- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 24 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Gillian Martin on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what the uptake of the Energy Skills Passport has been among offshore workers since the pilot scheme was launched on 22 January 2025.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-40615 on 7 October 2025. 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
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 25 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Gillian Martin on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what subjects were discussed at the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy's meeting with the Chief Financial Officer of SSEN Transmission on 17 March 2025, including whether any live or prospective electricity transmission consent applications were referenced, and which projects these were.
Answer
I was invited to attend the event at the Had Fab factory to celebrate the awarding of a non-government contract by SSEN to partner companies to manufacture pylons. This represented significant investment in Scotland’s manufacturing and supply chain.
There was no agenda item to discuss live or prospective electricity transmission consent applications.
The Ministerial Code clearly states that “the Planning Minister or any other Minister involved in the planning decision, must do nothing which might be seen as prejudicial to that process, particularly in advance of the decision being taken. Action that might be viewed as being prejudicial includes expressing an opinion publicly on a particular case which is before, or may subsequently be referred to, the Minister(s) for decision”.
It also states that a Minister cannot comment on decisions once they have been issued, other than in terms of what has appeared in the decision letter.
Any meetings that Ministers have with network companies are part of ongoing engagement with industry and follow the same principle.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 24 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Gillian Martin on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what contingency plans are in place should the Energy Skills Passport pilot scheme not achieve its expected (a) uptake and (b) outcomes, and what anonymised, regular datasets on this it plans to publish to support scrutiny of progress towards meeting these.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-40638 on 7 October 2025. 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
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 24 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Gillian Martin on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what steps it has taken to achieve employer recognition and use of the Energy Skills Passport pilot scheme among offshore operators, wind developers and tier-one contractors.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-40625 on 7 October 2025. 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
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 24 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Gillian Martin on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether any approved change requests have altered the scope, cost or timeline for the Energy Skills Passport pilot scheme, and what the rationale has been for each change.
Answer
There were no approved change requests to the Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray award that altered the scope, cost or timeline of the Energy Skills Passport pilot scheme.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 24 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Gillian Martin on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many Energy Skills Passport registrations there have been in each month since the pilot scheme was launched on 22 January 2025, also broken down by (a) local authority area and (b) how many passport users have had at least one login to the system each month.
Answer
The Energy Skills Passport is an industry led project, and the Scottish Government does not hold detailed information on operational matters. For such queries, we recommend directly contacting the lead industry bodies - Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) and RenewableUK (RUK).
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Ivan McKee on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how much (a) it and (b) its agencies has spent on promotion through social media influencers in each year since 2021.
Answer
(a) Details of Scottish Government spend on promotion through social media influencers in each year since 2021 to date are as follows.
Year | Spend (£) |
2021 | 63,746.20 |
2022 | 30,930.00 |
2023 | 19,900.00 |
2024 | 13,640.00 |
2025 | 52,800.00 |
These services are procured by the Scottish Government marketing team via the Scottish Government Marketing Services Framework.
All marketing agencies Scottish Government work with, including those which provide influencer services, must successfully tender through the Scottish Government's Marketing Services Framework. This comprehensive process evaluates their capability, experience and value for money before they can be approved as suppliers. The framework ensures Scottish Government only works with established agencies that meet Scottish Government’s procurement standards and legal requirements.
Scottish Government’s approved framework agencies manage influencer relationships on our behalf. They conduct thorough due diligence checks on potential influencers, including comprehensive reviews of their social media history to identify any content that could constitute hate crimes or bring the Scottish Government into disrepute. This vetting process follows the same rigorous standards used across UK Government communications, as outlined in the GCS guidelines for influencer marketing.
This process ensures anyone who is used as an influencer within a marketing campaign is appropriate to that campaign’s strategy, audience, message and objectives.
b) Scottish Government does not have access to wider agency spend on influencers and is therefore unable to confirm how much its agencies have spent on promotion through social media influencers in each year since 2021.
- Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
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Date lodged: Friday, 26 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to address the reported shortage of pupil support assistants in schools, in light of reported concerns from parents and unions that this is leaving a large number of children unable to attend school full-time.
Answer
We continue to work with our partners to ensure that all children and young people get the support that they need to reach their full potential.
Pupil support staff play a vital role in the education of our children and young people. Scottish Ministers have invested £15m per year since 2019-20, helping local authorities to respond to the individual needs of children and young people and to maintain near-record levels of pupil support staff in Scotland. In addition, the Scottish Government are investing an additional £29 million to support the recruitment and retention of the ASN workforce, in a context of record spend of over £1 billion by local authorities on ASN in 2023-24.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 26 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Ben Macpherson on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reported concerns by unions regarding a national crisis in college funding.
Answer
The college sector currently faces a number of high-level pressures and the Scottish Government acknowledges the extremely challenging operating environment in which they continue to deliver services.
In recognition of colleges’ vital role in our economy and wider society, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) allocations provide a 2.6% sector increase in teaching funding for 2025-26 compared to last year, and no college has had a reduction in teaching funding in 2025-26 when compared with 2024-25.
An increase of almost 5% in capital maintenance funding is helping colleges further invest in student’s learning experiences.
The Scottish Government is also working collaboratively with the SFC and Colleges Scotland through the Tripartite Alignment Group to identify and implement flexibilities to support colleges. To date, the Group has created the conditions to improve the financial sustainability of the sector with the introduction of the SFC’s College Transformation Framework, and the new asset disposals process; and is supporting colleges to maximise commercial income.
- Asked by: Brian Whittle, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 26 September 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 7 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on which commitments made in the Oral Health Improvement Plan (a) have been delivered to date and (b) remain outstanding.
Answer
The Oral Health Improvement Plan (OHIP) remains a relevant and important cornerstone of NHS dental services policy in Scotland. Significant progress has been made on the commitments from the OHIP since its publication, including through the introduction of payment reform in November 2023.
Our recently published Operational Improvement Plan sets out this Government’s current ambitions to further improve NHS dental services both now and into the future, supported by new funding in 2025-26. The Plan can be viewed at
https://www.gov.scot/publications/nhs-scotland-operational-improvement-plan/.
