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The Scottish Government has committed to the development of a just transition plan for Mossmorran following completion of the just transition plan for Grangemouth in 2025. As with the Grangemouth just transition plan, this work will be co-designed with key stakeholders including industry, the workforce and the community. The Scottish Government is actively engaging with relevant stakeholders as part of the scoping phase of this programme of work.

Our focus remains on mitigating any impact, to the best of our ability, that Petroineos’ decision to close the Grangemouth Refinery will have on the locality and wider economy. Petroineos’ consultation with their workforce is ongoing and, following its conclusion, we will be able to establish in more detail any potential impact that the closure of the Grangemouth Refinery will have.

The Scottish and UK Governments have announced a package of measures to support Grangemouth’s industrial future. This includes a skills intervention, jointly funded by Scottish Government and UK Government, to support those Petroineos workers affected by the recent closure announcement. This intervention will support workers at both the Grangemouth Refinery and Finnart Terminal, and will be provided by Forth Valley College.

Looking towards the long term future of the Refinery site, the Scottish and UK Government's are supporting the Project Willow cross site study which is examining the enablers and blockers to deploying low carbon technologies at Grangemouth. Such technologies will take time to be brought forward, but they offer a route to the creation of new, highly skilled jobs at Grangemouth and our focus is on accelerating the deployment of these projects and associated jobs.

Lastly, the Deputy First Minister and Secretary of State for Scotland have also signed an enhanced Falkirk and Grangemouth Growth Deal that will support wider economic development for those who live in the locality.

Since 2011 the Scottish Government has provided interest free loans worth over £223 million to individuals and businesses across Scotland to support the transition to zero emission/ultra-low emission vehicles.

This financial year we are providing £15 million of loan funding to further accelerate the shift to zero emission transport. To support a just transition to net zero, funding has now been prioritised to focus solely on lower income households, as well as households in rural and Island locations, in addition to the taxi sector.

Recipients of the loan as well as individuals who reside in rural and Island locations can also access the domestic charge point fund which will provide up to £400 of funding to support the installation of a charge point for an electric vehicle.

Both of these funds are delivered by Energy Saving Trust on behalf of Scottish Ministers, additional information on the schemes supporting the transition to Net Zero and funded by the Scottish Government can be found here - Grants and loans to help you travel greener - Energy Saving Trust.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of rural bus services supported by local authorities. Bus services in Scotland were deregulated by the then Conservative UK Government under the Transport Act of 1985 and are mostly provided by private operators. Under the Transport Act 1985, local authorities have a duty to identify where there is a social need for particular bus services and can subsidise these at their discretion. Funding is provided to local authorities in their annual settlement to support services they consider socially necessary and for all community transport services, including rural transport networks. In 2022-23, local authorities in Scotland spent £53 million on supported services nationwide.

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
   

We recognise that reduced levels of trust is a challenge facing governments around the world. Evidence shows that a key driver of trust is people feeling they have a say. One way we are working to improve levels of trust is through our Open Government Action Plan: providing meaningful opportunities for people to be involved in decisions that affect them and sharing information openly. This includes a fiscal transparency portal to help the public track government spend, and an AI register to show the development and use of AI in the Scottish public sector. Our commitments cover fiscal openness and transparency, health and social care, climate change, data and digital, and participation. These are all areas in which civil society and members of the public have told us the ongoing promotion of transparency, participation, inclusivity and accountability is important to them.

We are paying close attention to the impact trust has on democracy through the Democracy Matters engagement process on the future of community decision making. A key pillar of this was asking how more people can participate in local decision making. The process findings were published in September and we will now work with civil society and the wider public sector to deliver on the ambitions set out by our communities.

We continue to explore how best to bring together cross-sector ME/CFS stakeholders, to ensure effective collaboration and engagement from all parties is considered in driving forward developments and recommendations regarding ME/CFS in Scotland.

Scottish Ministers continue to assess the full implications of the Chancellor’s autumn Budget statement and political parties are encouraged to engage with the Scottish Government on the Scottish budget ahead of 4 December 2024.

Funding for schools is provided through the local authority block grant and local authorities have a statutory duty to identify, provide for, and review the ASN support provided for pupils in their local community.

The Scottish Government is making £145.5M available to local authorities to protect teacher numbers. In addition, we remain determined to improve the educational experiences of children and young people with additional support needs with spending on additional support for learning by authorities reaching a record high of £926m in 2022-23.

We published an updated action plan and progress report on 5th November 2024, highlighting progress made to address recommendations from Angela Morgan’s Additional Support for Learning (ASL) Review (2020) and we are committed to delivering the ASL Action Plan.

Statutory responsibility for the delivery of school education, including any school trips, rests with local authorities and they can utilise a range of funding sources to remove or minimise costs to lower-income families.

The Scottish Government is investing up to £1 billion in the Scottish Attainment Challenge this parliamentary term to tackle the poverty related attainment gap, including £520 million of Pupil Equity Funding which goes directly to schools.

Headteachers are empowered to use this funding to take school-level approaches to supporting children and young people from lower income families. Some choose to contribute to or cover costs such as residential trips, theatre trips and outdoor learning experiences in order make access to such learning opportunities as equitable as possible.

A new national working group is also considering how to further promote inclusive and impactful outdoor learning in all its forms, including but not exclusive to residential outdoor education.

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/