Through Equally Safe, we are working closely with local government and third sector partners to ensure victims and survivors of domestic abuse are aware of all sources of support. This year we are providing over £7.5m to Women’s Aid groups in Scotland, through our Delivering Equally Safe Fund, that provide vital and sometimes lifesaving support through a range of channels, including online and print materials. In addition to this we are also supporting Scotland's Domestic Abuse & Forced Marriage Helpline with over £550,000 funding to also ensure this information is widely available to those who need it.

The Scottish Government also funds the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre, which provides online guidance on legal and housing options available to women experiencing domestic abuse.

The Scottish Government currently has no plans to introduce a transition course for paramedics unable to find employment with the Scottish Ambulance Service.

The Scottish Government sets policies and frameworks at a national level, and it is the role of Health Boards, as the employers, to recruit graduates through a fair and consistent recruitment practice. When making recruitment decisions, Health Boards have to consider current turnover, retention, absence rates and budgets.

The Scottish Ambulance Service is in the process of recruiting paramedic positions for the remainder of the 2024-25 financial year.

We continue to work with SAS to explore how the role of a paramedic can expand into primary and secondary care further, offering new and different employment opportunities.

The Rural Affordable Homes for Key Workers Fund is a five year demand led fund of up to £25 million from the Affordable Housing Supply Programme budget and is available to local authorities and registered social landlords to purchase existing suitable properties in rural and island areas to provide affordable homes for key workers where there is identified need. The fund will run from 2023-24 to 2027-28. There are no plans for the fund to be made available to landlords in the private rented sector.

As set out in our recent Programme for Government, we will provide nearly £2.5 billion in 2024-25, to support public transport, making our transport system available, affordable and accessible for all. We also committed, in the PfG, to work with local authorities to ensure as many children as possible can access their free bus entitlement, cutting travel costs and making sustainable travel a more attractive option.

The safety of all public transport users is crucial, and we are working with industry stakeholders to develop actions to tackle antisocial behaviour on the bus network. This includes a process for temporary suspension or withdrawal of concessionary travel entitlement.

Ministers continue to work closely with ScotRail to develop measures to tackle and prevent antisocial behaviour while maximising the safety of all rail passengers and staff. ScotRail has taken several steps to enhance the visible presence of staff on trains, especially on key routes identified as needing additional support. Initiatives such as the "Safer Shores" campaign demonstrate a collaborative approach, with ScotRail working alongside Local Authorities and British Transport Police to provide extra staff on trains to popular seaside destinations during peak times. ScotRail has invested £1.6 million to triple the number of body-worn cameras for frontline staff. ScotRail have also invested in improved CCTV with intelligent video analytics.

To remove barriers to public transport, we have supported operators to accept contactless payment, with about 98% of buses now enabled. We delivered on our PfG commitment to launch a new Traveline Scotland journey planning website and app on 17 September. This improves the quality and availability of travel data to provide a journey planner that is fit for the future.

Much progress has been made in recent years to improve smart, integrated ticketing and payment on public transport, as detailed in the Smart Integrated Ticketing Delivery Strategy, which was published in August this year. This strategy also outlines a programme of work and strategy for the next 5-10 years, building on this progress and including exploring options for a new national integrated ticketing system, reflecting passenger's desires for integrated contactless and digital ticketing.

Scotland is the only part of the UK that already offers 1140 hours (equivalent to 30 hours per week in term time) of funded ELC to all 3 and 4-year-olds regardless of whether their parents are working or not because we are committed to promoting equality for all Scotland’s children, putting their interests first. We also make 1140 hours available to around a quarter of 2 year olds and to all children whose entry to primary school is deferred.

It is far from clear that a universal system of ‘free’ childcare for everyone would deliver either value for money for the Scottish taxpayer or the best outcomes for our children and young people. Despite the unprecedented financial challenges facing the Scottish Government we have prioritised tackling child poverty and expanding access to funded childcare for those families who stand to benefit most.

That is why over the next two years we are investing £16 million within six early adopter communities to continue our work to understand what it takes to design and deliver local childcare systems that support those families most at risk of living in poverty.

In addition we are also continuing to support the ‘Extra Time’ Programme, investing £4 million in a partnership with the Scottish Football Association to deliver before, after school and breakfast clubs, providing 3,000 targeted free places each week for children and their families.

We have also invested close to £1 million to deliver free or subsidised school age childcare services through our Access to Childcare projects. These projects are also considering specific challenges for families including remote and rural childcare provision, and specialist provision for children with disabilities or complex additional support needs.

We remain committed to expanding funded ELC to reach more younger children and to building a system of School Age Childcare, and we are going as far and as fast as we can to deliver that.

Local authorities have statutory obligations in respect of the delivery of education, which includes ensuring they have a complement of staff to meet local needs.

In Scotland we have the most teachers per pupil and highest paid teachers in the UK. We are once again providing £145.5 million to local authorities for the purpose of protecting teacher numbers. We are also continuing to provide £20,000 bursaries to incentivise career changers to train in the hardest to fill teaching subjects. Since the introduction of the scheme, 659 bursaries have been awarded.

I have also asked the Strategic Board for Teacher Education, which is made up of a range of key education stakeholders, to look at issues around the recruitment and retention of teachers in Scotland in detail, including geographical and subject-specific issues, as well as how we can increase diversity within the profession and improve support for early career teachers.

We have 17,330 pupil support staff in Scotland, the highest level on record and an increase of more than 2,000 since 2020. This is a direct result of our continued annual investment of £15 million to councils.

The Scottish Government has no plans at this time to commission further research in relation to student housing.

Through the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004, NatureScot can enter into Management Agreements to compensate land owners for stopping or not adopting management practices which would damage nature on Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Positive Management Agreements can also be agreed to support specialist management for nature which is not available through agri-environment or forestry support mechanisms. The amounts provided each year since 2020-21 are:

The Scottish Government Review of Purpose Built Student Accommodation recommended convening a national roundtable discussion which included representation from all those involved with the provision of purpose-built student accommodation, including developers and the investment community. The first roundtable discussion, chaired by myself, took place on 23 August. A further meeting will be convened later this year.

There are 1423 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Scotland, the majority of which have one or more private owners. 88.2% of all SSSIs cover the properties of one or more private owners.