Programme for Government 2025 to 2026

1 Growing the Economy

To deliver for Scotland we have:

• Supported over 3,000 jobs and over £168m of supply chain spend in Scotland in 2024 through the work of the Scottish National Investment Bank
• Maintained and strengthened Scotland’s position as the most attractive place in the UK for inward investment outside London and the South East
• More than doubled the membership in Techscaler increasing from 610 to 1,411 in 2024
• Increased GDP per person in Scotland. Since 2007, it has grown 10.3%, compared to 6.1% in the UK and proportionally more people earn the real living wage than in the rest of the UK
• An additional £34m in this year’s budget for the culture sector, enabling Creative Scotland to extend their multi-year funding to a record number of organisations
• Helped secure Sumitomo’s £350m cable factory investment at Nigg and committed over £68m investment in ports infrastructure for offshore wind since May 2024
• Funded Scottish Enterprise to support the creation or safeguarding of over 16,700 jobs and help companies unlock a record £1.89 billion planned capital investment

Growing our economy

The world currently faces economic uncertainty. Economic shocks have impacted households, businesses and public services. Scotland is not immune but the Scottish economy is resilient.

Through measures in this Programme for Government, we will help protect people from economic uncertainty, by investing in our workforce, supporting people into employment, attracting investment, and backing business.

More money in people’s pockets

The current economic uncertainty comes on the back of successive shockwaves which have impacted on household costs – from austerity to Brexit, the pandemic to the cost-of-living crisis. Alongside efforts to boost economic growth and protect those most at risk of poverty, we will help people in Scotland to weather the storm by:

• Keeping university tuition free.
• Delivering free childcare for all 3- and 4-year-olds, and eligible 2-year-olds.
• Giving pensioners the Winter Fuel Payment so they can heat their homes – overturning the UK government’s unfair cut.
• Delivering affordable homes across Scotland.
• Investing in a fair social security system and helping people into work.
• Making sure the majority of Scottish taxpayers pay less income tax than those in the rest of the UK.
• Providing free bus travel for 2.3 million people, including older and disabled people, and all children and young people.
• Funding the Small Business Bonus so thousands of small businesses pay no business rates.
• Keeping 40,000 children out of poverty by providing the Scottish Child Payment.
• Keeping prescription charges and eye examinations free.
• Reducing the cost of the school day, through free school meals and the school clothing grant.
• Helping people heat their homes and cut their bills with some of the most generous grants and loans in the UK.

There are many reasons to be positive about Scotland’s economic potential, and Scotland consistently ranks as the UK’s top investment destination outside of London and the South East of England. This Programme for Government will accelerate action which ensures businesses can create jobs and grow the economy, improve living standards, contribute towards a just transition to net-zero, and secure the growth and tax base needed to invest in public services.

However, while we will do all we can with the powers available, we do so with one hand tied behind our back as many of the most significant levers remain beyond our grasp. We will publish a further paper setting out the economic benefits that independence can bring for Scotland, with economic decisions taken in Scotland, for the benefit of Scotland, rather than a UK government that too often seems to treat Scotland as an afterthought.

Global competitiveness

Scotland is a trading nation and well placed to attract investment and compete on the international stage. However, the threat of trade barriers and tariffs risks real economic damage. We will respond by taking forward a new and ambitious programme of global engagement to showcase our domestic strengths and attract investment, to boost Scotland’s profile, competitiveness, and growth.

In response to global trade barriers, we will implement a new Six Point Export Plan, to:

• Deliver an International Growth Support Programme, providing grant support to Scottish companies to help them unlock specific international growth.
• Support the delivery of the Sector Export Plans for Technology, Life Sciences, Renewables and Hydrogen – addressing sector specific barriers, funding research and in-market promotion, and supporting individual companies.
• Bring more global buyers and suppliers to Scotland through inward missions to showcase the strength of Scottish export potential and supply chains.
• Expand Scottish Development International (SDI) support to get companies to their target markets by scaling up ‘go-to-market’ advice and increasing overseas missions where companies can get a deep understanding of the opportunities and meet buyers.
• Increase funding for our International Trade Partnership Programme with the Scottish Chambers of Commerce and expand access to business membership organisations who can now bid for support for trade missions to established and emerging markets.
• Providing information, advice and support to exporters to the US to help them maintain market share or build new North American business and develop a US Export Plan to identify those US states which offer the best fit for Scottish export strengths.

