Chamber and committees

Scotland is the only part of the UK that already offers 30 hours per week, in term time, of funded ELC to all 3 and 4-year-olds regardless of whether their parents are working or not. We also make 1140 hours available to around a quarter of 2 year olds and to all children whose entry to primary school is deferred.

It is far from clear that a universal system of government funded childcare would deliver either value for money for the Scottish taxpayer or the best outcomes for our children and young people.

Before turning to the detail, I think it is important to recognise the financial context that the Scottish Government is currently having to work within. As the Cabinet Secretary for Finance outlined in the fiscal statement on 3 September, we cannot shy away from the fact that Scotland continues to face one of the most difficult public spending environments that this devolved Parliament has ever seen.

That is why we have committed in this year’s Programme for Government to work with local authorities to maximise uptake of funded early learning and childcare for eligible two-year-olds, with a particular focus on families most at risk of poverty and areas with some of the lowest uptake rates.

Over the next two years we are also investing £16 million within six early adopter communities to continue our work to understand what it takes to design and deliver local childcare systems that support those families most at risk of living in poverty.

The engagement and targeted delivery that takes place for younger children in our six EACs will be a key element of our developing evidence base to inform future delivery.

We are continuing to support the ‘Extra Time’ Programme, investing £4 million in a partnership with the Scottish Football Association to deliver before, after school and breakfast clubs, providing 3,000 targeted free places each week for children and their families. We have also invested close to £1 million to deliver free or subsidised school age childcare services through our Access to Childcare projects. These projects consider specific challenges for families, including remote and rural childcare provision, and specialist provision for children with disabilities or complex additional support needs.

We remain committed to expanding funded ELC to reach more young children and to building a system of School Age Childcare, and we are going as far and as fast as budgets allow to deliver that.

Decisions on future funding for third sector organisations dealing with domestic abuse will be confirmed on completion of the budget process later this year.

The Scottish Government published an Action Plan in June 2023 to deliver improvements to the Scottish Welfare Fund. The actions committed to are being progressed in conjunction with stakeholders through our Practitioners’ Forum and Statutory Guidance Review Committee.

As well as stakeholders on these forums, officials have met with organisations including Engender to discuss the work that is being progressed on the back of the independent review recommendations and action plan and have discussed clarifying the Scottish Welfare Fund statutory guidance to support marginalised women.

In the Ending Destitution Together strategy, published in 2021, the strategy is clear that there are limits on the action that can be taken by the Scottish Government to support women with the condition of No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF). This is because immigration and nationality, including the NRPF policy, are reserved to the UK Parliament. There is an ask of the UK Government to remove the Scottish Welfare Fund from the list of restricted public funds set out under paragraph 6 of the immigration rules. If successful, this would enable Crisis and Community Care Grants to be provided from the Scottish Welfare Fund to people subject to NRPF, where they are eligible, on the same basis as anyone else.

We are proud that we have the Scottish Welfare Fund providing emergency support and a lifeline to people in need, through Crisis Grants to help meet immediate short-term needs arising from exceptional circumstances and Community Care Grants to help eligible people establish or maintain a home. We have protected investment in the fund of £41 million this year.

Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET) is a ten-year strategy, and we stand by its vision to grow a sustainable and inclusive wellbeing economy. Two and a half years into that ten-year strategy, significant progress has already been made in driving us towards that vision of a fairer, greener wellbeing economy.

Through NSET we have established a Centre of Expertise in Equality and Human Rights, which is embedding equality and human rights in our economic policy development. We are committed to addressing the range of labour market barriers, including intersectional barriers, experienced by women that lead them to be paid less on average than men. In line with NSET’s ambition to tackle structural inequalities, we are supporting women furthest from the labour market through delivery of our person-centered employability support. Through our Fair Work approach, we are supporting the creation of good quality, well-paid and flexible jobs to support women to raise their income levels and progress in the workplace. Further, our work to tackle economic inactivity seeks to support more people to enter, remain and progress in employment. Women are more likely to be economically inactive than men and the main reason for inactivity for both women and men is long term sickness, therefore we have focussed our efforts on addressing this challenge.

