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The Scottish Government have committed £6,000 to Scottish Refugee Council for Lived Experience on New Scots Core Group. We do not intend to publish a further breakdown of cost.

All funding for Community Engagement was distributed in the form of small grants for refugee assisting communities and groups, to enable their engagement in the development of the New Scots Strategy held between Q4 2023-2024. As published in the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy 2024: Engagement Analysis Report, 72 groups were funded and 81 events were held.

The Scottish Government provided £1.9 million (1,957,987.36) in associated costs to the New Scots refugee integration strategy intermediary/strategic funding through Equality, Connected Communities and Mainstreaming and Inclusion Budgets between July 2019 and March 2024. We do not currently plan to publish a further breakdown in costs.

The New Scots Partnership staffing costs came to £87,333 between January to March 2024. The following table provides a further breakdown on how this funding was spent.

The Scottish Government committed £16,000 to the New Scots welcome video project December 2021 to March 2022. We do not currently plan to publish a further breakdown of cost.

The Scottish Government understands the impact of retail crime on businesses and the concerns of retailers including the Scottish Grocers’ Federation.

Sufficient legislation already exists in order to prosecute those who are guilty of shoplifting.

Our Budget will make an additional £3 million available in 2025-26 to tackle retail crime. This is in addition to an investment next year of a record £1.62 billion for policing.

This funding will support the formation of a Retail Crime Taskforce which will provide a visible and measurable impact on retail crime and will deliver on the following objectives:

• Prevent: Stop people from becoming perpetrators of Retail crime by developing and implementing intervention and diversion mechanisms with partners.
• Pursue: Target retail crime by bringing perpetrators to justice, with a focus on repeat offenders and organised criminals.
• Protect: Strengthen the collective protections against Retail Crime by engaging directly with retailers on crime prevention and training.
• Prepare: Mitigate against the impact of Retail Crime by exploring innovate opportunities for direct reporting systems.

The Scottish Government continue to urge all retailers and their staff to keep reporting crimes. While it might feel like some minor incidents aren’t worth it, or individual retailers may feel like the police won’t be able to do anything, each crime report aids our collective understanding of who is doing this and why. Local officers may also well have intelligence they can use to catch the perpetrators.

The Scottish Government understands the impact of retail crime on businesses. Our Budget will make an additional £3 million available in 2025-26 to tackle retail crime. This is in addition to an investment next year of a record
£1.62 billion for policing.

This funding will support the formation of a Retail Crime Taskforce which will provide a visible and measurable impact on retail crime and will deliver on the following objectives:

• Prevent: Stop people from becoming perpetrators of Retail crime by developing and implementing intervention and diversion mechanisms with partners.
• Pursue: Target retail crime by bringing perpetrators to justice, with a focus on repeat offenders and organised criminals.
• Protect: Strengthen the collective protections against Retail Crime by engaging directly with retailers on crime prevention and training.
• Prepare: Mitigate against the impact of Retail Crime by exploring innovate opportunities for direct reporting systems.

New technologies will also be utilised to explore ways to make it easier for retail staff to directly report crimes to police, as well as capitalising on Police Scotland’s existing Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC), to secure early criminal justice outcomes.

The Scottish Government continue to urge all retailers and their staff to keep reporting crimes. While it might feel like some minor incidents aren’t worth it, or individual retailers may feel like the police won’t be able to do anything, each crime report aids our collective understanding of who is doing this and why. Local officers may also well have intelligence they can use to catch the perpetrators.

There are no plans to update the current legislation regarding the protection of retail workers. Section 1 of the Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Act 2021 already makes it a specific offence to assault, threaten or abuse a retail worker. Such behaviour can also be prosecuted using other, more general, offences including, for example, common law assault and the offence of threatening or abusive behaviour.

It is essential that those who perpetrate violence are held to account for their actions. Legislation and prosecution form part of our overall response to tackling violence, and sits alongside our preventative approach as set out in the Violence Prevention Framework for Scotland.

24 education settings have received certification for their work using the LGBT Inclusive Education National Implementation and Evaluation Toolkit.

The Toolkit is an optional additional support resource, on top of the national professional learning course. The focus of schools and education authorities is on supporting completion of the professional learning course as set out in the National Approach to LGBT Inclusive Education. The Toolkit is intended to support staff in settings where they feel they would benefit from a more structured pathway, additional to the professional learning. Certification is also optional and not necessary to use the Toolkit, staff can take what they need from the resource to support their own professional practice as and when required. Therefore, there will be schools using the Toolkit without seeking certification, for which there are no records held.

Our Teaching Bursary Scheme provides £20,000 bursaries for career changers wishing to undertake a one year Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in the hardest to fill teaching subjects. These subjects include: Physics, Maths, Technical Education, Computing Science, Chemistry and Home Economics.

Statistics on the employment of probationer teachers by subject and employment type are published in the post-probationer teacher employment dashboard, available through the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/publications/post-probationer-teacher-employment-dashboard/