Last year, we initiated a co-ordinated programme to attract capital investment to Scotland in priority areas. We will expand on that progress, by:

• Launching ‘InvestScotland’, a new portal that will showcase investment opportunities and information for investors and provide a single point of entry to government.
• Accelerating a targeted programme of proactive engagement with key capital investors.
• Strengthening SDI’s inward investment activity in Europe and the US by targeting Silicon Valley and other tech hubs to bring scaling companies to Scotland, engaging with global financial hubs to strengthen Scotland’s fintech and financial services sector, and leveraging opportunities from our partnership with the City of London Corporation.
• Working closely with the UK Government to unlock up to £25m of seed capital funding for our Green Freeports in the Firth of Forth and Inverness and Cromarty Firth, helping secure significant investment and create jobs.
• Seeking more co-investment from public and private pension funds into Scottish projects and businesses, by working with the Scottish Local Government Pension Scheme.
• Acting on feedback from the consultation underway on how Scottish Ministers could use powers in the Housing (Scotland) Bill to allow for exemption from rent control, in certain circumstances, including new property built exclusively for rent and mid-market rent. This will deliver rent control in a way that supports tenants, takes account of the rights of landlords and continues to support investment in private housing.
• Implementing the recommendations of the Housing Investment Taskforce to unlock new investment opportunities across all tenures. This includes improving leverage of public sector funds for affordable housing delivery, driving a new commercial market for shared home ownership, and supporting a more interventionist approach from public bodies.
• Consulting before the summer recess on how Co-ownership Authorised Contractual Schemes are used by those looking to invest in Scotland as well as the role of Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) in supporting our ambitions to encourage commercial investment in Scotland.

An innovation nation

We will continue to nurture and expand sectors which boost Scotland’s profile as a modern, high growth country – in particular tech and innovation, where our international reputation is growing. Entrepreneurs sell Scotland’s expertise on an international stage, attract significant inward investment, and will be critical to our future prosperity. We will support innovators, increase startup creation, develop business clusters in innovative markets areas, and build on Scotland’s expertise in critical technologies, by:

• Launching the First Minister’s Start-up Challenge — a bold initiative to support young people from disadvantaged or under-represented backgrounds to start and scale innovative businesses, through tailored ideation support, mentorship and grant funding.
• Transforming the number of women who start and scale businesses by investing up to £6 million to implement Ana Stewart and Mark Logan’s Pathways report – including a further round of competitive funding opportunities and the delivery of ‘Pre-Start’ support.
• Launching AI Scotland, a new national transformation programme founded on a partnership of business, academia, agencies and government, including a national AI adoption programme for SMEs.
• Hosting an Innovation Summit as the centrepiece of Scotland’s Innovation Week, showcasing Scotland as a global innovation nation, promoting knowledge exchange and attracting investment.
• Supporting women-led businesses to export more, including by increasing the number of women who participate in international trade missions.
• Investing £1.2m in Scottish Edge, recognising the critical role it plays in identifying and investing in Scotland’s best new companies.
• Partnering with the private sector to deliver an improved Ecosystem Fund, issuing grants to increase the scale, quality and profile of the Scottish start-up ecosystem.
• Creating a University Proof of Concept Fund focused on supporting research projects with significant economic potential to progress towards the formation of new companies by building prototypes, achieving market validation and attracting investment.
• Establishing a Technology Council of global business and academic experts to advise the Government on applying and benefiting from emerging technological trends.
• Delivering a financial support and guidance scheme to support industry clusters to emerge, grow and remain internationally competitive.
• Increasing investment in Scottish Funding Council core research and innovation grants to more than £325 million for the 2025-26 academic year to support the foundations of research in our universities, develop the talent pipeline, promote knowledge exchange, and drive growth.

Making it easier to invest and do business

We will create better certainty and stability, and make it easier to do business, including:

• No further divergence from the UK on Income Tax for the remainder of this Parliament – meaning no new bands, rates will remain the same and ensuring that the majority of Scottish taxpayers continue to pay less Income Tax than those in the rest of the UK.
• Recognising the ongoing concerns raised by the licensed hospitality sector on the valuation methodology applied to non-domestic property in this sector, we will commission an independent review to report by the end of 2026 and consider any recommendations in advance of the 2029 revaluation cycle.
• Publishing an action and implementation plan based on an assessment of the regulatory controls which exist in key growth sectors, starting with housing, public infrastructure, and green industries, by the end of 2025 – designed to make it easier to do business.
• Subjecting future Scottish government regulation to scrutiny to ensure that its purpose, content and timing have regard to potential opportunities and impacts on business and investment. This will include supporting improved engagement with business, robust Business and Regulatory Impact Assessments, and good regulatory practice.

