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Currently there are 110 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Civil Servants in the NCS Programme working on wider social care reform. Within the 110 (FTE) we have four staff working on the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill.

The Scottish Government has not had any recent discussions of this specific human resources issue with Scottish Water, as this is an operational matter for them to determine. However, I have asked Scottish Water to provide a response and I understand that there have been no changes to its policies – private companies operating on Mull are being asked to adhere to well-established, existing protocols.

The Scottish Government understand the importance of sport and physical activity and the positive impact that it has on the physical, mental, and social health of people in Scotland. We value the role that hockey plays in encouraging participation in sport, particularly for women and girls.

sportscotland, our national agency for sport, has provided Scottish Hockey with a direct investment of £815,175 in the current financial year to help support a wide range of activity that encourages and supports people to participate in hockey, including club, coaching, and performance sport.

In 2024-2025 sportscotland also provided additional investment of £296,506 into the sport of hockey through their athlete personal award programme, Direct Club Investment (DCI), Sports Facility Fund (SFF), support services, Awards for All investment, and expert resource.

In addition, sportscotland works in partnership with all 32 local authorities to invest in and support the Active Schools network. Active Schools aims to provide more and higher quality opportunities to take part in sport and physical activity before school, during lunchtime and after school, and to develop effective pathways between schools and sports clubs in the local community. In the 2022-23 academic year, hockey was the tenth most popular Active Schools activity (sixth for girls), with over 114,000 visits to around 5,500 Active Schools hockey sessions

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) holds operational responsibility for the delivery of apprenticeships across Scotland, including the assessment of sectoral demand. Within the roofing sector, there are currently three distinct apprenticeship pathways, all of which are embedded within the Construction Modern Apprenticeship (MA) frameworks.

The Scottish Government continues to prioritise funding for Modern Apprenticeships in construction, recognising the sector as one of the largest contributors to MA starts and in-training figures for 2024-25.

Modern Apprenticeship allocations are informed by consultation with employers and industry stakeholders. This includes demand statements from Sector Skills Organisations and representative bodies, input from Industry Leadership Groups, and insights drawn from Skills Investment Plans and Regional Skills Assessments.

In 2025-26, we are investing £300 million in heat in buildings programmes to increase energy efficiency and provide financial support. At the same time, we are prioritising skills development for Scotland’s current and future workforce—working closely with the sector to ensure training provision aligns locally with business needs and future demands, supporting our transition to net zero.

Through our Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray, we have allocated £75 million since 2022 to create jobs, support innovation and secure the highly skilled workforce of the future.

The number of public service vehicles, passenger journeys, and distance travelled by local bus services are published each year within Transport Scotland's Scottish Transport Statistics publication. The most recent version of the bus tables can be found at https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/ea2pp3vv/sts-chapter-02-bus-and-coach-travel-reference-tables-accessible.xls.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on the number of bus services. This information is held by the Traffic Commissioner for Scotland, with the most recent figures included in the Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain Annual Report 2023-24 available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/traffic-commissioners-annual-report-2023-to-2024.

To prevent any misuse of artificial intelligence by public bodies we encourage best practice and advice through the Scottish Government’s Public Sector AI Task Force which meets on a monthly basis to support the safe adoption of AI, finding synergies and reducing the risk of duplication. The Task Force currently has over 200 individual members from all areas of the Scottish public sector. The meetings’ agendas and minutes are openly available online.

Scottish Ministers also mandated the use of the Scottish AI Register for Scottish Government and core agencies in April 2024. The Register enables safe and transparent development and use of AI in the public sector, and offer the public a simple and effective platform to have a say in how AI is used to make decisions and deliver public services. Consisting of a public facing website, and underlying resources and governance tools for public sector developers, the Register helps ensure we manage AI risk effectively and consistently, whilst also sharing best practice and reducing duplication.

To protect creativity, we have responded to the UK Government’s “Copyright and AI” consultation and asked them to reconsider their proposed plans which would significantly impact creative talent. Officials are closely monitoring the current back-and-forth in the UK Parliament over the UK Data Bill, stemming from the amendments introduced by Baroness Kidron to protect creative talent, and the UK Government’s refusal to accept them. We understand that the UK Government now plan to delay addressing the AI copyright issue until the passing of a specific AI Bill, which they had announced last year for 2025, but is now not expected until 2026. We will continue to engage with UK Government on the future UK AI regulations to ensure Scottish creative talent is protected.

The Scottish AI Alliance, the delivery body of our AI Strategy are also working to understand and support creatives with the potential and the impact of AI in the creative sector, with an event on this topic taking place in Glasgow on the 13th of June.

The Scottish Government will seek to review and revise the current guidance in the coming months. However, this review will need to be cognisant of the likely requirements of the alignment position with the recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, which proposes further measures in relation to the operation of wastewater networks.

Economic inactivity due to long-term sickness and disability is a problem across the UK and each nation has seen increases since the pandemic.

In January to December 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Annual Population Survey (APS), an estimated 269,000 people in Scotland aged 16-64 gave their reason for being inactive as long-term sick or disabled, 33.7% of Scotland’s economically inactive people aged 16-64.

ONS state that although the APS estimates are robust at headline regional level, there are concerns with the quality of the estimates for smaller groups of the population such as local authority level estimates.

Due to the increased volatility in the APS local authority estimates in recent years, National Records of Scotland Census 2022 results have been provided in Table 1.

Table 1: Number of 16-64 year olds who are economically inactive due to being long-term sick or disabled by Local Authority, Scotland, 2022

The Scottish Government is supporting plans for a more sustainable, productive, innovative and diverse construction industry.

An open and transparent criminal justice system is important to allow for justice to be delivered and seen to be delivered so communities can have confidence in how offending behaviour is being dealt with. However, there can be areas of the operation of the criminal justice system where it is considered appropriate to allow certain individuals to remain anonymous to protect their dignity and privacy while still ensuring justice is able to be delivered.

Provisions to introduce new statutory anonymity protections for sexual offence victims as well as victims of certain other offences are contained in the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill which is currently before Parliament. If approved, the legislation will introduce these new protections to help protect the dignity of victims of these offences.

We held a public consultation on media reporting on child homicide victims between 9 July 2024 and 1 October 2024. We asked for views on a range of possible approaches to reducing the trauma that media reporting can have on bereaved families, and on the wider impacts those approaches might have. This included inviting views on legislating to provide automatic or ‘on application’ anonymity for child victims. The analysis of consultation responses was published on 24 February 2025.

The consultation made clear that there would be serious complexities with legislating to anonymise the victims of child homicide in a way that avoided unintended consequences (like criminalising bereaved family members); that struck a robust balance between privacy rights and freedom of expression; and that could be enforced in practice. However, many of the experiences highlighted in consultation responses vividly illustrate the need for more sensitive reporting on these cases. We are therefore working with stakeholders to explore a range of non-legislative measures including support materials for bereaved families, media guidance and training. Further detail is available on the Scottish Government website.

The Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill – which underwent Parliamentary consideration from 2022 to 2024 – contained provisions, on introduction, extending the anonymity for child suspects, accused, victims or witnesses both prior to and subsequent to any criminal court proceedings. This followed public consultation, with the analysis published on 8 September 2022. The provisions were further amended at Stage 2 to extend that, in relation to child victims and witnesses, anonymity could continue after a person turns 18 just as was the case for child suspects/accused. These provisions were amended out at Stage 3. Scottish Ministers gave a full account of the reasoning to the Parliamentary chamber. This is contained in the Official Report of 24 April 2024.