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The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring all children and young people receive high quality relationships, sexual health and parenthood (RSHP) education, which is an integral part of the health and wellbeing area of the Scottish curriculum. Curriculum for Excellence is the national approach to learning and teaching providing flexibility for teachers to deliver a curriculum tailored to local needs within an overarching framework.

The RSHP experiences and outcomes specify the need for children and young people to gain knowledge appropriate to their age and stage of education. RSHP education is intended to help children and young people build positive relationships while requiring that key aspects are presented in an objective, balanced and sensitive manner including in respect of the law on sexual behaviour. Teachers therefore have the flexibility to include content on consent and digital harm if they feel it appropriate to a RSHP lesson.

There are many resources available to teachers to help them deliver meaningful RSHP learning and these are summarised on Education Scotland’s website. One of these resources, www.rshp.scot, was includes learning activities on consent and how children and young people can learn to be safe and happy online. In addition, the Scottish Government also published a resource for professionals to help them support young people aged 11 to 18 in their understanding of healthy relationships and consent. The Key Messages for Young People on Healthy Relationships and Consent reiterate age-appropriate messages on the themes of consent, bodily autonomy and mutual respect.

The Scottish Government has also provided support for the development of the Digital Discourse Initiative (DDI) by Time for Inclusive Education and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). The DDI online learning provides teachers and school staff with an improved knowledge and understanding of how modern social media platforms work and their role in facilitating online disinformation and prejudicial content. We have also published a national framework for schools to help tackle sexual harassment and gender based violence. Misogynistic behaviour has been identified as an emerging concern within schools. The publication of this framework demonstrates our commitment to take swift action to respond to current concerns and ensure pupils and staff are properly supported. We are in the process of commissioning an independent review to establish further areas for improvement. We continue to take forward a range of additional actions in schools to address gender based violence and sexual harassment. Our Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Scotland Programme is working to tackle gender stereotyping and attitudes that condone violence against women and girls. We also continue to implement ‘Equally Safe’, Scotland’s strategy to prevent and eradicate all forms of violence against women and girls.

Local authorities receive money through the general revenue grant, and it is the responsibility of each local authority to allocate the total financial resources available, including on support for bus services, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled its statutory obligations. In 2025-26 the Scottish Government provided record funding of over £15.1 billion to local authorities, a real terms increase of 5.5%.

The Scottish Government continues to provide financial support for bus services, including subsidised bus services, with £49.5m allocated in 2025-26 for the Network Support Grant.

The Scottish Government delivered all the powers within the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, which enables each local transport authority to determine the options that are available to them to improve bus provision in their area.

Social Security Scotland does not currently publish statistics on Adult Disability Payment caseload broken down by both age and disability condition.

National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) designates all green data centres of a major scale as part of National Development 12: Digital Fibre Network. This includes AI-focused green data centres meeting the major development criteria.

It will be for the planning authority to interpret and apply NPF4 according to the circumstances of each individual case. To be considered a green data centre, planning authorities may wish to consider criteria such as the extent to which the data centre is powered from renewable energy sources; makes use of energy efficient technologies; seeks to minimise water consumption; and supports the re-use of excess heat.

There is an opportunity for Scotland to become a leader in green data centres given our capacity to generate energy from renewable sources.

In 2023, 70% of electricity generated in Scotland was from renewable sources – a marked increase compared to less than one-third (32%) a decade previously. As of June 2025, there is an estimated capacity of 76.5 GW of renewable energy projects, including storage, in the planning pipeline in Scotland. This means there is ample opportunity to use excess renewable generation for data centres, helping to reduce the impact and taxpayer costs of network constraints, with £390 million paid to Scottish wind farm operators in 2024 alone. As the National Energy System Operator (NESO) recognised in its 2025 Future Energy Scenarios, up to a fifth of Great Britain’s future data centre demand could be based in Scotland.

While we have no immediate plans to introduce planning guidance for energy-intensive developments, strategic planning is being undertaken by the Scottish Government to accommodate any infrastructure demands of AI technologies, such as AI data centres. Together with the UK and Welsh Governments, we have jointly commissioned NESO to produce a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) for Great Britain. The SSEP will spatially optimise a specified volume of flexible data centre demand (1-2GW). This will indicate where opportunities for energy system benefits exist, such as co-location of renewables and data centres, supporting the development of government policy on the spatial location of data centre demand. The Regional Energy Strategic Plan for Scotland will further enable the coordinated development of the energy system across multiple vectors.

National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) designates all green data centres of a major scale as part of National Development 12: Digital Fibre Network. What constitutes a major development is defined within the The Town and Country Planning (Hierarchy of Developments) (Scotland) Regulations 2009.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of timely access to psychological support, including psychological therapies for bereaved parents. One of the main ways this is provided is through Maternity and Neonatal Psychological Intervention (MNPI) services. For most parents who have suffered a pregnancy loss, bereavement and grief support provided by their Health Board or third sector organisations will meet their needs and they will not require specialist mental health services.

The Scottish Government funds the baby loss charity Sands to develop, and support NHS Boards to implement, the National Bereavement Care Pathway (NBCP) for pregnancy and baby loss in Scotland. The NBCP includes bereavement care for those who have experienced miscarriage and the sudden death of an infant. All 14 NHS Boards now officially signed up to the NBCP have appointed a NBCP Lead and are at different stages of implementation.

Our Delivery Framework for Miscarriage Care in Scotland, published on 6 February 2025, details work that will map out existing mental health services available following a pregnancy and baby loss to ensure that women can access appropriate mental health support, should they require it.

In 2025-26 the Scottish Government provided third sector organisations with £262,747 funding to support women and families who experience a pregnancy or baby loss.

A small number of parents experience more complicated grief and may benefit from engagement with specialist mental health services. If a parent is identified as requiring Maternity and Neonatal Psychological Intervention (MNPI) services in Scotland after the loss of their baby, they would typically be referred by their midwife, GP or other healthcare professional.

Since 2019, our continued investment has resulted in a substantial increase in MNPI services across Scotland. All NHS Boards now provide these services either from a dedicated local team or, for very small Board areas, via pathways to MNPI care in larger Boards that host the maternity hospitals where the patient is receiving inpatient care.

At the UK Spending Review the Scottish Government received a Barnett share of the net changes to UK departmental budget allocations, which ultimately fed into our total block grant settlement.

Any new or additional spending allocations in 2025-26 associated with this UK policy will be included in the overall budget calculation for the Scottish Government. However, spending changes related to Barnett funding arising from UK policy decisions are not allocated to any specific programme of work in Scotland.

All budget allocation decisions are taken as part of the Scottish Budget process.

In 2023-24 the Scottish Government permanently provided funding for smoking cessation and prevention services to Health Boards as part of the Outcomes Framework funding, which also covered a wider range of outcomes. In 2025-26 territorial Health Boards received an overall funding uplift of 3%.