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Scotland’s National Innovation Strategy will be published on Friday 9 June, setting out our 10 year vision to make Scotland one of the most innovative small nations in the world.

The Strategy has been developed by the Scottish Government in close collaboration with industry, academia and the wider innovation ecosystem.

Council tax is a local tax, set and collected by each local authority, with every council financially and administratively accountable to their electorate. It is important that local authorities retain the tools to enforce the payment of council tax by those who have the means to pay but choose not to do so, whilst the Council Tax Reduction Scheme ensures nobody has to meet a council tax liability they cannot be expected to afford.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that the views of the private, voluntary and childminding sector are heard and reflected in national policy. For example, the Scottish Government consulted on different funding models before the Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) expansion to 1140 hours.

I hosted a meeting with sector representatives on Tuesday 18 April to hear about challenges and opportunities for the sector, and I will be undertaking a programme of engagement over the next few months.

Senior Scottish Government officials also engage regularly with the sector, including through the Childcare Sector Working Group and the National Childcare Providers Forum.

The Scottish Government and COSLA have engaged with providers as part of the work on the joint review of the process for setting Sustainable Rates in 2022-23. I will consider the findings of this review carefully when it reports this summer.

The National Islands Plan provides a framework for action in order to meaningfully improve outcomes for island communities. The Plan sets out 13 Strategic Objectives and over 100 commitments, which must be delivered over the five year lifetime of the Plan. Strategic Objective 11 sets out a range of commitments to support arts, culture and language. 

Highlands and Islands Enterprise

Requests for Highlands and Islands Enterprise support are considered on a case-by-case basis. The Highlands and Islands Enterprise Island area teams review any requests around music festivals and consider what support may be possible or appropriate, such as advice, signposting or financial. Highlands and Islands Enterprise Creative Industries Team is also available to provide additional advice and signposting to potential support sources, and introductions to other regional events and businesses who may be relevant to an applicant. 

As well as the support on offer through area offices, XpoNorth Digital is a mechanism for Highlands and Islands Enterprise to provide specialist advice to Creative enterprises and continues to offer support and advice around areas like new business models, remote participation and digital opening up new additional revenue streams.

In the main, Highlands and Islands Enterprise support is not directly attributable to festivals but is more broadly aimed at building resilience and year round viability for organisations that will include festivals, exhibitions or events into a portfolio of activations.

Examples of where Highlands and Islands Enterprise has contributed support towards festivals and events with significant music elements are listed in the following table. 

Creative Scotland

Creative Scotland funding supports festivals in all island local authority areas, as well as islands within the Argyll & Bute and Highland local authority areas. Other island festivals supported by Creative Scotland may include programme strands of music, but are not included in this response.

Creative Scotland has provided £441,456  to organisations delivering music festivals in island communities through their Open Fund and Regular Funding Network, including the Regular Funded Organisation (RFO) of the St Magnus Festival, as listed in the table below. These set out the award made to the most recent iteration of the festival (either in 2022 or 2023). These exclude details of some scheduled 2023 festivals as they are currently under assessment.

In addition, Creative Scotland provided £387,351 to organisations through the Recovery Fund for Cultural Organisations (RFCO) and Culture Organisations and Venue Recovery (COVR) as listed in the table below. The RFCO fund (March 2022) is to enable cultural organisations, working primarily for public benefit, to rebuild and create opportunities to increase their financial resilience after the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVR fund was to support organisations that are vital to the cultural life of Scotland and require funding to help prevent insolvency and/or significant job losses due to the impact of COVID-19. There were two rounds of this fund, COVR1 in September 2021 and COVR2 in June 2021, the latter covering the period 1 April 2021 – 30 September 2021. Organisations that were awarded funding in the first round were able to apply in round 2.

In addition, Creative Scotland supports the following organisations based in island locations through Regular Funding (- NB St Magnus International Festival is included in the table).

Fèisean nan Gàidheal supports 47 tuition-based Fèisean that offer tuition in traditional Gaelic arts to young people across Scotland – this includes island based Fèis, as well as on the mainland. Fèisean nan Gàidheal also deliver the Blas Festival in partnership with The Highland Council. Shetland Arts and An Lanntair deliver annual programmes which include music festivals and festivals which have strong music elements e.g. Shetland Folk Frenzy and Hebridean Dark Skies Festival, respectively. Regularly Funded Organisations may also support events held by other independent organisations. 

EventScotland

EventScotland’s existing funding programmes offer opportunities for all event organisers, including music festivals, across Scotland to apply for funding on the basis that it meets the programme criteria. Events are assessed on their merits, and EventScotland will look at ways the event will create a positive impact for the host region and Scotland as a whole. Events are assessed in terms of their viability and event management experience as well as the five impact areas; Economic – Tourism and Business; Brand, Identity and Reputation; Media and Profile; Social and Cultural and Environmental Sustainability. 

In 2022, EventScotland supported 7 events (either music or with significant music elements) located in Island communities from its existing National and International programmes. These included Shetland Folk Festival, Orkney Food Festival, St Magnus International Festival, Tiree Music Festival, HebCelt, BWA Tiree Wave Classic and The Islay Festival.

In 2023, EventScotland is supporting Tall Ships in Lerwick as part of a portfolio of sporting and cultural events taking place across Scotland in 2023. The event has a music strand as part of a varied programme.

In addition to Tall Ships, EventScotland is supporting the following island music events in 2023: HebCelt, Tiree Music Festival, and the 40th Orkney Folk Festival.

