Chamber and committees

This information is not centrally held. The staffing levels involved for supporting work on MAPPA are a matter for each of the Responsible Authorities.

The Scottish Government is not aware of any suggested claims regarding the East Kilbride rail line within the context of Clyde Metro. If the member believes that this should be included with the scope of the Clyde Metro’s network development then I would encourage him to contact Strathclyde Partnership for Transport ([email protected]) who are leading the work for the ongoing Case for Investment stage.

While universities are autonomous institutions with responsibility for their own strategic and operational decision making, the Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council will continue to offer support to individual institutions, including Edinburgh, as they develop their own plans to mitigate financial challenges.

In line with our Fair Work principles, the Scottish Government expects universities to work with trade unions and staff representatives to reach the right decisions and ensure workers are treated fairly; and for workers to have appropriate channels for maintaining constructive and meaningful dialogue with the University. The Scottish Government expects universities to make every effort to protect jobs. Compulsory redundancies should only be considered as a last resort, after all other cost saving measures have been fully explored.

The Scottish Government recognises the pivotal role played by Scotland’s world-class universities in our economy and wider society. Ministers listened closely to the sector in the development of this year’s budget, and are investing over £1.1 billion in university teaching and research.

Funding

The following tables set out how much the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and the Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) has spent on the delivery of Graduate Apprenticeships (GAs) and Foundation Apprenticeships (FAs) in each of the last 5 complete financial years.

Accountability for, and funding of, Graduate Apprenticeships and Foundation Apprenticeships (delivered through colleges) was passed to the SFC in Academic Year (AY) 2021-22. In the same year SAAS became responsible for funding tuition fees for new GA enrolments.

In this time period, Skills Development Scotland (SDS) also provided funding for FAs and GAs that resulted in enrolments in addition to those below.

Table 1: Split of GA Funding Across SFC and SAAS from 2019-20 to 2023-24

We know that many carers experience mental, physical, employment and financial impacts as a result of their caring role. We recognise that a highly effective mental health system must address all levels of need. It means recognising and responding to the many underlying social determinants, circumstances and inequalities that can affect people's mental health and wellbeing.

The Scottish Government’s National Carers Strategy (https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-carers-strategy/) published in December 2022 sets out our cross-government approach to carer support and recognition, and sets out the importance of carers, including young carers, and their mental health.

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy Delivery Plan and the Workforce Action Plan were published jointly with COSLA in November 2023. Actions in the Delivery Plan cover a wide spectrum, from maintaining good mental wellbeing, to support in communities, to ensuring specialist services are available whenever needed.

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Action Plan recognises the valuable role of carers and sets out our ambition to both improve carer awareness training for the mental health and wellbeing workforce and also improve access to wellbeing support for carers.

Our National Wellbeing Hub provides advice for unpaid carers, with information and resources to support carers to look after their mental health and wellbeing.

The National Specification for Psychological Therapies and Interventions was published in September 2023. It aims to improve access to and the quality of psychological therapies and interventions so that people accessing help, including unpaid carers, have positive experiences.

Support for carers is one of the aims of the Core Mental Health Standards, which includes signposting to support and resources when needed. These standards were developed with the input of individuals with lived experience, including carers and set out clear expectations for what services will provide and to let individuals, their families and carers know what they can expect from a secondary mental health service. They emphasise the involvement of carers in care planning and decision-making, as well as the importance of gathering and acting on carer feedback.

The Scottish Government recognises the significant barriers faced by unpaid carers, many of whom are women, in accessing employment and fair work in the labour market. This is why unpaid carers have been identified as one of our key cohorts for support.

We have made a Programme for Government commitment to provide employability support to meet the needs of all parents or carers on a demand-led basis by ensuring closer working across childcare, education, housing, justice, and health services, so that people can quickly and easily access the support needed to enter and stay in work.

The Scottish Government’s National Carers Strategy (https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-carers-strategy/) published in December 2022, sets out our cross-government approach to carer support and recognition, with an emphasis on the need for collaboration between national and local government, the third sector, wider public and private sector. The Strategy sets out the importance of all employers being flexible and supportive of carers in the workforce and outlines our commitment to fund and promote the Carer Positive employer accreditation scheme. There are now more than half a million employees working in 290 Carer Positive organisations across Scotland.

We are working to ensure holistic wrap-around support is available throughout our support services. No One Left Behind is our approach to delivering an all-age, place-based, person-centred model of employability support in Scotland. Services are voluntary, aiming to support individuals (including paid and unpaid carers) towards the right job at the right time. The No One Left Behind Strategic Plan 2024-27 was published in September 2024, outlining our priorities for devolved employability services moving forward, and reaffirming our commitment to continuous improvement and expanding reach of our services including unpaid carers.

Over 73,000 people received support through No One Left Behind from April 2019 to September 2024.

Eradicating child poverty in Scotland is a national mission and the top priority for this Government.

The Scottish Budget for 2025-26 outlines wide-ranging investment to deliver progress on our national mission to eradicate child poverty. This includes investment in breakfast clubs, to expand the provision of free school meals to around 25,000 more children and to develop the systems to mitigate the two-child limit.

We are continuing to invest in direct support through social security, including the ‘game-changing’ Scottish Child Payment. Recently published statistics show that the Scottish Child Payment has provided over £1 billion of payments to eligible families since its launch in February 2021 to the end of December 2024, of which £62 million was issued to eligible families in South Lanarkshire. As of the end of December 2024 the families of more than 326,000 under 16’s across Scotland were actively benefiting from Scottish Child Payment, with over 19,600 of these within the South Lanarkshire local authority area.

Through our Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund, we awarded South Lanarkshire Council a total of £79,897 over 2023-24 and 2024-25 to support its ‘Pathways out of Poverty’ project. This project is working with families with a disabled child to test a holistic, person-centred model of support.

We are also supporting the Wise Group to deliver its relational mentoring programme, and in 2025-26 will make nearly £2.2 million available to allow ongoing delivery across six local authority areas, including South Lanarkshire. This investment will allow Wise Group to provide wraparound support to around 2,000 households in these areas.

In 2025-26, the Scottish Government continues to allocate over £3 billion a year to policies which tackle poverty and the cost of living for households.

The Scottish Government will continue to do all we can within our powers and will leave no stone unturned across government as we seek to eradicate child poverty.

Scottish Government grant making is allocated across portfolios to various parts of the third sector to improve a wide range of outcomes. Some Scottish Government funding will be issued through third sector intermediary organisations. Spending is not specifically classified as allocated to geographical areas for third-sector organisations to deliver local services. Consequently the information requested is not available.

Details on region specific funding can be sourced from the regions Third Sector Interface (TSI) or via SCVO's funding tracker - https://funding.scot/

Water bodies may be monitored for different purposes, such as public health or assessing the status of the water environment, which helps determine the location for quality monitoring and reporting.

My letter of strategic guidance for Skills Development Scotland in 2025-26 places an emphasis on the delivery of apprenticeships in the sectors that are most vital to Scotland’s economy and society. These include those that support the transition to Net Zero, and are most likely to result in high quality, long-term employment and meaningful career pathways for participants. In addition, we continue to fund in other sectors to help meet the skills needs of employers. A particular priority for the programme is on encouraging greater participation from small and micro businesses.