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Third Sector organisations play a key role in civil society and we welcome any insight and challenge they bring to public policy. The Scottish Government appreciates discussion around public policy and view it as an essential part of the democratic process.

To ensure funding is awarded on a fair and equitable basis by officials, The Scottish Public Finance Manual (SPFM) is issued by the Scottish Ministers to provide guidance to the Scottish Government and other relevant bodies on the proper awarding, handling and reporting of public funds. It sets out the relevant statutory, parliamentary and administrative requirements, emphasises the need for economy, efficiency and effectiveness, and promotes good practice and high standards of propriety.

Additionally, internal governance procedures are in place to ensure funding is awarded without prejudice or a single point of influence. These include an internal audit system, a governance and accountability team and accountable officer processes that ensure funding is awarded on the basis of value for money as well as outcomes and objectives that best serve the people of Scotland.

The Scottish Government has no plans to introduce temporary additional capacity on the west coast ferry network in light of the decommissioning of the MV Hebridean Isles. The planned removal of the vessel from service was factored in to the winter deployment plans.

Statistics on additional support needs teachers, split by local authority, back to 2010 are available on the Scottish Government website in Table 6.7 of the teacher census supplementary statistics: https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementary-statistics/

Table 1 shows the total number of bed days for patients with a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who had a non-elective admission and were discharged between 2021-22 and 2023-24, broken down by health board of treatment.

Table 1: Number of non-elective4 bed days for COPD3 continuous inpatient stays2

Source: SMR01, Public Health Scotland, extract: November 2024.

1. Scotland totals include all activity submitted to PHS. This includes some non-NHS provider activity. Due to this the Scotland total may be greater than the sum of all health board activity.
2. Continuous Inpatient Stay Methodology:

A patient's entire continuous stay in a hospital setting is referred to as a Continuous Inpatient / Day Case Stay ('CIS'). A CIS is an unbroken period of time that a patient spends as an admitted patient in a hospital setting. A CIS combines all the episodes that occur during a continuous stay in hospital, including transfers between clinicians, specialties and hospitals.

3. The data provided is based on COPD recorded as the main discharge diagnosis (ICD10 codes J40 – J44) for continuous inpatient stays.

                                             1.          Discharge Diagnosis - From last/discharging episode of the CIS

4. Non – elective admission type includes admission type 20-22, 30-36 and 38-39. More information on admission types can be found here: Admission Type
   

5. More information on SMR01 data terms can be found here: SMR01 - General/Acute Inpatient and Day Case
   

In general, the Scottish Government provides funding to all Health and Social Care Partnerships to commission and fund Residential Rehabilitation (RR) placements on the advice of their Alcohol and Drug Partnership. To support local commissioning, the Scottish Government also fund Scotland Excel for the National Commissioning Framework which aims to standardise commissioning for RR placements.

The Scottish Government also directly fund the following residential rehabilitation providers through the Residential Rehabilitation Rapid Capacity Programme (RRRCP) – 4 of these are new projects and 4 are expansions to existing services, which will provide 140 more bed by 2025-26.

Since 2016, we have invested funding of over £4.8 million in work to tackle sectarianism as we believe that the direct involvement of communities is central to delivering positive outcomes which make our communities safer. This funding supports the delivery of education projects in schools, colleges, prisons, communities and workplaces, providing learning opportunities for thousands of children and adults across Scotland.

Details of Tackling Sectarianism project funding and local authorities worked in from 2016 to 2024 can be found in the following tables:

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

1.In the period 2016-17 – 2023-24 there was 1 death in custody which has been classified as a Homicide.

2.In the period 2016-17 - 2023-24 there were 2 deaths in custody which have been classified as Culpable Homicide.

3.There have been no attempted homicides in the period 2015-16 - 2023-24. It should be noted however, that SPS are unlikely to record an instance of attempted homicide until the individual has been found guilty in a court of law, until such time it will be recorded as an assault.

4.The following table provides a breakdown of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults for the period 2016-17 – 2023-24:

The Scottish Government publish official statistics on housebuilding on a quarterly basis. The statistics requested can be found in the following link.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/housing-statistics-for-scotland-new-house-building/

No One Left Behind, our shared approach with Local Government to delivering devolved employability services, has a key role to play in meeting our commitment to halving the Disability Employment Gap by 2038. Whilst we have seen positive progress to date in the number of people with learning disabilities accessing support, we are committed to going further. That is why our Programme for Government sets out that we will have Specialist Employability Support in place across all 32 local authority areas by Summer of 2025.

Additionally, as outlined in the refreshed Fair Work Action Plan, we are working with partners to develop a central resource hub for employers. Feedback from surveys of a range of employers and engagement with key stakeholders is being used to inform the design of the resource in an accessible way to help ensure that organisations of all sizes and sectors across Scotland can access advice and support to better implement Fair Work.