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The Scottish Government is continuing to take action to reduce inappropriate out-of-area placements and delayed discharges experienced by people with learning disabilities and complex care needs through our Coming Home programme.

New Dynamic Support Registers (DSR) were introduced in May 2023 to help with local planning, building on our £1 million investment into Health and Social Care Partnerships through the Community Living Change Fund. It was encouraging to see an 18% reduction in numbers of people reported as being on the DSRs in the most recent quarter, but more needs to be done.

Our ongoing work combines a national focus with strong local leadership. A Peer Support Network has been established and has met a number of times. The Scottish Government and CoSLA co-chaired a Coming Home stocktake event on 12 May 2025, which was attended by system leaders from across health and social care. We are working with CoSLA, including via the co-chaired Collaborative Response and Assurance Group (CRAG), to collectively agree actions from this event and progress the Coming Home vision.

We have also consulted on how the proposed Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodivergence Bill can strengthen our work on the Coming Home programme, in particular the recommendation to establish a National Support Panel and whether there are opportunities to strengthen Dynamic Support Registers in the future.

The Scottish Government is committed to working across Scottish society, and the Scottish Parliament, to guard against the threat of polarising forces and ensure we empower people who feel distant from politics or on the margins of society.

The recent Gathering was an important milestone in this work – bringing together more than 50 leaders to assess the robustness of Scotland’s democratic system and examine the root causes that might undermine shared values. It secured a commitment, across civic, faith, and political leaders, to foundational principles which will guide our collective response and to working in a shared endeavour to give life to these principles. But this was only ever a starting point.

As set out in Programme for Government 2025-26, Scottish Government will now work with partners to develop specific, targeted actions in response to these issues, including:

• Developing counter interventions to the threats to our democratic system.
• Creating positive relationships and engage people across society on the issues.
• Working with partners to engage their own networks to strengthen democratic.
• Using the Scottish Government’s convening power to advance the dialogue around, and progress the solutions to, the issues identified.

Further detail on the outcomes of this work will be provided in due course.

Costs for The Gathering were met from within relevant portfolio budgets which include budget cover for a range of day-to-day spend, including events and engagements.

The judgements and issues in the Scottish Government’s Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan are informed and influenced by ongoing developments in the UK Government’s energy policy and recent court decisions. We are taking sufficient time to analyse and reflect on those developments and their impact on Scotland.

Scotland’s valued and highly skilled offshore oil and gas workforce must be at the heart of a just transition, therefore the Scottish Government is not awaiting a final policy position from the UK Government to take action. We have been supporting workers with the powers available to us, and will continue to do so. We are working with industry partners on an Energy Skills Passport, and with UK Government to develop a Regional Skills Pilot scheme for Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire. Through our Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray we have invested £9.7 million on skills interventions, including the Skills Passport, a Digital Innovation Lab, and an Energy Skills Transition Hub which will open later this year.

The recruitment and deployment of police officers is a matter for the Chief Constable.

Police Scotland’s three-year Business Plan 2024-2027 sets out the Chief Constable’s vision of a thriving workforce which goes beyond an overall officer headcount and that of a police workforce which includes police staff.

The Chief Constable aims to make maximum impact with a workforce that has the right skills and capacity to keep people safe. Through the Chief Constable’s workforce modernisation plan, Police Scotland are developing an operating model that will create capacity to deal with new and increasing threats by moving more officers to frontline roles, to strengthen community confidence.

The deployment of officers and staff is a matter for the Chief Constable. It is vital that the Chief Constable has the flexibility to develop her workforce to respond to new and emerging operational demands.

Investigation of reports to Police Scotland are quite rightly operational matters for the Chief Constable. Police Scotland has confirmed that every crime report is assessed for threat, harm, risk, vulnerability and for proportionate lines of investigation and evidence, as soon as it is reported.

The Scottish Government has had a range of discussions with a number of stakeholders regarding implementing the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act 2024, including on alternative models.

The Scottish Government is clear in its support for a just transition for Scotland’s valued oil and gas sector, which recognises the maturity of the North Sea basin and is in line with our climate change commitments and energy security.

No concerns were raised at any point.

The recruitment and deployment of police officers is a matter for the Chief Constable. The Scottish Government has increased police funding year-on-year since 2016-17, investing more than £14.6 billion since the creation of Police Scotland in 2013, with £1.64 billion being invested this year. Scottish Government funding in 2024-25 enabled Police Scotland to undertake the highest level of recruitment since its inception and Scotland continues to have more police officers per capita than England and Wales.

The Chief Constable has made it clear that she intends to bring the frontline of policing to its strongest possible position and that frontline strength goes beyond an overall officer headcount to focus on the whole policing workforce. Police Scotland’s three-year Business Plan 2024-2027 sets out an ambitious programme of workforce modernisation, reducing back-office duplication and creating capacity to deal with new and emerging threats. The current Police Scotland workforce figures indicate that the total policing workforce stands at 22,482 (FTE).