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The Scottish Government works closely with its agencies and partners to explore all viable options to avoid closures and retain jobs in the region. However, despite our best efforts to seek alternative outcomes, this is not always possible to achieve.

The people affected by these announcements are always our immediate priority. The Scottish Government provided support to these individuals through our initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE). Through providing skills development and employability support, PACE aims to minimise the time individuals affected by redundancy are out of work.

In Scotland, employability services are delivered through the No One Left Behind approach, which sees Scottish and Local Government work in partnership with public, private, and third sector organisations to deliver support to those who are at risk of long-term unemployment. Employability support is in place in every local authority area, with decisions on the design taken by Local Employability Partnerships. Between April 2019 and June 2024, 1813 people have entered No One Left Behind support in Inverclyde.

The Scottish Government welcomes the news that recently released statistics from SEPA show that in 2023 both the amount of household waste generated, and the carbon impact of Scotland’s household waste, were at their lowest levels since records began in 2011.

The small increase in the household recycling rate of 0.15% to 43.5% in 2023 shows there is work to do to increase recycling and to support our sustainable resource and climate goals. This is why our Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 and draft Circular Economy and Waste Route Map set out numerous measures to increase Scotland's reuse and recycling rates.

Open Government Licences (OGLs) are controlled and administered solely by the Kings Printer for Scotland. The license is freely available to public bodies, and we support public bodies to use OGL where appropriate. Bodies such as the Care Inspectorate, Nature Scot, Food Standards Scotland and the National Records of Scotland are already using OGLs. It should be noted it is a matter for anyone who wants to use material under the OGL to satisfy themselves that the terms of that licence are suitable to cover any intended use.

The duration of access to psychological support for children and young people with cancer is led by clinical need.

In December 2022 Scottish Government committed to making recurring funding available to the existing specialist psychological support services for young people with cancer across Scotland. This commitment was successfully met in 2023-24 and continues to provide more certainty to these specialist roles.

The psychological support considerations regarding specialist workforce for children and young people with cancer is currently being reviewed by the Managed Service Network for Children and Young People with Cancer (MSN CYPC) as part of a wider workforce review. The Scottish Government is in regular contact with the MSN as their review continues.

Data provided by the NHS Research Scotland Cancer Research Network on the number of blood cancer clinical studies that have been supported by the Network in each financial year since 2018-19 are shown in the following table, noting that individual studies can take a number of years to complete. The figures are inclusive of studies open to recruitment and in participant follow up in any given year, paediatric and adult studies, and public, charity, and industry sector funded studies.

Local authorities were asked to consider whether they wished financial support to cancel school meal debt while adhering to guidance produced by COSLA on the issue. Local authorities are expected to use any grant for the purpose of clearing school meal debt and that in accepting the offer of funding, local authorities will agree to adhere to the COSLA Good Practice Principles for School Meal Debt Management in their management of school meal debt going forward. The COSLA Good Practice Principles are available through the following web link: Good-Practice-Principles-for-School-Meal-Debt-Management.pdf (cosla.gov.uk)

Local authorities were asked that any bid included details of the amount of school meal debt accrued as of 31 March 2024, as well as the amount that they were seeking to write off. This could include any debt that the local authority has cleared prior to that point.

The Scottish Government believes that local councils should decide how to achieve the right balance in the use of housing to meet local needs and to support thriving communities. We delivered secondary legislation to enable councils to apply a 100% Council Tax premium to second homes from 1 April 2024.

To enable increases beyond the 100% premium would require primary legislation. We are continuing to explore and consider this change, in partnership with COSLA, as part of the Joint Working Group on Sources of Local Government Funding and Council Tax Reform.

The Scottish Government is currently analysing bids to the School Meal Debt Fund and is following up with local authorities on the information provided. Therefore, no funding has been issued at this time. The funding will be issued as soon as all due diligence processes are complete.

Post-School Education and Skills Reform is a 10-year transformation programme developed in light of James Withers’ Independent Review of the Skills Delivery Landscape, and which will help us to achieve the ambitions set out in the Post-school education, research and skills - purpose and principles - gov.scot (www.gov.scot),

This is one of the first and one of the largest programmes of public service reform to get underway, with five main strands of work currently progressing at different stages of development and preparation towards implementation.

For instance, we are taking forward legislation to deliver simplification of the funding body landscape as part of the 2024-25 legislative programme and have also commenced work on skills planning across government and with key partners.

Change of this magnitude requires careful collaboration with a wide range of delivery partners and will not happen overnight.

At my latest appearance at the Education, Children and Young People Committee on 4 September 2024 I reiterated my commitment to continue to update that Committee on progress with post-school reform at the appropriate times. Our programme to reform post-school education and skills is progressing well, and I expect to be providing a further update early in 2025.

The Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Working Group’s remit was to inform the development of a Student Mental Health Action Plan as set out in our 21-22 Programme for Government. The Action Plan was published in September 2024.

We are considering how best to support delivery of the Action Plan, including oversight and support.

We will shortly be engaging with the higher and further education sectors and health and other public and third sector organisations to update them on next steps and request their support and participation going forward.