Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government remains committed to advancing equality for LGBTQI+ people across all areas of life, including the labour market.

We are providing over £1.1 million to organisations working to promote LGBTQI+ equality in Scotland in 2024-25, including for initiatives to tackle discrimination and empower LGBTQI+ people and allies to advocate for LGBTQI+ rights in their workplace.

Through our Fair Work First approach we are leveraging employers’ commitment to fair work for all, including the LGBTQI+ community, by applying Fair Work principles to public sector grants, contracts and other funding, where it is relevant and proportionate to do so. These principles ask employers to commit to creating more diverse and inclusive workplaces and providing channels for effective voice, including trade union recognition. These facilitate open communication with workers to share their lived experiences, advocate for equal rights and ultimately improve workplace culture; and help all workers protect their legal rights and ensure fair treatment.

The next summary report, for the period January to June 2023, will be published in the coming weeks at: Access to counsellors in secondary schools and children and young people’s community mental health services – summary reports - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

As part of the HIV Transmission Elimination (HIVTE) Delivery Plan, the Scottish Government has committed to developing a proposal to address HIV awareness across the health and social care sector. Funding has already been provided to NHS Education for Scotland to develop training materials for healthcare practitioners in non-HIV specialist roles and a specialist educator post has been funded to support the provision of training across Scotland. The HIVTE plan recognises that this work may require further expansion. We will work with relevant authorities to maximise uptake of training, and will consider whether NHS and local authorities should be encouraged to make this mandatory.

The Scottish Government, through its partnership with Peatland ACTION, restored a total of 10,361 hectares in 2023-24. This is a record high delivery for the peatland restoration programme, and continues our progress towards the 2030 restoration target of 250,000 hectares.

The following table shows the number of attendances and those waiting eight hours or more and 12 hours or more aged 65-74, 75-84, 85-94, and 95+ at A&E in Scotland in 2023-24.

Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) met it’s 900ha woodland creation target in 2023-24 by planting 454ha of new trees and delivering 447ha of trees through naturally seeded regeneration, principally around Loch Katrine.

It is an offence in Scotland, as it is in England and Wales, for utilities to fail to secure the safety of road works by ensuring that those works are adequately guarded and lit and that appropriate traffic signs are placed to guide and direct persons using the road. The Scottish Ministers may issue or approve codes of practice giving practical guidance to utilities in respect of these duties and this is incorporated in the Safety at Street Works and Road Works Code of Practice 2013. A failure to comply with the Code of Practice is evidence of a failure to discharge the relevant safety duties and accordingly evidence that an offence has been committed. These requirements for utilities arise from the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991.

For roads and highway authorities the equivalent legislation is the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 (covering Scotland), and the Highways Act 1980 (Covering England and Wales). While the 1980 Act also included a provision for a mandatory Code of Practice on safety, the 1984 Act did not, and so it was not previously possible to prescribe a mandatory Code for Scottish roads authorities on this topic. As this omission predates the formation of the Scottish Parliament, we cannot provide detail of the policy rationale of the time. This was rectified in 2019, when the Scottish Government made the necessary legislative changes to the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 to extend the requirement to follow the mandatory safety Code of Practice to Scottish Roads authorities. The legislation which requires Scottish roads authorities to follow the mandatory Code of Practice has now been in force since 10 January 2022. The 2013 version of the Code of Practice is currently under review, which will result in an amended foreword, including Scottish road authorities in the list of bodies the Code applies to.

We remain committed to sustained investment to strengthen provision of education in Scotland and we are offering local authorities £145.5m in this year’s budget to protect teacher numbers.

The commitment to increase the number of classroom assistants has already been exceeded, with 725 additional staff recruited in 2022-23 alone. In addition, since 2019 the number of teachers in Scottish schools has increased by 1,786 from 52,247 to 54,033.

We will continue to work with local authorities to deliver our shared education commitments, with the approach we are able to take being dependent on the resources we have available and ensuring we deliver value for money, during an era where budgets continue to be under pressure as a result of UK Government austerity measures.

The Scottish Government, recognising these exceptionally challenging times, has declared a national Housing Emergency and called on the UK Government to reverse the almost 9% cut to Scotland’s capital budget. We continue to work closely with partners to address levels of homelessness and improve the supply of social and affordable housing.

For the current financial year, the City of Edinburgh Council will benefit from £34.2 million for the provision of more social and affordable homes. We do not currently have confirmation of Affordable Housing Supply Programme budget levels beyond 2024-25 but we are working within agreed funding parameters to allow projects to continue to be approved with future year spend implications.

Our intention is to publish a refresh of the Infrastructure Investment Plan pipeline this year which will focus on maximising the impact of our capital investment towards spend that delivers on the outcomes of this government. In the meantime, efforts to boost affordable housing supply by acquiring properties to bring into use for affordable housing and help reduce homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation have been given an £80 million uplift over the next two years. Decisions on the allocation of the additional £40 million for 2024-25 will be made shortly.

The appointment of a new ministerial team has presented an opportunity to simplify portfolio titles across all parts of government. This in no way changes our commitment to the principles of a Wellbeing Economy, as set out in the National Strategy for Economic Transformation.

A growing economy that is fair and green supports delivery of our other priorities to work towards eradicating child poverty, delivering sustainable public services and tackling the climate emergency. These are and will continue to be the key focus for the Scottish Government.