Chamber and committees

A total of five awards have been made from the Scottish Investment Fund.

Two awards were made in 2008-09:

Momentum Scotland Ltd - £500,000

Out of the Blue Arts and Education Trust - £425,000.

Three awards have been made in 2009-10 to date:

Comrie Development Trust - £200,000

West Lothian Food and Health Development - £200,000

Re-Union Canal Boats Ltd - £236,150.

Awards from the fund are in the form of grant, loan and risk capital.

Further work on improving financial inclusion will be taken forward through Achieving our Potential, our framework for tackling poverty and income inequality in Scotland. We have yet to finalise the allocation of the £7.5 million which will support Achieving our Potential in the two years 2009-10 and 2010-11.

We continue to provide support for money advice through the local government settlement, and are providing £1.471 million in 2009-10 to other organisations to support money advice. We have also committed £55,000 in 2009-10 to a financial education project, with further allocations yet to be confirmed.

Funding information is available for financial years only. The following organisations received funding in 2007-08 and 2008-09. Funding provided to local authorities through the local government settlement to support the provision of money advice is not included because the Scottish Government does not hold details of which organisations were funded. Financial inclusion activity supported by the Fairer Scotland Fund in 2008-09 also cannot be separately identified.

(£000)

	2007-08	2008-09
Financial Inclusion Fund Allocation		Covered by Fairer Scotland Fund
Dundee	450
East Ayrshire	350
Glasgow City	900
Inverclyde	600
North Ayrshire	300
North Lanarkshire	500
Renfrewshire	450
South Lanarkshire	500
West Dunbartonshire	600
West Lothian	350
Western Isles	300
Money Advice
Money Advice Training, Information and Advice Services	285	316
Citizens Advice Direct	313	326
National Debtline	100	600
Citizens Advice bureaux (Barnett consequential)		374
Financial education
Citizens Advice Scotland	250	-
Young Scot	88	100

 

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Funding information is available for financial years only. We allocated £5.3 million, though the Financial Inclusion Fund, to local authorities in 2007-08. In 2008-09, reflecting the Concordat with local government, the funding for financial inclusion activities was included in the wider ring-fenced £145 million Fairer Scotland Fund.

Funding in respect of enhanced debt advice services was also included within the general funding allocation for local authorities in both 2007-08 and 2008-09 but the amounts were not separately identifiable. We provided £0.698 million in 2007-08 and £1.616 million in 2008-09 to other organisations to support money advice.

We funded two financial education projects in 2007-08 (£338,000) and one in 2008-09 (£100,000).

Skills Development Scotland work with community planning partnerships (CPPs) to address employability issues through joint pursuit of a range of priorities including:

On employability - Workforce Plus; Integrated Employment and Skills; Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE)

On young people “ More Choices More Chances; Curriculum for Excellence; 16+ Learning Choices

On National Training Programmes - Modern Apprenticeships (MA), Get Ready for Work (GRfW) and Training For Work (TFW)

On literacy and numeracy “ The Big Plus.

The European Social Fund (ESF) Programmes for 2007 to 2013 are clearly aligned with the government''s economic strategy to create opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish through sustainable economic growth.

The ESF Lowlands and Uplands Scotland (LUPS) programme covers three main priorities:

1. Moving people into employment;

2. Improving skills and productivity of those in work and helping those in danger of redundancy, and

3. Widening access to post school lifelong learning for key client groups.

In the Lowlands and Uplands ESF programme the focus of Priority 1 is on offering help to hard-to-reach, workless groups experiencing multiple barriers to entering the labour market. The funds are awarded to organisations running projects which offer a range of tailored support to enable these most disadvantaged people to move into employment or training making a tangible impact on their lives.

Priority 1 received 46% of the total ESF LUPS funding available which amounts to £107.1 million (at March 2009 euro/sterling rate). There has been a commitment to front load European funding generally, and this Priority in particular in the present economic climate. The Round 2 funding was announced by the First Minister on 18 April 2009, and this brought the commitment of this priority to £81.3 million or 76% of the total allocation.

So far the ESF projects approved, including £39 million to Community Planning Partnerships, are concentrated on the most disadvantaged groups and specifically include a high proportion of young participants. The projects awarded ESF grants are run by experienced organisations committed to partnership working largely from the third sector, local authorities and further education colleges.

A full list of the approved projects and grants awarded can be obtained from the Intermediate Administration Body websites. For Lowlands and Uplands Scotland this is www.esep.co.uk and for the Highlands and Islands this is www.hipp.org.uk.

Young people''s career choices are often persuaded by stereotyped views about which jobs are suitable for men and which are suitable for women. The construction and engineering industries have been particularly proactive in working to challenge these perceptions.

To comply with their Public Sector Duties under the equality legislation, Skills Development Scotland (SDS) will undertake an Equality Impact Assessment on the Modern Apprenticeship programme in the coming year. Early discussions with the Equality and Human Rights Commission have indicated a willingness to work with SDS on the Occupational Segregation aspect of the Equality Impact Assessment.

Employability sits at the heart of the Scottish Government''s policy agenda and we encourage our partners to adopt the same approach. Scottish Government has been working with Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) to ensure Local Employability Partnerships are an integral part of the CPP in addressing the wider challenges in the local area including employability. These partnerships bring together all the key decision makers locally to ensure that the resources aimed at employment are themselves utilised to the best possible effect. In total, there are 26 local employability partnerships across Scotland. The Scottish Government is working with the remaining CPPs to ensure they are addressing employability challenges within its forums.

Also, the Scottish Government is entering into Single Outcome Agreement (SOA) with each CPP. The first SOAs with CPPs “ for 2009-10 “ are due to be agreed by 1 June 2009. Each SOA sets out ambitions against a series of agreed priority outcomes for the local area in question. CPPs may choose to highlight employability as one of these priority local outcomes. Annual reporting by the CPP to both the Scottish Government and local communities will allow progress towards these local outcomes to be monitored.

This question was answered in the Chamber. The answer can be viewed in the Official Report using the following link:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialReports/meetingsParliament/or-09/sor0430-01.htm

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-22726 on 28 April 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.