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As of 3 September 2025, the Scottish Government no longer has a policy prohibiting the use of public funds to support the manufacture of munitions.

‘Unallocated’ and ‘Functionless’ are not terms which are applied to the categorisation of roles within the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government continually monitors its operations to ensure its resources are deployed as effectively and efficiently as possible. This is achieved through prioritisation, effective vacancy management and adapting to changing needs.

The total number of children and young people that have accessed school counselling services in the last three years can be found in the following table:

In line with the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Flexible Working Regulations 2014 employees have a statutory right to make a flexible working request and for that to be considered by their employer. This includes requests to work a compressed hours working pattern.

The Scottish Government’s Flexible Working policy allows staff to request informal or formal compressed hours where this form of flexible working is suitable for the post and the needs of the Directorate. Such arrangements are based on fulfilling the Scottish Government’s contracted full time working hours of 35 hours per week in whatever working pattern is agreed (e.g. four days per week, nine day fortnight etc).

Compressed hours requests are made and considered at an individual employee level and are not applied as a singular working pattern at a directorate or organisational level where the standard full time working week continues to be five days. In considering individual requests for a compressed hours working pattern from an employee, managers are required to ensure that adequate cover remains in place within their team across the full working week. Where that would not be the case, such requests may be rejected.

Regarding the four-day working week, a pilot was undertaken by two public bodies (Accountant in Bankruptcy and South of Scotland Enterprise) as part of the 2023-24 Programme for Government where staff piloted working a 32 hour week. This pilot will end on 3 November.

The SG and its agencies will not be moving to a 32 hour week however the findings from the pilot will be shared with the Scottish Government and wider public sector to support ongoing public service reform efforts.

We are using every lever at our disposal to create well paid, skilled jobs here in Scotland. Our Programme for Government 2025-26 sets out what we are doing to deliver certainty and stability and make it easier to do business. This includes no further divergence from the UK on Income Tax for the remainder of this Parliament. The latest data shows more taxpayers have been coming to Scotland than leaving since devolution of Scottish Income Tax. Other taxes that may impact private sector job creation, such as Corporation Tax and Employer’s National Insurance Contributions, remain fully reserved to the UK Government.

Scottish Income Tax is forecast to raise a record £20.5 billion in 2025-26, £763 million more than they forecast at the Scottish Budget last year. We continue to use the additional revenue raised to support our investment in public services.

Latest figures show that Scotland continues to attract taxpayers from the rest of the UK with net migration of taxpayers positive across all tax bands and almost all age groups in 2021-22 Intra-UK migration of individuals: movements in numbers and income - GOV.UK.

The Scottish Government recognise the invaluable role of the social care workforce. Whilst not an employer, we continue to work closely with COSLA and key partners to progress joint commitments in the National Workforce Strategy and recently published Service Renewal Framework, which both support efforts to recruit and retain social care staff.

For the 2025-26 financial year, the Scottish Government will be investing £125 million to enable adult social care workers in the third and private sectors to be paid at least the Real Living Wage. This takes the estimated total investment to deliver this policy to £950 million.

The workstreams of the Joint Social Services Taskforce have achieved real change to improve the workforce experience, through supporting career opportunities and staff development, these include:

• creation of a portable national induction framework;
• development of a social care career options tool;
• publication of an earn and learn blueprint;
• agreement of the introduction and trial a new Care Technologist role; and
• publication of our Funding Landscape resource.

Additionally, we continue to provide funding for the NES Social Care Centre for Workforce Supply (CWSS), who support employers ethically and sustainably recruit international works, who play a vital role in our care sector workforce. The CWSS are working with the Home Office to engage with displaced workers in England and promote opportunities to move to social care roles in Scotland.

Collectively these actions make it easier for employers to recruit and retain staff.

Organic farming statistics for the UK are published annually by Defra. The following table shows the area of fully organic land farmed in Scotland since 2007:

The scoring process for applications is based on criteria that do not require information on whether the applications are creating new, expanding or reinvigorating existing growing sites. Since 2021 we have awarded over £491,000 to Green Action Trust, with 55 community organisations and projects across Scotland receiving a share of this funding.

The Scottish Government’s expenditure on international letter postage for each year from 2021 is as follows.