The Scottish cabinet will meet on Arran later to mark the contribution rural and island communities make to the economy.

A new national body to promote employee ownership of businesses is to be announced by the First Minister, as well as Scotland's first food and drink tourism action plan.

As part of the visit to the Firth of Clyde island, a public discussion led by Nicola Sturgeon will be held at Arran High School in the afternoon.

The travelling cabinet initiative, which sees Sturgeon's ministerial team meet periodically in different parts of the country, aims to allow local people to engage with them face-to-face, the government says.

The last travelling cabinet, in May, took the ministers around Lanarkshire and Glasgow area as they announced extra funding for the Clyde Gateway regeneration project.

More than 40 such meetings have taken place in recent years in towns and cities including Cupar, Dumfries, Aberdeen, Alloa, Inverness, Ullapool, Oban and Greenock.

The meeting on Arran is the first island cabinet since the passage of the new islands legislation in May.

It comes after a difficult week for the First Minister, following public revelations about a civil service probe into allegations of sexual harassment made against her predecessor Alex Salmond.

These claims which date back to 2013, when Salmond was still in office, have since been handed onto police.

Sturgeon was facing calls at the weekend from opposition parties to suspend the former first minister from the SNP.