There is a wide range of transformation work underway within the Scottish Government, much of which has built upon the foundations of the Corporate Transformation programme I established in my previous government role.

Transformation activity is now being directed by the ‘In the Service of Scotland’ framework, which sets out the mission, vision, improvement priorities and values for the core Scottish Government, and has the broad aim of creating an organisation that can deliver effectively and efficiently for ministers and the people of Scotland in any future operating environment.

The improvement priorities are:

• creating an empowering and enabling culture.
• building a sustainable and outcomes-focused organisation.
• nurturing respectful and trusting partnerships.
• developing high quality business processes.
• providing a flexible workplace, enabling technology and usable data.

Examples of current work include a shared services programme that will implement Oracle Cloud, transforming the HR, finance and purchasing function for Scottish Government and public sector customers; a programme of work to implement a People Strategy; a range of initiatives to upskill civil servants, such as the Scottish Digital Academy which provides high quality professional learning to public and third sector staff to build digital capability; and the Single Scottish Estate, which is identifying opportunities to efficiently co-locate some public services and support our transition to Net Zero.

The reuse of brownfield, vacant and derelict land is strongly supported through National Planning Framework 4, which was adopted in February 2023. Since then, it has been part of the statutory development plan, influencing planning authorities preparation of local development plans and their decisions on planning applications, with the intention to maximise the use of existing assets. There are no plans to incur additional costs to the public purse by creating another public body to do this work.

The Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey Information Hub will be published soon. It will map out all the sites in the most recent survey, allowing users to easily source more information on vacant and derelict land in their areas.

In 2024/25, an investment of £6.8 million has been committed for projects supporting the reuse of vacant and derelict land through the Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme (VDLIP).

Scottish Government recognises that Citizens’ Assemblies are an important and effective method to involve the public in policy and decision making.

Our longer term commitment to using Citizen’s Assemblies remains unchanged, and any Citizens’ Assembly will be targeted to help tackle some of Scotland’s most difficult issues.

As outlined in our response to the Institutionalising Participative and Deliberative Democracy working group, to ensure any future Citizens’ Assemblies build upon the learnings of previous Citizens’ Assemblies delivered in Scotland, a key first step in our approach will be to undertake an impact assessment of the Citizens' Assembly of Scotland and Scotland’s Climate Assembly.

Budget to deliver participatory work is dispersed across policy areas, which currently allocate funds and undertake activities as required. The financial situation facing the Scottish Government continues to be the most challenging since devolution, and we set out the limitations that budget constraints have posed to the delivery of Citizens’ Assemblies to the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions committee in October 2023 (see page 4, paragraph 6).

We will update Parliament in due course when we arrange for the next Citizens’ Assembly to be convened.

Helping people into fair, sustainable jobs is central to delivering on the ambitions set out in Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation.

We are taking action to address labour and skills shortages, including better aligning the education and skills system with the needs of employers and the economy.

Our No One Left Behind approach to employability support is an all-age, place-based, person-centred model to support people further removed from the labour market to move towards, into and to remain in work.

While employment law is reserved, through our Fair Work Action Plan we are helping to create fairer workplaces, address structural inequalities, and enhance workers’ rights, so that Scotland’s labour market offers good quality and rewarding jobs for everyone.

All of this supports the interconnected priorities this government is working towards - of growing a fair, green economy, to invest in sustainable public services, tackle the climate emergency and eradicate child poverty.

We are committed to the expansion of universal free school meals in primary schools. The next step in this expansion is to P6 & P7 pupils in receipt of the Scottish Child Payment from February 2025, followed by universal provision in P6 & P7 during 2026.

We are also committed to delivering a pilot of universal free school meal expansion in secondary schools. This pilot will provide evidence which will assist us in our considerations of any future expansion of provision.

The responsibility for the delivery of free school meals is a matter for local authorities. This duty under Section 53 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 sets out that local authorities must provide, or secure the provision of, a school lunch free of charge to pupils who meet the eligibility criteria set out within that Act. The national eligibility criteria for free school meals is available through the following web link: Free school meals - mygov.scot .

To give effect to the principal recommendation of the Legal Aid Payment Advisory Panel, that independent research be commissioned to consider the financial landscape for legal aid providers, a working group was established in 2022.

Membership of the group included representatives of the Law Society of Scotland, the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association and the Scottish Legal Aid Board. The group met regularly and agreed a specification to tender for the required research.

Following two unsuccessful tendering processes, the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association indicated their withdrawal from the working group. The Scottish Government share these frustrations, but an offer to re-tender remains.

The Scottish Government has held productive discussions with both the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association on the purpose of the research and will continue to make the case for re-tendering. We do believe that there is much to gain by carrying out the research.

Attached is a list of suppliers with spend for Consultancy. The data has been sourced from The Procurement Information Hub and includes all suppliers that fall under the consultancy classification.

Due to the wide range of services captured under the term consultancy we are unable to predict the expenditure for financial year 2024-2025.

I refer the Member to the answer to question S6W-26002 on 18 March 2024, which provides an update on implementation of the Children (Scotland) Act 2020 (the 2020 Act) and refers to a recent section-by-section breakdown provided to Parliament of the 2020 Act’s commencement status.

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/questions-and-answers .

The Scottish Government has accepted a recommendation in the recent ‘Hearings for Children’ report to commence section 3 of the 2020 Act, relating to the views of the child in proceedings under the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011. We are taking forward relevant work in that regard and are considering whether further provisions could be commenced.

We have implemented extensive reforms to streamline and improve the planning system to support our economy and give greater certainty to developers and investors. Our reforms include removing certain applications from the system, increasing capacity to focus on applications where most value can be added; extending the review cycle of Local Development Plans to allow planning authorities to focus on delivery; and appointing Scotland’s first National Planning Improvement Champion to work with all those involved to support improvement within the service.

We recognise there is scope to improve on current planning timescales with the most recent annual data for the 2022-23 period showing that the average timescale for major developments is 39.5 weeks, and local (non householder) development is 14.4 weeks. It is important to note that there can be many reasons for delays in determining applications, including requests for and submission of additional information, delays with responses from consultees and the requirement for a legal agreement. However, constructive and collaborative working between applicants and authorities means that consistently over 93% of applications are approved annually.

Our current consultation "Investing in Planning - a consultation on resourcing Scotland's planning system" aims to further support improvement in the delivery of planning services, including streamlining the assessments required to support applications, project managing applications, improving engagement and taking a proactive approach to development and consenting.