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The Scottish Government will carefully consider the Community Trade Union’s report as part of our continued commitment to the vitally important sector. We acted at pace in 2016 to secure the future for the Dalzell and Clydebridge steel works, rescuing more than 100 jobs, and retaining steel plate production in Scotland. To protect the interests of the Scottish workforce, the Scottish Government maintains regular engagement with the plant owners, the UK Government and other partners; and we will shortly respond to the UK Government consultation on the Plan for Steel.

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

The Scottish Budget for 2025-26 outlines wide-ranging investment to deliver progress on our national mission to eradicate child poverty. This includes investment in breakfast clubs, to expand the provision of free school meals to around 25,000 more children and to develop the systems to mitigate the two-child limit.

We are continuing to invest in direct support through social security, including the ‘game-changing’ Scottish Child Payment. Recently published statistics show that the Scottish Child Payment has provided over £1 billion of payments to eligible families since its launch in February 2021 to the end of December 2024, of which £62 million was issued to eligible families in South Lanarkshire. As of the end of December 2024 the families of more than 326,000 under 16’s across Scotland were actively benefiting from Scottish Child Payment, with over 19,600 of these within the South Lanarkshire local authority area.

Through our Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund, we awarded South Lanarkshire Council a total of £79,897 over 2023-24 and 2024-25 to support its ‘Pathways out of Poverty’ project. This project is working with families with a disabled child to test a holistic, person-centred model of support.

We are also supporting the Wise Group to deliver its relational mentoring programme, and in 2025-26 will make nearly £2.2 million available to allow ongoing delivery across six local authority areas, including South Lanarkshire. This investment will allow Wise Group to provide wraparound support to around 2,000 households in these areas.

In 2025-26, the Scottish Government continues to allocate over £3 billion a year to policies which tackle poverty and the cost of living for households.

The Scottish Government will continue to do all we can within our powers and will leave no stone unturned across government as we seek to eradicate child poverty.

Funding

The following tables set out how much the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and the Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) has spent on the delivery of Graduate Apprenticeships (GAs) and Foundation Apprenticeships (FAs) in each of the last 5 complete financial years.

Accountability for, and funding of, Graduate Apprenticeships and Foundation Apprenticeships (delivered through colleges) was passed to the SFC in Academic Year (AY) 2021-22. In the same year SAAS became responsible for funding tuition fees for new GA enrolments.

In this time period, Skills Development Scotland (SDS) also provided funding for FAs and GAs that resulted in enrolments in addition to those below.

Table 1: Split of GA Funding Across SFC and SAAS from 2019-20 to 2023-24

The Scottish Government recognises the significant barriers faced by unpaid carers, many of whom are women, in accessing employment and fair work in the labour market. This is why unpaid carers have been identified as one of our key cohorts for support.

We have made a Programme for Government commitment to provide employability support to meet the needs of all parents or carers on a demand-led basis by ensuring closer working across childcare, education, housing, justice, and health services, so that people can quickly and easily access the support needed to enter and stay in work.

The Scottish Government’s National Carers Strategy (https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-carers-strategy/) published in December 2022, sets out our cross-government approach to carer support and recognition, with an emphasis on the need for collaboration between national and local government, the third sector, wider public and private sector. The Strategy sets out the importance of all employers being flexible and supportive of carers in the workforce and outlines our commitment to fund and promote the Carer Positive employer accreditation scheme. There are now more than half a million employees working in 290 Carer Positive organisations across Scotland.

We are working to ensure holistic wrap-around support is available throughout our support services. No One Left Behind is our approach to delivering an all-age, place-based, person-centred model of employability support in Scotland. Services are voluntary, aiming to support individuals (including paid and unpaid carers) towards the right job at the right time. The No One Left Behind Strategic Plan 2024-27 was published in September 2024, outlining our priorities for devolved employability services moving forward, and reaffirming our commitment to continuous improvement and expanding reach of our services including unpaid carers.

Over 73,000 people received support through No One Left Behind from April 2019 to September 2024.

The next iteration of the National Performance Framework (NPF) and National Outcomes will be published following conclusion of the work I announced in the Chamber, on 8 January 2025. The NPF is being substantially overhauled because we want it to work better for people in Scotland, including carers. We are currently at the planning stage for this work and will update Parliament on progress at the appropriate points.

We are committed to promoting apprenticeship opportunities in island and rural communities to encourage inclusive growth.

As part of this effort we provide a rural uplift for Modern Apprenticeship delivery, offering increased payments to training providers to support the expansion of apprenticeship programmes in these areas.

In addition, funding for travel and subsistence (including accommodation) is available for apprentices who are required to attend structured, formal off-the-job training beyond normal travel limits.

As noted in response to S6W-26881, NatureScot maintains a detailed FAQ section on the Nature Investment Partnership on their website, which has been recently updated https://www.nature.scot/doc/nature-investment-partnership-faqs. The information requested in parliamentary question S6W-35357 is available on this page.

The following information provided relates to the Home Energy Scotland (HES) Grant and Loan Scheme, which provides funding to install heat pumps and other measures to domestic owner occupied households in Scotland.

a) Table 1 outlines the number of heat pump applications i) received and ii) approved (i.e. legal commitments made to applicants) from 2022-23 until 28 February 2025.

Table 1:

Scottish Government remain in discussions with NHS Grampian to finalise brokerage to support a financial deficit in 2024-25. We have asked NHS Grampian for more information on what has driven the financial deficit together with assurance that financial sustainability will improve in future years. We await a response from NHS Grampian but expect the matter to be resolved in early course.

The Scottish Government is working with VisitScotland to establish a series of meetings which will include key representatives from the tourism industry and local government. These discussions will provide an opportunity to improve and refine published guidance including consideration of operational aspects of the levy such as administration, reporting, and forms.