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Eradicating child poverty in Scotland is a national mission and the top priority for this Government.

The Scottish Government recognises the pressure on household budgets which is why the 2025-26 draft budget continues to allocate over £3 billion a year to policies which tackle both poverty and the cost of living, ensuring that families are supported with the costs of raising a child.

This includes providing a range of support such as 1,140 hours of high-quality funded early learning and childcare to all three and four year olds and eligible two year olds. If families paid for this offer themselves it would cost them more than £5,500 per eligible child per year.

We also offer free school meals to all 277,632 pupils in P1 to 5 and in special schools, saving families taking those meals around £400 per year per child, as well as providing free bus travel for 2.3 million people, including all children and young people under 22, disabled people and everyone age 60 and over – which Child Poverty Action Group estimate saves families on the median wage £2,836 by the time a child turns 18.

Further, the draft Scottish Budget for 2025-26 preserves the social contract at the heart of the Scottish Government’s approach. This includes continuing free prescriptions, compared to £9.90 per item in England from 1 May 2024, and ensuring that no Scottish student pays tuition fees which means that, unlike elsewhere in the UK, a Scottish student studying in Scotland will not incur additional debt of up to £28,605.

In total, subject to Parliamentary approval, the Scottish Budget for 2025-26 will deliver almost £64 billion of funding, focusing resource across the four priorities set out in the Programme for Government: eradicating child poverty; growing the economy; tackling the climate emergency; and ensuring high quality and sustainable public services.

Eligibility for our low-income benefits for families with children, including Scottish Child Payment, is not based on income thresholds. To qualify for these payments individuals must generally be in receipt of certain reserved benefits.

Carer Support Payment is the only devolved benefit with an earnings threshold. The Scottish Government’s 2025-26 draft budget increases the earnings threshold to £196.

There are no current plans to increase the income thresholds for the Education Maintenance Allowance. This is on the basis that the Scottish Government has faced its most challenging budgetary settlement since devolution began – a settlement which has not been inflation-proofed, and which has subsequently required difficult decisions to be made, due to the pressures on our public services. Any future changes to the EMA and corresponding budget would need to be considered in this context.

In 2016, an agreement was reached between Scottish Ministers and COSLA on a new strategic funding plan for flood protection schemes. This agreement ensures that from 2016 to 2026, a minimum of £42 million per annum is allocated for flooding capital grants within the local government settlement. Information is provided below on the schemes funded under that agreement.

To date, £32.2m funding committed through the Memorandum of Understanding has been spent. A breakdown of this figure, along with explanatory detail, is provided below:

The Scottish Government published estimates of the impact of the increase in employer national insurance contributions on the public sector in Scotland on 20 November. While the information is incomplete, these estimates indicate the combined impact on the public sector and commissioned services could be well over £700 million.

If the UK Government’s reported allocation is all that is provided, that will mean the Chancellor will be short-changing services the public depend on by over £400 million.

We will continue to work with His Majesty’s Treasury, Local Government and portfolios to support an evidence-based approach and will update Parliament when new information is available.

The National Entitlement Card allows the holder to access rail concession schemes, where such schemes exist. It is a feature of these Local Authority sponsored schemes that tickets may only be purchased in face-to-face transactions – either at ticket offices or on board a train. The Scottish Government specifies that all ScotRail trains should have a member of staff on board and therefore these concessionary fares are always available for eligible passengers.

The following tables present the estimated value of Small Business Bonus Scheme (SBBS) relief awarded to self-catering units as at 1 June 2024, broken down in Table 1 by assessor, and in Table 2 by local authority, for properties (unit owners cannot be reliably identified from the information held) receiving 100% SBBS, 25% SBBS, other proportions of SBBS and no SBBS relief. These tables include all self-catering properties in receipt of SBBS relief.

It is not possible to provide how much non-domestic rates income has been forgone for the financial year 2023-2024. This is due to data issues within the 2023 Billing System snapshot. Equivalent figures for 2022-2023 can be found in the response to question S6W-12629. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Government cannot reliably estimate the cumulative rateable value of each ratepayer’s non-domestic properties and can therefore not state the number of self-catering units that do not quality for SBBS due to having a combined rateable value in excess of £35,000. From 1 April 2023, SBBS relief includes a taper from 100% for properties with a rateable value up to and including £12,000, to 25% where the rateable value is £15,000, and to 0% where the rateable value is £20,000 or higher.  

Eligibility for SBBS is set out in legislation and it is for local authorities to administer it in accordance with that legislation.

Figures are rounded to the nearest thousand. Figures relating to fewer than five units, or less than £500 value, are suppressed for data protection purposes, and are marked as "[low]". Zero values are actual zero. Where no SBBS relief is awarded, the NDR income forfeited is zero. The data sources for both tables are the Scottish Assessors’ Valuation Roll as at 1 June 2024, and local authority reliefs information as at 1 June 2024. Final outturn data for 2024-2025 may vary.

Table 1: Estimated value of SBBS relief awarded to self-catering properties as at 1 June 2024, by assessor and SBBS percentage (£)

A) The Scottish Government does not record the information you have requested in an easily accessible format. The costs for each case are recorded in the individual case files or across multiple sources of information. As set out in the answer to question S6W-31821 on 9 December 2024 the costs to provide this information could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost. The requester asked for information spanning 18 years.

The number of established training places in each specialty is determined by anticipated future demand and workforce need for consultants and General Practitioners rather than foundation programme numbers.

While resident doctors are eligible to apply to specialty training after completing foundation training, other career routes are available and many choose deferred application or alternative routes including periods in locally employed doctor roles or periods of travel alongside options to develop their skills and experience through SAS grade roles. Data shows a trend of increasing proportions of Foundation Year 2 doctors delaying NHS specialty training in the whole of the UK and in Scotland. However, of all the cohorts from 2017 to 2021, only 8% of Foundation Year 2 doctors did not receive any offer of a training post after applying in the same year they completed foundation training.

The overall cost of training Foundation Year 2 doctors from August 2023 to July 2024 was £56,590,177.