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Consideration of all protected characteristics, including gender, will continue to inform the design and delivery of post school education and skills reform.

We will continue to build on our existing work to address barriers for women and girls, including:

• A range of resources developed by Education Scotland to address gender segregation in subject choices in schools.
• The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) is working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to tackle persistent inequalities in the tertiary education sector. Their approach includes for institutions to have regard to significant imbalances on courses and take action to address it.
• The refreshed Fair Work Action Plan which was published in December 2022 and aims to take an intersectional approach, where possible, to tackling the structural labour market barriers faced by disadvantaged groups in Scotland’s labour market including women.
• The Scottish Apprenticeship Advisory Board (SAAB) created the Gender Commission, who developed recommendations that offer practical solutions to help address the gender imbalance across the Apprenticeship family. The Gender Commission published their report and recommendations, and SG are committed to integrate findings from the Commission into our reform work to ensure they become embedded in the skills system.

An initial Equalities Impact Assessment, Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA): Purpose and Principles (www.gov.scot) for the Purpose and Principles for Post-School education, research and skills Post-school education, research and skills - purpose and principles - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) was published on 4 July 2023.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-28572 on 12 August 2024. 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

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-28575 on 12 August 2024 . 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

While employment law is reserved, our Fair Work approach seeks to improve workers’ rights and conditions and aims to address women’s workplace inequalities by encouraging employers to take action to tackle occupational segregation and reduce gender pay gaps across the labour market in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is committed to using all levers at our disposal to extend Fair Work First conditionality with clear standards and minimum requirements to cover all forms of Scottish Government support within the limits of devolved competence.

We are currently focussed on implementing fair work conditionality in public sector grants, and the Scottish Government will be undertaking an evaluation of Fair Work First before exploring options to extend conditions to other forms of support such as licencing.

The Scottish Government has received representations on the principle of making eligibility for business rates reliefs and licences to trade conditional on payment of the real Living Wage from a range of stakeholders, including retail representative bodies like the Scottish Retail Consortium, Scottish Grocers Federation and Association of Convenience Stores. Forums such as the New Deal for Business Non-Domestic Rates Subgroup, Retail Industry Leadership Group, Scottish Ratepayers Forum also provide a routine opportunity for stakeholders to make representations to Scottish Government.

The recently published Fair Work Convention Inquiry into the hospitality industry also made recommendations for the Scottish Government on fair work conditionality. The Scottish Government will undertake a programme of assessment and consider each of the recommendations carefully.

The Scottish Government is committed to using all levers at its disposal to extend Fair Work conditionality with clear standards and minimum requirements to cover all forms of Scottish Government support within the limits of devolved competence and this matter is still being considered.

Decisions on future funding for third sector organisations dealing with domestic abuse will be confirmed on completion of the budget process later this year.

Scotland is the only part of the UK that already offers 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. 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 government funded childcare would deliver either value for money for the Scottish taxpayer or the best outcomes for our children and young people.

Before turning to the detail, I think it is important to recognise the financial context that the Scottish Government is currently having to work within. As the Cabinet Secretary for Finance outlined in the fiscal statement on 3 September, we cannot shy away from the fact that Scotland continues to face one of the most difficult public spending environments that this devolved Parliament has ever seen.

That is why we have committed in this year’s Programme for Government to work with local authorities to maximise uptake of funded early learning and childcare for eligible two-year-olds, with a particular focus on families most at risk of poverty and areas with some of the lowest uptake rates.

Over the next two years we are also 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.

The engagement and targeted delivery that takes place for younger children in our six EACs will be a key element of our developing evidence base to inform future delivery.

We are 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 consider 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 young children and to building a system of School Age Childcare, and we are going as far and as fast as budgets allow to deliver that.

The Scottish Government published an Action Plan in June 2023 to deliver improvements to the Scottish Welfare Fund. The actions committed to are being progressed in conjunction with stakeholders through our Practitioners’ Forum and Statutory Guidance Review Committee.

As well as stakeholders on these forums, officials have met with organisations including Engender to discuss the work that is being progressed on the back of the independent review recommendations and action plan and have discussed clarifying the Scottish Welfare Fund statutory guidance to support marginalised women.

In the Ending Destitution Together strategy, published in 2021, the strategy is clear that there are limits on the action that can be taken by the Scottish Government to support women with the condition of No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF). This is because immigration and nationality, including the NRPF policy, are reserved to the UK Parliament. There is an ask of the UK Government to remove the Scottish Welfare Fund from the list of restricted public funds set out under paragraph 6 of the immigration rules. If successful, this would enable Crisis and Community Care Grants to be provided from the Scottish Welfare Fund to people subject to NRPF, where they are eligible, on the same basis as anyone else.

We are proud that we have the Scottish Welfare Fund providing emergency support and a lifeline to people in need, through Crisis Grants to help meet immediate short-term needs arising from exceptional circumstances and Community Care Grants to help eligible people establish or maintain a home. We have protected investment in the fund of £41 million this year.