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The Scottish Government provides almost £430 million in funding for concessionary travel and bus services to support the bus sector across Scotland. This includes funding of almost £50 million to help bus operators support access to affordable transport locally, and £6 million to continue our support for the Community Bus Fund which aims to help local authorities improve bus services in their area, through exploration of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 powers.

The Scottish Government has no plan for a revaluation of domestic properties in 2024.

Domestic Services staff are an essential part of the multi-disciplinary Healthcare team in improving patient, staff and public safety and should work closely with infection control teams within hospital settings as set out in the NHSScotland national cleaning services specification (SHFN 01-02) which is available here: https://www.nss.nhs.scot/publications/nhsscotland-national-cleaning-services-specification-shfn-01-02/

Scottish Government recognises that careers in science may offer excellent opportunities for Scottish graduates.

Through the national careers service led by Skills Development Scotland, we seek to ensure that everyone in Scotland can access high quality careers advice that draws on the latest labour market data.

The Scottish Funding Council also works with universities and colleges to promote partnership working with industry, including with scientific companies. It does this through the University Innovation Fund (UIF), the Innovation Centre programme, the provision of core funding for organisations such as Interface and Converge and other strategic investments.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of industry engagement and outreach activities in attracting and inspiring the workforce of the future.

The National Strategy for Economic Transformation sets bold actions to deliver fairer, greener prosperity for all Scotland’s people and places, and to make our economy more sustainable and resilient in the longer term.

Developing the Young Workforce (DYW), and third sector partners including Career Ready, offer excellent opportunities for employers to engage with young people in schools to encourage them to learn about and experience opportunities in their sectors.

The Scottish Government is pleased to announce that today we will publish the draft Bioenergy Policy Statement for consultation.

The draft Bioenergy Policy Statement is seeking views on the priorities and principles that we have set out for the use of bioenergy, as well as views on the potential to scale up domestic production of biomass via planting of perennial energy crops.

The consultative draft of the Policy Statement will be available to view on the Scottish Government website at http://www.gov.scot/ISBN/9781835215074 and the consultation questions will be available on Citizen Space at https://consult.gov.scot/energy-and-climate-change-directorate/draft-bioenergy-policy-statement-consultation . The consultation will be live for 12 weeks from today until 12 June 2024.

As set out in our Hydrogen Action Plan, hydrogen in the transport sector could act as a complementary energy source alongside electrification, providing an option to parts of the transport sector such as heavy duty vehicles, when full electrification is challenging. We support the rollout of infrastructure needed for hydrogen vehicles to operate in Scotland: Aberdeen City has two hydrogen refuelling stations.

Transport Scotland has contracted Heriot-Watt University to work with road haulage fleets and stakeholders to assess where initial enroute charging and refuelling infrastructure for zero emission HGVs will be needed.

The Zero Emission Truck Taskforce, convened by Transport Scotland, includes a working group focused on hydrogen refuelling infrastructure; this included hydrogen truck manufacturers and fleets interested in hydrogen trucks.

As set out in our Hydrogen Action Plan, hydrogen in the transport sector could act as a complementary energy source alongside electrification, providing an option to parts of the transport sector such as heavy duty vehicles, when full electrification is challenging. We support the rollout of infrastructure needed for hydrogen vehicles to operate in Scotland: Aberdeen City has two hydrogen refuelling stations.

Transport Scotland has contracted Heriot-Watt University to work with road haulage fleets and stakeholders to assess where initial enroute charging and refuelling infrastructure for zero emission HGVs will be needed.

The Zero Emission Truck Taskforce, convened by Transport Scotland, includes a working group focused on hydrogen refuelling infrastructure. The Taskforce included hydrogen truck manufacturers and fleets interested in hydrogen trucks.

The recruitment and promotion of Senior Civil Servants must include a robust selection process. Standards for hiring Senior Civil Servants (SCS) are set by UK Cabinet Office. These include the use of additional forms of assessment including psychological assessment, which have supplemented interviews for SCS for over 10 years. Academic research suggests that interviews alone are a poor predictor of future job performance, and supplementing interviews with other forms of assessments, including psychological, strengthens hiring decisions.

A Prior Information Notice was published on 13 February 2024 to inform the market of our intention to issue an Invitation to Tender for a new assessment contract for Senior Civil Service recruitment and promotion. The Tender is yet to be published and a new contract will be awarded, after all bids are assessed for quality of service and value for money, later in 2024. In the last 12 months, the current provider of psychometric assessments to the Scottish Government assessed 125 candidates for 30 SCS recruitment and promotion campaigns, at a cost of £165,401. This is in line with equivalent Cabinet Office contracts per SCS Campaign.

The early learning and childcare (ELC) census Early learning and childcare statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) is the Scottish Government’s current annual data collection on funded ELC.

The census collects data on the number of registrations for funded ELC by age. It does not collect data on the number of hours each child accesses.

Number of two year old registrations for funded ELC at the time of each census: