The Scottish Government's 2025-26 Budget was published on 4 December 2024. This was a week after the Scottish Human Rights Commission published their report on rights in the Highlands and Islands, so there was not sufficient time to fully consider and incorporate the report and its recommendations into the Scottish Government's 2025-26 Budget.

However, an Island Communities Impact Assessment was undertaken on the 2025-26 Budget, to consider the unique needs of Scottish island communities.

We are considering the Scottish Human Rights Commission’s report with a view to formally responding to its recommendations ahead of the summer recess.

Nationality and citizenship are matters that are fully reserved to the United Kingdom Government under the Devolution Settlement, therefore the Scottish Government does not control the provision and resultant use of all mainstream forms of identification, such as passports, in Scotland.

The Scottish Government does however support the PASS scheme, which is an accepted standard for age verification in different places, for example in a licensing context. The CitizenCard is an accredited card which is part of the PASS scheme. The Scottish Government also supports Young Scot to maintain provision of the Young Scot National Entitlement Card, which currently enables 834,000 young people across Scotland to have identification which meets PASS standards.

There can be no doubt that the tariffs that have been imposed by the United States will cause damage to the global, UK and Scottish economies. The USA is the most valuable export market by far for Scotch Whisky, worth £971m in 2024 (18% of total Scotch Whisky exports by value). The USA imported nearly $12 billion worth of distilled spirits in 2024, with Mexico ($5.4 bn), France ($2.1 bn) and the UK ($1.8 bn) being the largest trading partners by value. Scotch Whisky is subject to the 10% baseline tariff which may be passed through to higher prices for US consumers and weaken demand. Additionally, the uncertainty in future global trading arrangements more broadly is widely expected to lead to weaker growth, higher inflation, financial market instability and increased borrowing costs which could impact consumer confidence generally and impact demand for Scotch Whisky. We will continue to closely monitor and assess the impact of US tariff policy on Scotland’s exports across key sectors, including Scotch Whisky.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-35938 on 25 April 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 Digital Identity Beta project contract was awarded to the successful supplier following a competitive tender via the Digital and Technology Services Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) where all suppliers listed on Lot 1 of the DPS were given the opportunity to respond to the tender. Prior to issuing the tender, a supplier day was held – invitations for this were issued via a PIN on the Public Contracts Scotland portal, therefore all suppliers registered on PCS could request to attend.

The UK’s international obligations, and domestic legislation which implements them, require that equal treatment is afforded to bidders from countries with which a relevant international agreement applies. This means that it would not be lawful to discriminate in favour of suppliers based in Scotland.

There are no legal mechanisms in place to mandate the use of ScotAccount for access to public services.

Scotland’s diverse fishing industry is subject to a variety of management measures including temporal and spatial restrictions on gear deployment, vessel type and catch. As with the 2017 change to minimum landing size for lobster, there are instances where management measures vary between areas, to help ensure sustainable fisheries. It should be noted that the 2017 measures were informed by scientific advice, a 12-week public consultation and engagement with our Regional Inshore Fisheries Group (RFIG) network.

Decisions made regarding the management of Scotland’s commercial fisheries are based on stock assessment advice provided by our scientific advisors and we recently shared updated reports based on landings from 2020 – 2023 with our stakeholders.

In addition, the Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics publication has information on landings and sales data, and can be accessed through the Scottish Government website. This can be used to compare the landings of different species and different geographic areas.

The following table shows the total number of children and young people that were in temporary accommodation at some point during each year from 2017-18 to 2023-24.

Data on temporary accommodation placements (HL3) is only available from 2017-18.

Children and young people are defined as when a household member is aged 24 and under.

We thank the Scottish Human Rights Commission for their detailed report. We expect to issue our formal response to the report before the Scottish Parliament's summer recess.

Scottish Government are currently procuring a replacement for the grant funded Refugee Support Service for which we committed up to £3.6m in 2024/25. We do not intend to publish a breakdown of costs. We are currently at a sensitive point in the procurement process and providing a breakdown of costs for the delivery of the existing service could compromise this.