Chamber and committees

The First Minister emphasised his Government’s commitment to Scotland’s independence in his first call with the Prime Minister earlier this month. The Scottish Government stands ready to engage at any point with the UK Government to begin talks about the change to the Scottish Parliament’s powers to allow the Scottish people to choose their future.

There is a wide range of transformation work underway within the Scottish Government, much of which has built upon the foundations of the Corporate Transformation programme I established in my previous government role.

Transformation activity is now being directed by the ‘In the Service of Scotland’ framework, which sets out the mission, vision, improvement priorities and values for the core Scottish Government, and has the broad aim of creating an organisation that can deliver effectively and efficiently for ministers and the people of Scotland in any future operating environment.

The improvement priorities are:

• creating an empowering and enabling culture.
• building a sustainable and outcomes-focused organisation.
• nurturing respectful and trusting partnerships.
• developing high quality business processes.
• providing a flexible workplace, enabling technology and usable data.

Examples of current work include a shared services programme that will implement Oracle Cloud, transforming the HR, finance and purchasing function for Scottish Government and public sector customers; a programme of work to implement a People Strategy; a range of initiatives to upskill civil servants, such as the Scottish Digital Academy which provides high quality professional learning to public and third sector staff to build digital capability; and the Single Scottish Estate, which is identifying opportunities to efficiently co-locate some public services and support our transition to Net Zero.

Public bodies listed in the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 have a duty to comply fully with responsibilities set out for them in the Act. I expect them to fulfil these duties, including in relation to the publication of financial information.

I have written to chairs and chief executives of public bodies, in which I have reminded those bodies listed in Schedule 8 to the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 that they have a duty to comply fully with responsibilities set out for them in the Act.

Public bodies listed in the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 have a duty to comply fully with responsibilities set out for them in the Act. I expect them to discharge these duties, including in relation to the publication of financial and other transparency details.

Scottish Government’s responsibilities for its public bodies include taking appropriate steps to ensure that the landscape is appropriate. This does not require an independent review.

Scottish Government recognises that Citizens’ Assemblies are an important and effective method to involve the public in policy and decision making.

Our longer term commitment to using Citizen’s Assemblies remains unchanged, and any Citizens’ Assembly will be targeted to help tackle some of Scotland’s most difficult issues.

As outlined in our response to the Institutionalising Participative and Deliberative Democracy working group, to ensure any future Citizens’ Assemblies build upon the learnings of previous Citizens’ Assemblies delivered in Scotland, a key first step in our approach will be to undertake an impact assessment of the Citizens' Assembly of Scotland and Scotland’s Climate Assembly.

Budget to deliver participatory work is dispersed across policy areas, which currently allocate funds and undertake activities as required. The financial situation facing the Scottish Government continues to be the most challenging since devolution, and we set out the limitations that budget constraints have posed to the delivery of Citizens’ Assemblies to the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions committee in October 2023 (see page 4, paragraph 6).

We will update Parliament in due course when we arrange for the next Citizens’ Assembly to be convened.

The City of Edinburgh Council is responsible for commissioning homelessness services in its area and assessing the impact of decisions on service provision. The Scottish Government cannot intervene in those decisions. The council has provided assurance that all three supported temporary accommodation facilities will remain operational and disruption to existing residents and staff will be minimised.

The reuse of brownfield, vacant and derelict land is strongly supported through National Planning Framework 4, which was adopted in February 2023. Since then, it has been part of the statutory development plan, influencing planning authorities preparation of local development plans and their decisions on planning applications, with the intention to maximise the use of existing assets. There are no plans to incur additional costs to the public purse by creating another public body to do this work.

The Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey Information Hub will be published soon. It will map out all the sites in the most recent survey, allowing users to easily source more information on vacant and derelict land in their areas.

In 2024/25, an investment of £6.8 million has been committed for projects supporting the reuse of vacant and derelict land through the Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme (VDLIP).

To give effect to the principal recommendation of the Legal Aid Payment Advisory Panel, that independent research be commissioned to consider the financial landscape for legal aid providers, a working group was established in 2022.

Membership of the group included representatives of the Law Society of Scotland, the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association and the Scottish Legal Aid Board. The group met regularly and agreed a specification to tender for the required research.

Following two unsuccessful tendering processes, the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association indicated their withdrawal from the working group. The Scottish Government share these frustrations, but an offer to re-tender remains.

The Scottish Government has held productive discussions with both the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association on the purpose of the research and will continue to make the case for re-tendering. We do believe that there is much to gain by carrying out the research.