Chamber and committees

Since the Scottish Government first introduced universal free school meals for Primaries 1-3 in 2015, Scottish Ministers and officials have regularly engaged with a wide range of stakeholders as their views and experiences have been essential in developing the programme.

COSLA and local authorities are represented on groups involved in the roll out of universal free school meals. Officials and Ministers have engaged with young people regarding free school meals through their attendance at stakeholder events. Parents and carers views have been captured in reports including the Poverty and Inequality Commission’s Child Poverty Delivery plan progress report and NHS Scotland’s Evaluation of the Implementation of Universal Free School Meals in Primaries 1-3.

There have been no recent discussions between Ministers and/or officials and the other bodies mentioned regarding the establishment of a dedicated non-departmental public body for housebuilding in Scotland.

National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) supports the delivery of more high quality homes in the right locations to provide choice and meet diverse needs. As a recently adopted part of the development plan, it provides an up-to-date context for decision making that has a democratic mandate to guide us to the place we want Scotland to be in 2045. There is no need for local development plans to replicate policies in NPF, enabling planning authorities to focus on allocating land for new homes, and supporting their delivery in collaboration with developers, communities and infrastructure providers.

We recognise there is scope to improve on current planning timescales. There can be many reasons for delays in determining applications, including incomplete applications leading to requests for additional information, delays with responses from consultees and the time take to reach legal agreements. However, timescales for decisions are only one measure, and constructive and collaborative working between applicants and authorities means that consistently over 93% of applications are approved annually.

We recently consulted on resourcing the planning system, including options to improve capacity and the number of planners. The consultation closed on 31 May and we are carefully considering the responses received.

Working across Government and together with our partners, we continue to take action to address labour and skills shortages, including better aligning the education and skills system with the needs of employers and the economy.

We remain committed to supporting a high-quality post-school education, research and skills system with over £2.4 billion investment, including more than £133 million of this investment focused on Modern Apprenticeships. There is also significant progress being made to reform and improve key areas of the post-school learning system covered by James Withers’ review Fit for the Future, including on apprenticeships, skills planning and simplification of the funding body landscape.

I provided the latest update on progress in a letter to the Education, Children and Young People Committee on 27 March 2024, available at Update to Committee - Post school reform | Scottish Parliament Website . Other action includes Scotland’s Migration Service which was launched in March 2024. The new service provides information and offer individual appointments to help people with moving and settling into life in Scotland. It also supports businesses to navigate the immigration system, including advice from qualified advisors.

No One Left Behind is the Scottish Government’s shared approach to delivering an all-age, place-based, person-centred model of employability support in Scotland. It sees Scottish and Local Government working together, with partners from the third, private and wider public sectors to support both individuals and employers with their labour market needs.

The Young Person’s Guarantee was introduced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic as a measure to prevent long-term adverse impacts for young people in the labour market. It contained a number of aspects, covering skills, education, and employability.

Employability support available through the Young Person’s Guarantee was delivered through Local Employability Partnerships, with Local Authorities acting as lead accountable body. Specific details on funding are not held by the Scottish Government, therefore requests for this information would need to be directed towards Local Authorities. Employability contacts for each local authority can be found on the Employability in Scotland website which can be accessed here: https://www.employabilityinscotland.com/local-employability-services/

Employability support for young people is now delivered through the No One Left Behind approach across Scotland including Edinburgh, as part of the long-term ambition to simplify the employability landscape for service users.

In setting out the four key priorities for the Scottish Government, the First Minister has been clear in emphasising the need to focus on action and delivery rather than additional strategies.

The National Strategy for Economic Transformation was published in 2022 and is a 10-year strategy. The strategy set out our long-term vision to build a fairer, wealthier and greener economy based on the principles of prosperity, equality, sustainability and resilience.

The strategy’s Fairer and More Equal Society programme aims to reorient our economy towards wellbeing and fair work, to deliver higher rates of employment and wage growth. The Skilled Workforce programme seeks to ensure that people have the skills they need at every stage of life to have rewarding careers and meet the demands of an ever-changing economy and society, and that employers invest in the skilled employees they need to grow their businesses.

Engagement with business, enterprise and industry stakeholders was a critical part of developing the strategy. We continue to work with partners to deliver the labour market interventions that will have the greatest impact on achieving our ambition of growing an economy that is fair and green and we will be setting out the next phase of our approach in the forthcoming Programme for Government.

The Education Maintenance Allowance is vital in supporting young people from lower-income households to overcome financial barriers and to stay in education. It is a central component of this government’s support for young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Scottish Government has faced its most challenging budgetary settlement since devolution began – a settlement which has not been inflation-proofed, and which has subsequently required difficult decisions to be made, due to the pressures on our public services. Any future changes to EMA would need to be considered in this context.

The work to define a Minimum Income Guarantee for Scotland continues to be led by an independent Expert Group who are due to publish a full report, which will include consideration of costs, later this year. The Scottish Government will respond to the recommendations made in due course. The report is expected to focus on what is deliverable and fiscally responsible now, alongside a longer-term vision for what a Minimum Income Guarantee with full powers might look like. The Expert Group’s work has been overseen by a cross-party Strategy Group who will continue to be updated as the work progresses.

The Scottish Government has already introduced a national smartcard that can be used across all modes of public transport. The National Entitlement Card ( saltire card) is available to any Scottish resident and, since 2019, can be used across Scotland for any operator that provides a compatible smart ticket. This platform is also used for the national concessionary travel schemes, with approximately 170m smart journeys taken each year.

Our refreshed Smart Delivery Strategy will be published in summer 2024, outlining our programme of work in the coming years. This includes exploring development of options for a new national integrated ticketing system to reflect passenger desire for progression to integrated contactless and digital ticketing. We will encourage operators across all modes to participate in these options for a new system that could offer multi-modal fare capping, removing the need to think about a ticket for each leg of the journey, potentially building on the five regional integrated ticketing schemes that are available in Scotland, led by operators and local transport authorities.

The strategy aligns with the work of the National Smart Ticketing Advisory Board (NTSAB), established in November 2023, to advise on national technological ticketing standards that will support a new integrated system, as well as delivery of smart ticketing measures from the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019. With NSTAB’s advice, a business case will be developed, which will consider the timescales and costs of delivering a national integrated ticketing system.

The Scottish Government is keen to promote a culture of entrepreneurship.

Scottish Government business support is provided by our enterprise agencies, utilising a range of support mechanisms. Scottish Enterprise provide business support in the area which includes the Edinburgh Eastern Constituency.

Scottish Enterprise systems do not hold tags for UK or Scottish parliamentary constituencies. Accordingly, as a proxy, the postcodes for the Edinburgh Eastern constituency were used to identify businesses in that constituency to which payments were made. It is also not possible for Scottish Enterprise to break down the payments according to size of business as they do not hold company size in our finance system