Planning is at the heart of economic growth and underpins this government’s priorities, particularly in growing the economy and eradicating child poverty. We will boost planning capacity and reduce barriers to delivery, by:

• Reversing the decline in professional planners working in public authorities, including appointing, developing and training 18 new future planners in the Scottish Government, and providing 30 bursaries for post-graduate planning by end of September this year.
• Undertaking rapid audits of planning teams in each of the key agencies and working with them to reduce complexity, cost, and speed up processes.
• Providing local authorities, through the Planning Hub, with additional capacity and expertise, prioritising action where evidence shows they are having challenges with meeting timescales or where there are delays in producing local plans.
• Supporting the delivery of three ‘Masterplan Consent Areas’ including for development associated with the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport, helping to de-risk investment by putting in place up-front development consents.
• Removing all dated national planning advice to declutter the system.
• Consulting on mechanisms to accelerate house building, including land assembly, build out rates and fiscal measures that stimulate access to land with planning permission where building has not started.

Supporting our rural economy

Our land and seas underpin Scotland’s world class food and drink industry – accounting for almost a third of total manufacturing turnover. In predominantly rural and island areas, agriculture contributes over £3 billion in output every year, while our marine economy is worth over £4.9 billion. We will support farmers, crofters, and fishers to capitalise on Scotland’s unique position, by:

• Investing an additional £5m in Scotland’s food and drink strategy, to drive growth, and £5m to support food processing and marketing.
• Supporting Scotland’s world leading fishing sector to maximise fishing opportunities and modernise, delivering technical and management improvements through the Future Catching Policy and our Inshore Fisheries Management Improvement Programme.
• Delivering reformed direct support payments to support sustainable food production.
• Publishing the Rural Support Plan – providing clarity on financial support plans for the next 5 years.
• Further to the consultation on proposals for crofting law reform, introducing legislation this year.
• Progressing the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, which will improve transparency of land ownership, help ensure large scale land holdings deliver in the public interest and give communities more opportunities to own land and more say in how it is used.
• To help improve the processes for communities to buy land and assets, launching a consultation on proposals from the review of community right to buy powers and deliver £7m through the Scottish Land Fund, enabling more community groups to purchase assets.
• Creating more opportunities for new entrants to farming on public land – including considering the use of land acquisition to deliver tenancy opportunities and prioritising capital support for new entrants and the next generation of farmers through the Future Farming Investment Scheme.
• Laying the draft Good Food Nation Plan before Parliament by the summer and establishing the Scottish Food Commission.
• Delivering £14m of funding to support sustainable, inclusive economic growth in the marine economy and coastal communities.
• Streamlining the consenting process for aquaculture, to improve efficiency and clarify the consenting process for aquaculture development between 3 – 12 nautical miles.
• Publishing the National Islands Plan to address island challenges and opportunities over the next five years, investing over £5m for the islands programme and additional support through the islands business resilience programme, while also scaling up decarbonisation efforts through the Carbon Neutral Islands Project.

Scotland’s global image

One of Scotland’s greatest strengths is our global reach – supported by a diaspora of tens of millions of influential Scots and bolstered by internationally recognised assets, including our natural heritage, culture, and tourism. Capitalising on those networks and strengths, we will promote Scotland at home and abroad, through the Scottish Government-led Brand Scotland partnership and worldwide network of offices, trade and investment envoys and Global Scots, including:

• Delivering the biggest increase in culture funding in the history of the Scottish Parliament, investing at least £100 million more in the arts and culture by 2028-29, with an additional £34 million this year.
• Providing a further £20 million to support Creative Scotland’s multi-year funding programme – more than doubling the number of organisations that receive multi-year funding.
• Supporting Scottish Agritourism as they prepare for the World Agritourism Conference in Scotland in 2026.
• Boosting our screen sector, with an additional £2 million ensuring our screen sector can add £1 billion Gross Value Added to the Scottish economy by 2030.
• Hosting a range of events which will put a focus on Scotland, including most immediately the Orkney 2025 Island Games and the 2026 Commonwealth Games.
• Working with VisitScotland, airlines and travel partners to grow international connectivity – including extending seasonal routes and improving frequency and capacity.

We will continue to press the case that EU membership is the best for Scotland, while working with the UK Government to maximise opportunities for economic growth in Scotland from a stronger EU/UK relationship, including:

• Significant easements to the trade in food and drink products.
• Closer cooperation on energy and climate, including on emissions trading.
• Reducing unnecessary obstacles to trade in goods and services.
• Promoting mobility for business travellers, touring artists and young people.
• Rejoining the EU Erasmus+ and Creative Europe programmes.

