On 1 September 2026 the Scottish Government published its Programme for Government 2026-31, the plan for the current parliamentary mandate. It is a broad document, but for screen businesses working in Scotland the significant parts are money and machinery for the sector, a set of workforce measures, and one criminal law change that relates to workplace culture. This article picks out what matters for screen businesses and is written for anyone who employs or engages people, or runs productions, in Scotland.
First, a point of context shaping all of it: employment law is largely reserved to the government in Westminster, so the Scottish Government cannot change core employment rights. Its influence on screen workforces runs instead through funding, skills and workplace culture, and that is where this Programme has most to say.
The headline for the sector is structural. The Programme commits to establishing Screen Scotland as a distinct organisation, directly funded by the Scottish Government, with increased funding to support homegrown talent. Screen Scotland currently sits within Creative Scotland, so becoming a directly funded body in its own right is an important change in how the screen sector is backed and held to account.
This sits inside a wider culture funding uplift: an additional £100 million a year for culture by 2028-29, with a further £50 million by the end of the Parliament, alongside a £110 million pipeline of major events to 2030 and a new Youth Culture Pass. For screen businesses, more direct funding and a clearer institutional home are the main takeaways, with the detail of how the new Screen Scotland is set up, and funded, still to come.
Public funding generally carries conditions. Scottish Government grants and funding already come with fair work expectations through the established Fair Work First policy, which asks recipients to meet criteria such as paying at least the real living wage and avoiding inappropriate use of zero-hours contracts. While the Programme does not add new rules to public funding, it does commit to evaluating Fair Work First alongside trade unions to future-proof workplaces. Businesses that expect to draw on the enlarged funding should assume fair work expectations are here to stay.
On skills, the Programme leans on training and pathways rather than heralding sweeping change. It extends the Pathways Fund programme to support more female founders, develops new apprenticeships in rural and island communities, and expands university Knowledge Transfer Partnerships that connect businesses with academic research. None of these is screen-specific, but they are part of the wider pipeline the sector draws on.
Two workforce points matter more directly. The Programme restates the aim of removing barriers to work for people who are inactive through ill-health or disability, which bears on inclusive recruitment. More significantly, it commits to a new, continuous childcare offer running from nine months old to the end of primary school, phasing in funded care for babies from the end of maternity leave, alongside universal primary school breakfast clubs (from 2027), after-school care, and holiday provision (from 2029).
Screen work seldom fits standard nursery hours. Early calls, late wraps, weekend shoots and location work away from home, often confirmed at short notice, make conventional childcare hard to arrange. A broader, year-round system that extends into wraparound and holiday care bears directly on who can take freelance crew and cast roles and stay in them. Because childcare pressures fall heaviest on parents and disproportionately on women, this offer is as much an inclusion prompt for the sector as it is a practical one.
The most concrete legal change with a workplace dimension is the Misogyny (Criminal Law) (Scotland) Bill, included in the year-one legislative programme. It will recognise misogyny as a distinct form of prejudice and abuse, and is backed by a multi-year public health campaign on attitudes towards women and girls. It sits alongside the screen sector’s own industry-led initiatives, such as the BFI/BAFTA anti-harassment guidelines, BECTU conduct codes, and independent reporting bodies like CIISA.
The Misogyny Bill is criminal law, not an employment law change so it addresses the conduct of individuals and how the justice system responds, and it is devolved to Scotland. It does not create or alter what businesses must do. A business’s own duty to prevent sexual harassment sits in employment and equality law, which is reserved to Westminster. The Equality Act 2010, as amended by the Worker Protection Act 2023, already requires businesses to take reasonable steps to prevent the sexual harassment of their staff, and from 30 October 2026 the Employment Rights Act 2025 strengthens this to all reasonable steps, with liability for third-party harassment. That duty applies in Scotland as part of Great Britain, whatever happens with the Scottish Bill. For screen businesses, the Misogyny Bill is part of the cultural backdrop; the harassment duty is the concrete obligation to plan for.
Two further Bills are worth noting more briefly. A Legal Aid (Scotland) Bill, also in the year-one programme, will modernise and simplify the legal aid framework, which is relevant to access to justice rather than to day-to-day workforce matters. And a Human Rights Bill continues in development, with introduction aimed at Year 2 of the Parliament, so it is a direction of travel rather than an immediate change.
For screen businesses in Scotland, the Programme is less about new duties and more about the shape and funding of the sector, with the biggest single change being a Screen Scotland standing on its own feet. Workforce rights that govern the day-to-day are still made at Westminster, so this Programme is best read as the funding and cultural backdrop against which those rights apply.
Last updated 23/09/2026
Last updated 30/10/2026