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The movement and management of fire crews at an operational incident is entirely a matter for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

The safety and wellbeing of firefighters is a priority for both the Scottish Government and for the fire service.

All children and young people should receive the support that they need to reach their full potential. Local authorities are under a statutory duty to identify, provide for, and review the additional support needs of their pupils.

Spending on additional support for learning by local authorities has reached a record high of £926m in 2022-23. The Scottish Government has continued to invest £15m per year since 2019-20 to help authorities respond to the individual needs of pupils and provides over £11m of funding each year to directly support pupils with complex additional support needs and services to children and families.

It should be noted that between 2012-13 to 2022-23, the real terms average spend per pupil in both primary and secondary schools has increased from £6,170 and £8,349 respectively in 2012-13 to £7,075 and £8,766, respectively.

The number of pupils identified with additional support for learning needs has increased markedly since 2010 and there continue to be year on year increases. This is partly driven by a change to how ASN statistics were gathered in 2010.

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 education, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the experience of the social work workforce to ensure it is more sustainable in the longer term.

Whilst the social work workforce is primarily employed by local authorities who have a statutory duty to maintain an adequate workforce to meet the needs of their population and to fulfil their statutory duties in respect of social work, the Scottish Government has introduced measures to help address the challenges facing the profession.

This includes working jointly with COSLA and other key stakeholders to address the acute recruitment and retention challenges facing the profession; forming a joint Social Care & Social Work/Services Workforce Taskforce to explore opportunities to deliver improvements for the adult and children's social care and social work workforce; and creating a National Social Work Agency to provide a single national body with oversight of social work education, training and professional development, and the improvement of social work services.

As part of the preparation of the SBA (Single Building Assessment process) Scottish Government has had conversations with the wider sector, including Fire Engineers and Assessors where we have discussed the need for a FRAEW (Fire Risk Appraisal of External Wall).

When assessing an existing building’s EWS (External wall system), it is noted that existing buildings cannot be expected to meet modern Building Regulation standards for risk to human life as these buildings were built during a time when less onerous Building Regulations were in force. The PAS 9980 will be used by assessors to make an informed expert decision of whether or not the EWS is a low, medium or high risk and dictate from this whether or not the current build up is tolerable, and no further remediation is required, or the risk is intolerable and therefore remediation should be undertaken.

The aim of a SBA is not to bring a building into compliance with current Building Regulations, but to ensure that the risk to building occupants is reduced to a tolerable level. The focus of the remediation is to follow the recommendations in the SBA in how to bring the relevant parts of the building to either a low, or tolerable risk level. Where large areas of the façade are being remediated, alterations will be required to comply with current (fire) building regulations including the use of acceptable materials. To note that the current ban applies to any new building warrant applications only.

Mortality data up to 2022, including breakdowns of deaths caused by cancer, has been published to its usual annual timetable by National Records of Scotland at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/vital-events-ref-tables/2022/vital-events-22-ref-tabs-6.xlsx . This includes crude (unadjusted) death rates.

Public Health Scotland will publish further statistics on cancer mortality, including age-adjusted mortality rates and time series comparisons, in late 2024. This work has been delayed whilst the population figures for previous years are rebased by National Records of Scotland.

The Scottish Government and partners have been supporting pilot phases of the Scottish Childminding Partnership recruitment model, led by the Scottish Childminding Association, to recruit and train new professional childminders across rural, island and urban communities.

The first phase operated in 10 rural local authorities, including: Argyll and Bute; Dumfries and Galloway; Highland; Moray; North Ayrshire (Arran and Cumbrae); Orkney; Scottish Borders; Shetland; Stirling and Cne Siar.

The second phase tested the model in urban areas, including: Edinburgh; Glasgow; Dundee and East Renfrewshire. However, a number of rural areas continued to participate, including: Dumfries and Galloway; Highlands (Sutherland, Caithness and Isle of Skye); areas within Cne Siar; Orkney; and Arran in North Ayrshire.

As announced in the 2023 Programme for Government, the Scottish Government is committed to scaling up these innovative pilots to grow the childminding workforce by 1,000. We are currently working with the Scottish Childminding Association to develop a new national programme of recruitment and retention activity which will be offered to all Local Authorities.

Applications which make their way through the application journey on the energyconsent.scot portal are assigned a single case number which is retained from the pre-application period, all the way through to a determination decision.

The dates at which a scoping opinion request submitted under section 12 of the Electricity Works (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2017 is received, and then a response provided, are not data points which are captured by the portal system. It is therefore not possible to calculate the average time taken to provide a response in the years requested.

Unauthorised access to information by the cyber threat actor was contained to information on the NHS Dumfries and Galloway network.

The Scottish Government is aware of this matter and appreciates the distress this will have caused to those affected.

The Scottish Government encourages those with concerns to seek advice from the Law Society of Scotland or the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission. If a client is dissatisfied with the service or conduct of a Scottish solicitor, they have the right to complain. The Scottish Legal Complaints Commission (SLCC) is the gateway for all complaints about solicitors in Scotland.

The Law Society of Scotland have published an information page on their website to assist those affected. McClures Jones Whyte FAQs | Law Society of Scotland (lawscot.org.uk)

The Scottish Government has taken proactive steps to mitigate against such a situation in future. The Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill introduces the authorisation of legal businesses, bringing benefits such as greater consistency in regulating legal firms, enabling the Law Society of Scotland as the regulator to identify and address deficiencies early.

The Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Act made a number of important changes to how trusts are administered and how trustees are appointed or removed, to respond to the practical difficulties that co-trustees may have in removing a trustee who was appointed as a trustee in their professional capacity, and is no longer a member of their profession.

The Scottish Government is committed to unlocking the potential of scientific and technological innovation to transform lives, increase healthy life expectancy and reduce health inequalities across Scotland.

The Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) pathway has been established to provide a national approach to the identification and adoption of research proven scientific and technological innovations. The ANIA pathway is led by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery, hosted by NHS Golden Jubilee. It is a collaborative venture that also draws on the expertise of NHS National Services Scotland, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Public Health Scotland and NHS Education for Scotland.

The ANIA pathway is governed by an Innovation Design Authority (IDA). This brings together senior Scottish Government and NHS leadership to support improved partnership working, provide system leadership and take joint decisions on the progression of innovations through ANIA stage gates.

Following recommendations from the IDA, the Scottish Government has:

• Invested £1.8 million in a national digital dermatology programme to prioritise the most urgent referrals, quickly offer advice for those who do not require a face-to-face appointment, prevent unnecessary anguish and reduce late-stage skin cancer diagnosis.
• Invested £350,000 in a new national team based within NHS Golden Jubilee to accelerate the distribution of Closed Loop Systems for people living with Type 1 Diabetes, increasing effective glycaemic control, and reducing the likelihood of complications, which at their most serious can include blindness, renal failure, and amputations.

There are a range of further innovations currently being evaluated within the ANIA pathway. Scottish Ministers will consider investment in these programmes following any recommendation by the IDA.