Skills for success

To capitalise on economic opportunities, we need people with the skills to grasp them. Our colleges and universities are vital anchor institutions across Scotland. We will work with partners to secure a long-term and sustainable future for further and higher education, developing our skills system for the future, including by:

• Maintaining our commitment to free tuition which means that unlike elsewhere in the UK, a Scottish student studying in Scotland will not incur additional debt of up to £28,605.
• Widening access to higher education for students from the most socio economically disadvantaged communities – towards our goal of 20% of all entrants being from the 20% most deprived communities by 2030.
• Subject to legislative processes, delivering a simplified post-school funding body landscape that is sustainable and efficient, consolidating apprenticeship funding within the Scottish Funding Council by March 2027, and student support funding within the Student Awards Agency Scotland by March 2026.
• Establishing a national Recognition of Prior Learning system - formally acknowledging an individual’s skills and knowledge gained through work experience, training, or other learning outside of formal education.
• Investing up to £2m to develop engineering skills in the Glasgow City Region, designed by the Clyde Maritime Cluster in partnership with Skills Development Scotland.
• Introducing a new Scottish Government-led approach to national skills planning, and strengthen regional skills planning, to ensure that post school provision becomes more responsive to Scotland’s strategic skills needs and priorities.
• Reviewing and improving school-age and adult careers support, including better information on career choices, job prospects and earnings.
• Supporting schools to access film and screen learning – so Scotland has the workforce to meet the demands a £1bn film and screen industry will create.
• Subject to a successful evaluation, support the continuation of Corseford College, and the learning opportunities it offers young people with additional support needs, through funding of £700,000 in 2025-26.
• Taking forward a review of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig with the aim of providing it a secure future.
• Providing £3.5m so that colleges can deliver the pipeline of skills our economy and public services need, with new programmes focused on care and offshore wind.
• Fostering links with universities abroad, encouraging foreign investment in our world leading research, and attracting international students and staff, working with our new International Education Trade Envoy, Professor Rachel Sandison OBE and partners.

Improved communities

Global economic uncertainty often has a disproportionate impact on our regional and rural economies. Every community in Scotland must be able to draw on their strengths and assets to benefit from, and contribute to, a stronger economy. Working to ensure the benefits of growth are felt across Scotland, we will:

• Progress the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill, alongside investment in social enterprises, support for co-operatives and employee-owned firms, as well as continued investment in a CWB practitioner’s network. This will be supported by the work of the new Economic Democracy Group focused on growing Inclusive and Democratic Business Models in Scotland.
• Invest over £200 million in grant funding in Growth Deals – helping bring projects with significant community benefit into operation, including:
  • Transforming Inverness Castle into a ‘Spirit of the Highlands’ themed attraction.
  • Upgrading the University of the Highlands & Islands Outer Hebrides Campus project, with a focus on supporting the expansion of renewable energy sectors.
  • The Manufacturing Innovation Centre for Moray will bring world-leading research and development expertise to attract jobs and investment.
  • Edinburgh Innovation Hub will grow innovation-led enterprise in and around East Lothian, aiming to deliver around 100 new start-ups over its lifetime.
  • Renfrew Bridge will link Renfrew with Yoker and Clydebank, improving connections and forecast to create up to 800 jobs in the area over 25 years.
  • The development of three new industrial units at Coldstream in the Scottish Borders will enable small businesses to grow and create new jobs.
• Work with regional and local partners to identify how best to formally devolve further elements of decision-making and delivery to Regional Economic Partnerships (REPs), and present options before the end of this Parliament.
• Work with REPs in Glasgow City Region and in North East to deliver Investment Zones in those regions, bringing jobs and clusters of innovation.
• Award new regional contracts, alongside delivery of the £600 million+ R100 programme, so more households, communities and businesses can access reliable gigabit connectivity.
• Provide £70 million of funding – with flexibility for relevant local authorities, including Orkney and Shetland Islands, over how this is used – for inter-island connectivity.
• Deliver capital investment to regenerate communities, supporting at least 26 projects across Scotland that align with local development and regeneration plans, including:
  • Reactivating the Cullipool Village slate quarry – to be owned, managed, and directly benefit the community of Luing, generating income and local jobs.
  • The re-development of Cowdenbeath Town Hall, converting the building into a multi-purpose enterprise space.
  • Cathcart Road Net Zero Industrial Units, expected to create 17 new jobs and unlock an estimated £1 million follow-on inward investment.
• Start the process of identifying, designating and supporting Areas of Linguistic Significance, subject to the passage of the Scottish Languages Bill.
• Implement the recommendations of the Short Life Working Group on Economic and Social Opportunities for Gaelic, ensuring Scottish Government strategies on housing, transport and digital connectivity urgently address issues which undermine the economic resilience of the communities identified by the report.
• Deliver Scotland’s Migration Service and making the continued case for tailored migration routes, including a Scottish Visa, Rural Visa Pilot and Scottish Graduate Visa.
• Support developments of benefit to Gaelic-speaking communities through the Scottish Government’s Gaelic Capital Fund, including awarding a £500,000 grant for a new Screen Machine mobile cinema serving rural communities across Scotland.