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As part of work being undertaken to develop the new Palliative Care Strategy, we are gathering and analysing evidence to tell us what actions should be taken to achieve the aim of ensuring that everyone in Scotland receives well-coordinated, timely and high-quality palliative care, care around death, and bereavement support based on their needs and preferences.

We have set up a number of working groups, bringing together stakeholders with expertise in priority areas for action, and these groups are developing recommended actions for inclusion in the strategy for discussion with the Strategy Steering Group (SSG) at its next meeting.

At the September meeting of the SSG there was discussion on the progress of the working groups and work being done to better understand people’s lived experiences of palliative care, as well as the proposed structure and timeline for the Strategy. A minute of the meeting will be available on the SG website, at https://www.gov.scot/groups/palliative-and-end-of-life-care-strategy-steering-group/ , once this has been agreed by the group.

The 2022 teacher census total was 54,193 teachers, which indicates an increase of 1,946 from the baseline, as measured by the 2019 census.

To inform decisions on future education workforce planning I have commissioned an external modelling and research exercise which will allow all of the issues around workforce planning to be considered holistically and will help ensure we will have an education workforce in place that enables us to progress our commitments to reducing teachers’ class contact time, raising attainment overall, closing the poverty related attainment gap and improving additional support for learning, while delivering maximum value for money during an era where budgets continue to be under pressure as a result of UK Government austerity measures.

Agreed budget savings were announced as part of the Deputy First Minister’s Statement to the Scottish Parliament on 21 November 2023. Further details of savings were included in the ‘Update on 2023-24 In-Year Budget Changes - Letter of 21 November 2023,’ sent to the Finance and Public Administration Committee convenor Kenneth Gibson MSP. A copy of this letter can be found here

The published figure for higher education resource funding in the 2023-24 budget was £809.2 million and this will be used as a comparator figure for the 2024-25 Budget announcement.

Universities in Scotland are autonomous bodies, and the Scottish Government does not hold data on the level and nature of financial investment from China.

The latest available information on convictions is for the financial year 2021-22 and is provided in the following table.

People prosecuted for TV Licence evasion, by gender, where main charge, 2017-18 to 2021-22*.

The Scottish Government is committed to expanding electronic monitoring use across a broader range of licences and community orders, including exploring use of remote alcohol monitoring as provided for by the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019.

A new national contract for electronic monitoring was procured in 2020 that would allow for use of new technologies. In May 2022, provisions in the 2019 Act were commenced to allow electronic monitoring as part of bail and to allow electronic monitoring with Community Payback Orders at first disposal.

As work continues to embed these recent changes, we are now engaging with justice partners to explore the potential uses of new technologies, including remote substance monitoring technologies.

Police Scotland has concluded that a stand-alone portal is neither the optimum nor best value route to create the capability for digital media to be submitted by members of the public.

Police Scotland will utilise the Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC) Programme, currently in pilot in Dundee, which will make it easy for a member of the public to submit digital evidence as part of an investigation following a report to the police. DESC will enable development of further capabilities where scope to further improve the service to the public is identified.

DESC is planned to be rolled out on a phased approach across Scotland between 2024 - 2026.

The Scottish Government has engaged with justice partners on potential uses of new technologies, including both GPS and remote substance monitoring technologies. This engagement has included discussions with Justice Social Work, the judiciary, Community Justice Scotland, Violence Reduction Unit and private sector providers.

The campaign aims to achieve the following objectives among the target audience by the end of the campaign period:

• To deliver 40% prompted campaign recognition.
• To achieve 30% of campaign recognisers claiming to have taken any action as a result of seeing the campaign (including liking/sharing campaign content, talking about the campaign with friend, communicate with a child/teenager about health impact of vaping).
• To deliver an increase in the number of parents / carers who have spoken to their child about the risks of vaping in the last two months.