Since publishing NSET we recognise that much has changed – fiscally, politically and internationally. Our focus is therefore now on accelerating delivery of NSET through our Programme for Government by prioritising actions that are affordable, deliverable and will have the greatest impact on the Government’s four priorities of eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency, and delivering high quality and sustainable public services.

The Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund (SHNZHF) launched in August 2020 and provides capital funding to social landlords to retrofit their existing housing stock by installing clean heat and improving their energy efficiency. Projects are eligible for up to 60% of the capital costs of clean heating systems and 50% of energy efficiency measures.

This year the SHNZHF is investing approximately £16.8m in 19 projects. To date, the fund has awarded approximately £75.3 million to 80 projects across Scotland for the installation of net zero measures to existing social rented homes.

The date set for the next funding checkpoint of the SHNZHF has not yet been set. When set it will be communicated to stakeholders through the fund website and stakeholder channels.

Social Landlords interested in developing heat networks can also access Scotland’s Heat Network Fund which makes capital funding available for the construction of new heat networks in addition to the decarbonisation and expansion of existing heat networks.

Our Area Based Schemes target areas with high levels of fuel poverty and enable improvements projects to go ahead in mixed tenure blocks benefiting some social tenants. Since 2013 we have invested over £600 million in area based schemes. This has helped around 40,000 social tenants and their neighbours to benefit from net zero measures and warmer homes that are less expensive to heat.

The Scottish Government recognises the need to increase the supply of affordable homes, including larger properties suitable for households with children. The Scottish Government has allocated additional capital of £40 million in each of the next two financial years to support acquisitions and, where appropriate, to help bring long term empty social homes back into use. This builds on the success of last year’s National Acquisition Programme, which invested more than £83 million in 2023-24 and helped deliver almost 1,500 affordable homes. This additional £40 million takes our total investment in affordable housing to almost £600 million in 2024-25.

The Scottish Government’s ambition is to prevent homelessness, where possible, to avoid the need for temporary accommodation. We understand, however, that there is a need for more suitable temporary accommodation, which would include accommodation suitable for the needs of women with children.

The Scottish Government has taken action to increase the supply of suitable accommodation, in particular, larger properties suitable for households with children. Scottish Government investment of more than £83 million in our National Acquisition Programme in 2023-24 delivered almost 1,500 affordable homes. This assisted local authorities’ efforts to ensure households with children who have been living in temporary accommodation for longer periods are supported into suitable settled housing.

The Scottish Government has allocated additional capital of £40 million to the Affordable Housing Supply Programme in each of the next two financial years. As women make up the majority (74%) of single parent households assessed as homeless, this will benefit them most.

In our engagement with local authorities to date, we have been clear that increasing the supply of social housing suitable for families is needed to reduce the number of children in temporary accommodation, a key Scottish Government objective in tackling child poverty.

Scottish building regulations already set requirements for new buildings and new building work, including entertainment venues, that are intended to provide safe, unassisted and convenient access to and within buildings. However, building regulations are not applied retrospectively to existing buildings.

Attention should be drawn to the Scottish Government's response to S6W-28573 on 12 August 2024 noting that the Scottish Government expects building owners and managers to be familiar with their duties under equalities legislation and where necessary make reasonable adjustments following the relevant codes of practice published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

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

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

Through Equally Safe, we are working closely with local government and third sector partners to ensure victims and survivors of domestic abuse are aware of all sources of support. This year we are providing over £7.5m to Women’s Aid groups in Scotland, through our Delivering Equally Safe Fund, that provide vital and sometimes lifesaving support through a range of channels, including online and print materials. In addition to this we are also supporting Scotland's Domestic Abuse & Forced Marriage Helpline with over £550,000 funding to also ensure this information is widely available to those who need it.

The Scottish Government also funds the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre, which provides online guidance on legal and housing options available to women experiencing domestic abuse.