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The use of contractors in SG is largely accounted for by resourcing requirements to strengthen key professional skills such as expanding our digital capabilities. Employing temporary and agency workers provides the flexibility required to meet immediate business and access specialist and other skills quickly.

Having grown the workforce to respond to the Covid-19 epidemic, the Scottish Government reviewed its workforce plans at the beginning of the 2022-23 financial year and the Resource Spending Review. Recruitment controls were introduced in 2022 and the Scottish Government has continued to prioritise reductions in contingent workers as an initial means of reducing the workforce size and cost. This approach has been in partnership with recognised Trade Unions. The number of contingent workers is now 39% lower than in March 2022.

One of the areas in which this was delivered was the Digital Directorate within DG Corporate. A number of roles were identified that would be needed on a long term basis which were currently occupied by contingent workers. An intentional cost saving strategy was implemented to replace some posts being held by contingent workers with directly employed staff. It is estimated that this process has saved Scottish Government £3.2m.

The deployment of medical agency staff, including locum psychiatrists, is a matter for individual NHS Scotland Health Boards. Health Boards should always be seeking to secure best value whenever they enter into arrangements regarding use of locums in order to maximise the impact that investment has on the quality and availability of patient care.

To address specific challenges in the recruitment and retention of permanent psychiatrist posts in Scotland, we have established a Working Group which is actively considering locum usage. The specific challenges facing psychiatry have been considered by the Medical Locums Task and Finish Group. The Psychiatry Working Group will make a series of recommendations and are expected to report to Ministers in Spring 2025.

Scottish Ministers have a number of mechanisms open to them to drive improvements in the delivery of services across NHS Scotland, with powers of direction under the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978 being just one of those.

Social Security Scotland carefully considers what information on counter fraud can be placed into the public domain to ensure it does not undermine the ability of Social Security Scotland to prevent and detect crime and protect the public purse. It does not disclose details of the size of the Counter Fraud Branch.

Counter Fraud Branch consists of officials who work closely together to prevent, detect, identify and investigate allegations of fraud against Social Security Scotland. The staff undertake fraud risk assessment, intelligence management and investigation activities and are located throughout Scotland.

The majority of the staff resources within the Counter Fraud Branch are fully engaged in delivering the Counter Fraud activities highlighted above. A small proportion work to understand, monitor and where appropriate investigate potential internal threats – which includes, but is not limited to, insider fraud. This team also provides specialist investigation support to other business areas within Social Security Scotland.

It is important that we work closely with leaders in the Psychiatry profession to address the challenges they are currently facing and the Psychiatry Recruitment and Retention Working Group are currently working towards producing a series of recommendations which will be presented to Ministers in Spring 2025.

Whilst the working group has been ongoing, the Scottish Government has worked in partnership with the profession on a range of measures to support recruitment and retention in psychiatry. This has included funding and supporting recruitment stands at the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) international congress events (2023 and 2024); working with NHS Education for Scotland (NES) colleagues on improvements to psychiatry webpages to increase engagement and on the promotion of vacancies; ensuring that the specific challenges facing psychiatry were considered by the Medical Locums Task and Finish Group and; supporting the Centre for Workforce Supply (CWS) in their direct work with NHS Health Boards to address challenges in filling vacancies and on the promotion of careers in Scotland.

We also continue to work with NES and the RCPsych to encourage medical students to consider a long-term career as a psychiatrist. This work includes the Choose Psychiatry campaign, undergraduate taster sessions and improved psychiatric placements at Foundation level. Recruitment into Core Psychiatry has improved drastically in recent years, with the exception of one unfilled post in 2020, 100% of entry level posts have now been filled for the fourth consecutive year (up from 63% in 2018).

The Scottish Government recognise the crucial role councils and their employees play in communities across Scotland. That’s why the Scottish Government has made available over £14 billion to local authorities this year, a real terms increase of 4.3 per cent, with a record £15 billion for 2025-26 set out in the Scottish Budget, a further real terms increase of 4.7 per cent.

