resourced to keep Scotland safe and provide all of its statutory functions. The budget for 2025-26 is £18.8m higher than 2024-25 and while clearly decisions on how its budget is spent are a matter for the SFRS Board and Chief Fire Officer, SFRS continue to respond to every emergency incident with the appropriate level of resources.

SFRS continually review and develop its operational response to any new and emerging technology or site to keep communities safe and ensure the highest level of preparedness.

The Scottish Government is fully committed to delivering net zero by 2045. Our pathway to net zero must recognise that agriculture and food production relies on natural processes and will always cause some degree of emissions. We have no policy to reduce livestock numbers. Instead, we are committed to supporting the sector to enhance productivity and resilience while reducing emissions intensity

Since 2019, the Scottish Government has been supporting the sport sector to offer free period products; reducing stigma and addressing overarching gender equality.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-30734 on 11 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

In addition to the information provided in answer S6W-30734, sportscotland’s Working with Female Athletes learning platform on Brightspace has recently been updated to include additional e-learning resources. This includes Sport Wales’ e-learning module on the menstrual cycle in sport. Resources are available for all and are free of charge.

The proposed reforms will make pre-application consultation for electricity infrastructure projects a statutory requirement and also introduce an Acceptance Stage when Scottish Ministers can decline to accept applications which have not fulfilled the necessary requirements. These reforms will reduce timescales for processing applications and increase local input into project proposals.

The Scottish Government will publish detailed guidance on the Acceptance Stage and what happens if the relevant planning authority objects or if an application is not accepted.

The proposed reforms will apply to applications for consent under section 36 and section 37 of the Electricity Act 1989 made to Scottish Ministers. Section 36 applications made to Scottish Ministers have a capacity of over 50MW. Therefore, it is not anticipated that the reforms to introduce new fees for pre-application functions will reduce application numbers.

The scope of the proposed reforms to vary consents without an application will be limited to variations and will not include suspension or revocation of consents. Interested parties will be notified of the proposal and given the opportunity to make representations. Where the variation proposed by the Scottish Government is to amend the consent or its conditions or both due to a change in environmental circumstances or relevant technological changes, the agreement of the consent-holder will be required.

Separately, the proposed reforms intend that the Scottish Government will be enabled to correct errors or omissions made in a consent, where the consent-holder would be notified of the proposed variation and given the opportunity to make representations to the Scottish Government.

The proposed reforms will make pre-application consultation for electricity infrastructure projects a statutory requirement. This will increase opportunities for meaningful community input.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving care for people with chronic pain, by delivering the actions in the Pain Management Service Delivery Framework Implementation Plan at pace.

The Implementation Plan outlines actions to expand skills and knowledge on chronic pain across local services and scaling-up new ways of working to improve the consistency and resilience of local pain services.

The Scottish Government’s budget for the coming year has now been passed by Parliament and will invest a record £21.7 billion in Scotland’s health and social care services, including £200 million to reduce waiting lists and improve capacity.

By March 2026, we expect no-one to wait longer than 12 months for a new outpatient appointment, inpatient treatment or day case treatment with more than 150,000 extra patients seen as a result.

The latest data showing the number of school leavers in each initial destination (three months after the end of the school year) by local authority and nationally for each year since 2009-10 can be found in Table L2.1a in the supplementary tables published alongside the Summary Statistics for Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations, No. 7: 2025 edition. The supplementary tables with data on initial destinations are available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-for-attainment-and-initial-leaver-destinations-no-7-2025-edition/documents/.

The latest data showing the number of school leavers in each follow-up destination (nine months after the end of the school year) by local authority and nationally for each year since 2009-10 can be found in Table L2.2 in the supplementary tables published alongside the Summary statistics for Follow-Up Leaver Destinations, No. 6: 2024 Edition. The supplementary tables with data on follow-up destinations are available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-follow-up-leaver-destinations-no-6-2024-edition/documents/.

The information requested is not held centrally. Headteachers know their learners best and they decide how to invest their Pupil Equity Funding, based on their local context. Pupil Equity Funding must enable schools to deliver activities, approaches or resources which are clearly additional to universal local improvement plans.

Scottish Attainment Challenge funding, which includes annual Pupil Equity Funding of £130 million to 97% of schools, supports up to 3,000 additional staff, including up to 700 FTE teachers.

Spending on additional support for learning by local authorities reached a record high of over £1 billion in 2023-24 – the latest figure available – an increase from £540m in 2012-13. The 2025/26 budget sets out that a further £29m of additional investment will enhance support for children with additional support needs in our schools. This will include an allocation for local and national programmes to support the recruitment and retention of the Additional Support Needs workforce and enable us to build on the work being delivered through our Additional Support for Learning Action Plan. Details of the national programme of work will be set out in due course.