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The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring our work is informed by the experiences of people and communities that are affected by racism, hatred and prejudice.

The Scottish Government’s Hate Crime Strategy, and its associated Delivery Plan launched in November 2023, sets out our strategic priorities for tackling hate crime in Scotland. It was informed by communities with lived experience of hate crime, including Irish communities. We are committed to supporting a range of ongoing and participatory engagement, and will continue to work in partnership with Irish community organisations in Scotland to understand issues of importance to them, as we deliver our Strategy.

Scotland’s National Performance Framework is our wellbeing framework that sets out a vision of societal progress through National Outcomes. The Framework has equality breakdowns available as standard for each of the 48 National Indicators relating to people.

Scotland’s Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 demonstrates a clear, continuing commitment to improve the collection and analysis of racial data, to inform understanding of needs and differential experiences of marginalised groups. The strategy was developed in collaboration with a range of external partners. By the end of 2024, an Interim Review of the Equality Evidence Strategy will be completed and published. Aligning with one of the Equality Evidence Strategy Actions, analysis of Scotland Census 2022 data will be completed in 2025 to further add to understanding of differential experiences.

The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government’s statement to Parliament on 3 September outlined the challenging financial situation faced by the Scottish Government following the UK Chancellor's July statement. She confirmed that spending controls are in place to make sure the entire SG budget is being managed prudently. These additional controls set out that any activity undertaken, or commitment made, that generates expenditure in 2024-25 must only proceed if it is truly essential and unavoidable. “Unavoidable” means if the Scottish Government would otherwise breach its legal obligations, or fail to provide essential support to emergency situations, or cause significant economic damage across Scotland. The scale of the savings required means that these exceptional measures are being applied across the whole Government, with all policy areas having to think about what this means for them.

Whilst I had originally set out the intention to make Changing Place Toilets funding available across financial years 2024-25 and 2025-26, reductions in the mental health budget mean we are no longer able to launch the fund in the current financial year. Instead, funding will be reprofiled into future years. I remain committed to increasing the numbers of Changing Places Toilets across Scotland and we are continuing preparatory work to enable the launch of the Fund.

Following the UK Chancellor's July statement, the Scottish Government continues to face the most challenging financial situation since devolution.

We have sought to protect mental health funding, despite difficult decisions about reductions which affect all of Government.

Despite this reduction to the 2024-25 budget, we remain committed to taking forward our work across mental health, working closely with our key delivery bodies, partners and stakeholders. Our collective focus has to be on making as much difference as possible with our funding.

No elements of the Distress Brief Intervention (DBI) programme will be discontinued in 2024-25. Savings were realised through pre-agreed changes in funding to the original pilots, which from 2024-25 will be funded by local areas rather than centrally by the Scottish Government. The DBI programme continues to grow – it is now live locally in 29 of the 31 Health and Social Care Partnership areas, with the remaining 2 actively preparing to go live in October 2024. In addition, 3 national pathways to DBI are live – via NHS24 and via call handling centres operated by Police Scotland and the Scottish Ambulance Service.

Over the past four years, the Scottish Government provided a total of £12.13 million of additional funding to address Mental Health Officer (MHO) shortfall across Scotland. Under the Training Grant Scheme alone, we provided £1.93 million for local authorities to train 83 additional MHOs. This funding exceeded our original commitment to invest £1.5 million over three years to train MHOs. Under the Capacity Increase scheme, the Scottish Government provided another £10.2 million for local authorities to increase MHO capacity. These schemes were intended to run for a limited number of years to alleviate system pressures raised specifically from the pandemic and to allow local government to undertake statutory duties.

Since 2022-23, the Scottish Government has been providing local authorities with an additional £22 million per annum to increase social work capacity in adult services. Given the close links between social workers’ and MHOs’ duties, this additional £44 million in funding is thought to have also benefited MHO capacity.

We monitor the state of the MHO workforce through the annual MHO Report published by the Scottish Social Services Council. The most recent report, published in August 2024, showed an increase of 27 individuals (headcount) working as MHOs, compared to the previous year. This figure represents the net headcount after considering the MHOs who have left the sector. The actual number of MHOs who have joined the workforce over the previous year, therefore, is higher.

In addition to providing funding, the Scottish Government is working closely with partners to improve MHO capacity, for instance, we have set up a Joint Social Services Taskforce with the aim of exploring opportunities to deliver improvements for the adult and children’s social care and social work workforce. This group is exploring options for a pilot exercise to increase capacity for the MHO workforce by reducing administrative burdens.

The Scottish Government is absolutely clear that there is no place for hatred and prejudice in Scotland. We work cooperatively with a range of organisations throughout the country to tackle all forms of hatred and prejudice, including Irish community organisations in Scotland.

Our Hate Crime Strategy Delivery Plan sets out our immediate actions over the next two years, up to April 2026, to implement Scotland’s Hate Crime Strategy. This reflects our commitment that everyone in Scotland lives free from hatred and prejudice and that all our communities, including our Irish communities, are empowered, inclusive and safe.

The Delivery Plan supports the implementation of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. The Act consolidates, modernises and extends existing hate crime legislation and is an essential element of our wider approach to tackling hate crime. The Act includes legislative protections against offences aggravated by prejudice against race and religion.

This information is not collected or held by the Scottish Government.

Since 2019/20, the Scottish Government has invested, in the pursuance of its Programme for Government commitments, over £19 million across five years to support student mental health and wellbeing in colleges and universities and to help institutions to transition to a more sustainable means of providing mental health support for students. The cessation of this funding – referred to in the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government’s letter – was extensively discussed with the sector, including when transition funding was put in place for Academic Year 2023-24.

Our new Student Mental Health Action Plan, published on 13 September, seeks to move to a mainstreamed approach to student mental health which will help students better access services. The Government will work with NHS Boards, CoSLA, Public Health Scotland and community based providers to join up support that is already available, embedding students’ mental health needs into the wider communities in which they live and study.

The Action Plan recognises the importance of each college and university having a Student Mental Health Agreement in place. To enable this we continue to support NUS Think Positive with £130,000 in 2024-25.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29572 on 17 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29572 on 17 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The extent of electrification required will be determined by the outcome of the procurement exercise.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29572 on 17 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.