In the context of that record settlement, the Scottish Government are committed to working in partnership with local government to ensure that children across Scotland continue to receive the high-quality education services that they deserve but it is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on non-teaching staff, on the basis of local needs and priorities.

The Scottish Government have published and commissioned several research papers to inform the development of Scottish Income Tax policy, all of which have been shared with Ministers upon conclusion of the work.

HMRC has published three pieces of research reports commissioned by the Scottish Government:

1.Estimating Scottish taxpayer behaviour in response to Scottish Income Tax changes introduced in 2018 to 2019: Estimating Scottish taxpayer behaviour in response to Scottish Income Tax changes introduced in 2018 to 2019 - GOV.UK

2.Intra-UK migration of individuals between Scotland & rUK: movements in numbers and income: Intra-UK migration of individuals: movements in numbers and income - GOV.UK

3.Labour market participation and intra-UK cross-border migration of Scottish taxpayers: Labour market participation and intra-UK migration of taxpayers - GOV.UK

In December 2021, The Scottish Government also published its own evaluation of the 2018-19 reforms: Scottish Income Tax: 2018-19 policy evaluation - gov.scot/

The Tax Strategy reaffirms our commitment to evaluate the impacts of our tax policies. This includes enhancing the evidence base on the links between tax and economic competitiveness, and fully evaluating the impacts of the 2023-24 and 2024-25 changes to the Scottish Income Tax system.

Official statistics for Adult Disability Payment are routinely published by Social Security Scotland, including information on the number of recipients. Social Security Scotland does not publish statistics on clients leaving the Adult Disability Payment caseload.

Social Security Scotland will continue to review the value of the statistics produced and will take account of users’ needs when developing future publications, in line with Code of Practice for Statistics.

The latest Adult Disability Payment official statistics publication can be found at: https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/publications/statistics. The next release of Adult Disability Payment statistics, covering the period to the end of January 2025, is due to be published on 18 March 2025.

It is the responsibility of all Social Security Scotland colleagues to identify and prevent fraudulent applications being awarded.

Social Security Scotland has a zero tolerance to fraud and use a combination of system controls, processes and colleague awareness to prevent it. Mandatory fraud prevention and identification training is provided to all colleagues when they join the organisation.

In support of this Social Security Scotland has a dedicated Counter Fraud branch to further support the organisation in mitigating fraud risk.

Social Security Scotland carefully considers the information on counter fraud activity that can be placed into the public domain to ensure that any information released does not undermine the ability of Social Security Scotland to prevent and detect crime and protect the public purse.

Published national statistics on CAMHS waiting times captures children who meet the CAMHS criteria. Children who require neurodevelopmental support are not reported in these statistics unless they have co-morbid mental health issues. We do not currently collect data on length of waits for neurodevelopmental services centrally.

However, the Scottish Government are working closely with NHS Health Boards and Local Authorities to improve services and support for children and young people and their families and will continue to ensure long waits are appropriately addressed, as well as continue to provide tailored support to NHS Health Boards.

Our National Neurodevelopmental Specification Children and young people - national neurodevelopmental specification: principles and standards of care - gov.scot places an expectation on NHS and Children’s Services to work together to provide the support required by children and families, which may include assessment, diagnosis or other intervention. The Specification makes clear that support should be put in place to meet the child or young person’s requirements when they need it and should not be dependent on a formal diagnosis.

This year we have provided health boards with £123 million to support improvements across a range of mental health services, including neurodevelopmental services. We have also provided local authorities with over £65 million since 2020 to fund community-based mental health supports and services for children and young people aged 5-24 (26 if care-experienced) and their families, including supports for neurodiverse children and young people.

The Scottish Government does not hold FTE data on contractors. Information on the headcount of contractor staff whose information is captured in the Human Resources Management Information System statistics are available on the quarterly published statistics on Scottish Government workforce. (Scottish Government workforce statistics - gov.scot).