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Scottish Government ministers regularly discuss human rights issues with international partners, including individual cases. We do not keep statistics on how often these issues are raised.

Since the November 2023 publication of the Scottish Government’s position paper, Taking a Feminist Approach to International Relations, officials have taken forward a range of activities as part of our commitment to mainstream a feminist approach across key policy areas, including international development, climate justice, trade, and peace & security.

This includes working to embed gender equality throughout our international development work as well as developing specific gender equality programmes. In seeking to equalise power in our international development activities, we work directly with organisations in our partner countries of Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia and have established a Global South Advisory Panel. On trade, the Scottish Government is committed to addressing the gender export gap in Scotland, confirmed by the findings in the recent Gender Export Gap research report. We will be working with our delivery agencies and stakeholders in implementing the report’s recommendations, providing tailored advice, assistance, and international market access opportunities to help women-led businesses succeed on the global stage.

Through its International Development Fund, the Scottish Government has over the last year, following work with our partner countries, launched new programmes with a heavier focus on investment in health, education, equalities, and renewables, underpinned by and guided by our core Principles. We also launched two new major Climate Justice Fund programmes in 2023.

The Scottish Government separately provides funding to support Human Rights Defenders. The Scottish Government established the Scottish Human Rights Defender Fellowship in 2018 as a temporary relocation programme to support international human rights defenders at risk as a direct result of their work. The Fellowship – and Scotland – has welcomed 19 human rights defenders from 16 different countries, two of whom have been from our partner countries Malawi and Zambia.

Local Government funding allocations are routinely published in Local Government Finance Circulars. The allocations in question are available at:

2013-14 - Circular 2/2013

2014-15 - Circular 2/2014

2015-16 - Circular 2/2015

2016-17 - Circular 1/2016

2017-18 - Circular 1/2017

2018-19 - Circular 4/2018

2019-20 - Circular 2/2019

2020-21 - Circular 4/2020

2021-22 - Circular 5/2021

2022-23 - Circular 1/2022

2023-24 - Circular 3/2023

2024-25 - Circular 2/2024

2025-26 - Circular 1/2025

The Scottish Government does not hold all data in a way that can meet this request. The Scottish Government can provide you with a breakdown of its annual spend on contingent workers by Directorate, but is unable to provide this by Project and/or Contract name as it cannot be consistently categorised in this way.

The table containing the breakdown of expenditure by Directorate on contingent workers was too large to be incorporated into the PQ response. This has therefore been recorded as bib 65692 held in The Scottish Parliament Information Centre. To note, this data has been extracted from a different system to that which retains records on contingent worker numbers and cannot be viewed as inter-related, due to the dependency on different hierarchical structures and definitions of contingent worker. This data does not provide a comparable view of the costs attributable to the contingent workforce listed Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot

The Scottish Government implemented an Oracle Cloud enterprise resource planning system in Autumn 2024, replacing our legacy HR and Finance systems. Though the data capture of contingent workers remains an area requiring some further development, the implementation of a combined HR and Finance system will improve the data we hold on workforce costs.

The Scottish Government has prioritised a reduction in the contingent workforce such as contractors and consultants, as it has reduced its workforce size. This approach has been in partnership with recognised Trade Unions. The number of contingent workers is now 39% lower than in March 2022.

NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) was allocated £6.9m of capital funding for the purchase of the Hassockrigg Eco Park and equipment, to increase the resilience of the system for disposing of NHS clinical waste and to secure its long-term future.

Ongoing running and maintenance costs associated with the site are the responsibility of NSS as site owner, and it is for NSS to allocate appropriate funding for these costs from within the Board’s overall budget. The 2025-26 Scottish Budget provides funding of £428.5 million to NSS. NSS will receive a 3% baseline uplift of £12.5 million – this represents a 0.6% real terms increase compared to 2024-25.

The SPCB is open to discussions with organisations that may provide a practical improvement to the processes we already have in place.  Already, we have embarked on several ways to reduce single use products including disposable cups usage across the Scottish Parliament.  The cup levy has been in place since 2019 which has significantly reduced the use of disposables.  We actively monitor the usage of disposable cups with our service partner and are working to reduce this further through positive consumer behaviour.  We are in the process of installing a customer operated appliance that rinses and dries reusable cups efficiently and hygienically. This will support customers further with using reusables on a return basis assisting us with the goal of disposable reduction. We have also ordered a stock of reuseable cups to be available when personal cups are forgotten or not available.

The use of contractors in SG is largely accounted for by resourcing requirements to strengthen key professional skills such as expanding our digital capabilities. Employing temporary and agency workers provides the flexibility required to meet immediate business and access specialist and other skills quickly.

Having grown the workforce to respond to the Covid-19 epidemic, the Scottish Government reviewed its workforce plans at the beginning of the 2022-23 financial year and the Resource Spending Review. Recruitment controls were introduced in 2022 and the Scottish Government has continued to prioritise reductions in contingent workers as an initial means of reducing the workforce size and cost. This approach has been in partnership with recognised Trade Unions. The number of contingent workers is now 39% lower than in March 2022.

One of the areas in which this was delivered was the Digital Directorate within DG Corporate. A number of roles were identified that would be needed on a long term basis which were currently occupied by contingent workers. An intentional cost saving strategy was implemented to replace some posts being held by contingent workers with directly employed staff. It is estimated that this process has saved Scottish Government £3.2m.

A Contingent Worker is defined as non directly employed workers that are engaged in any capacity for the Scottish Government. Contingent worker statistics published include consultants, contractors, interim managers, inward secondments/ Service Level Agreement, temporary workers, short-term youth initiatives, other contractors and Government UK Fast Stream.

The use of contractors in SG is largely accounted for by resourcing requirements to strengthen key professional skills such as expanding our digital capabilities. Employing temporary and agency workers provides the flexibility required to meet immediate business and access specialist and other skills quickly.

Public bodies and organisations operating in Scotland can be affected by a wide range of law in both devolved and reserved areas, with differing statutory mechanisms for enforcement. The Scottish Ministers may, in some cases, be subject to statutory duties to issue guidance to affected organisations and groups. However, other public bodies will have a statutory roles in regulating enforcement and issuing guidance about areas of law, including those reserved to the UK Parliament.

For payments made by the Scottish Government to public bodies and publicly funded organisations in Scotland, the Scottish Government expects those bodies to comply with the full range of legal obligations imposed on them by all relevant legislation. This includes duties under the Equality Act 2010, where key provisions on matters such as discrimination and the various protected characteristics, including sex, are reserved, or under health and safety workplace regulations, which are also reserved.