EventScotland/ VisitScotland also supports The List Magazine in the creation of the consumer-facing ‘Guide to Scotland’s Festivals’ which has a music genre included.

Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022

The most recent Themed Year, Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022, engaged on a wide range of issues including culture, tourism, heritage, equality, literacy, creative industries and events.

21 events and festivals (many of which included music or had significant music elements) were supported through the £600k Year of Stories Open Events Fund. Supported events on Scotland’s islands included SEALL’s An Tinne with events across the Isle of Skye, Map of Stories events in Orkney and North Uist, Songs from the Last Page’s touring event on Skye and Seanachas – a series of events presented to celebrate the Year by An Lanntair in Stornoway.

The Scottish Government has supported 180 community-centred projects with £732k of partnership funding delivered through the 2022 Community Stories Fund, delivered in partnership with VisitScotland and Museums Galleries Scotland with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Supported events (either music or with significant music elements) included ‘Tìr Ìseal nan Òran (Tiree: Low Land of Song)’ which took place on Tiree, ‘Cliabh An T-Shenachais - The Story Creel’ which was delivered on Mull and Iona, ‘Sgeulaichean Siarach’ and ‘Ri tac an teine’ which both took place on Lewis, and ‘Object Stories’ and ‘Four Corners’ which both took place on Uist, Events took place across Orkney, including ‘Orkney, Scotland and Norway: stories in music and verse’.

Dandelion

During 2022 Unboxed was a major UK-wide programme celebrating creativity and innovation, featuring ten large-scale commissioned projects designed to reach millions on-line and in person, bring people together and showcase creativity across the Four Nations.

The Scottish Government stands with the international community in deep concern over the spiralling violence in Sudan.

We welcome the initial £5 million in life-saving aid announced by the UK Government but more must be done.

The Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, Europe and External Affairs has written to the Foreign Secretary to raise a number of issues in relation to the situation in Sudan. This included a call for everything possible to be done to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to vulnerable people in need. The content of this letter is available here: Protecting those fleeing violence in Sudan - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

As I highlighted in a recent parliamentary debate and at the NASUWT conference last month, I am determined that teachers and school staff are supported to deal with challenging behaviours in our schools.

Any incidents of violence or abuse towards anyone are completely unacceptable and the safety of our children, young people and staff at school is of paramount importance.

We have produced guidance for local authorities and schools to promote positive relationships and manage behaviour, including de-escalation of violent behaviour. We are also investing £2 million of funding to support violence prevention activities within schools and communities.

We are currently gathering evidence that will help us better understand the extent of behavioural issues at a national level through our Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research, which started in February.

We will use this research and engagement with stakeholders, including the Scottish Advisory Group for Relationships and Behaviour in Schools, to inform the development of further future policy, guidance and support for schools and school staff.

And as I recently announced, I will also convene a summit bringing together partners and stakeholders to discuss relationships and behaviour in schools and focussing on practical support at classroom, school and local level.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-18183 on‎ 7 June 2023. 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 current benchmark for measuring the pupil teacher ratio (PTR) nationally is 13.7. Sanctions would only be applied if the national average were to rise above this. Since the average has been maintained or lower since the PTR agreement with local authorities was introduced in 2016, no sanctions have been applied.

The Scottish Government provide annual funding to Energy Saving Trust (EST) who are an independent organisation working to address the climate emergency. EST then deliver the EV infrastructure fund on behalf of Scottish Ministers.

EST publish stats on their website which cover the number of chargepoints installed in Local Authority areas across Scotland and the total amount of funding paid per financial year, the link can be found here - Domestic chargepoint funding - Energy Saving Trust .

The specific information you have requested can be found in the following tables:

Domestic Chargepoints funded in Island locations based on postcode data:

The stark warning from the World Meteorological Organisation that global temperatures will temporarily breach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming during the next five years means that we will experience increased intensity and frequency of heatwaves, flooding, wildfires, supply chain disruption and storm events here in Scotland. This underlines why it is more important than ever that we take lasting action to secure a net zero and climate resilient future in a way that is fair and just for everyone.

We are making progress on reducing our domestic emissions through delivery of our updated Climate Change Plan. The latest data show our emissions are down by over 50% since the 1990 baseline, over halfway to net zero. The hardest part of the journey is ahead of us, as we need to halve our emissions again by 2030, and we can only achieve this through collaboration. The Scottish Government is currently in the process of developing our next draft Climate Change Plan on emissions reduction, alongside three sectoral Just Transition Plans, on Transport, Buildings and Construction, and Land Use and Agriculture. We will also be taking account of consultation responses to revise the Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan to deliver a just transition to net zero in the energy sector.

Alongside this, we are continuing to deliver over 170 policies and proposals in the current Scottish Climate Change Adaptation Programme, the Scottish Government is also now developing the next programme. Public consultation is anticipated for the start of 2024 with the aim of publishing a final statutory programme in Autumn 2024. While progress is being made, we acknowledge that more needs to be done.

Scotland cannot act with credibility here at home if we are blind to the fact that the impacts of climate change and a transition to net zero are not felt equally – that those who have done the least to contribute to the climate crisis are impacted first and worse by it. Developed countries like Scotland have a moral responsibility to support developing countries to help secure a global transition in a way that is fair and just. Through the Climate Justice Fund, Scottish Government will meet this responsibility through continuing to lead international advocacy for climate justice and action on loss and damage.