Chamber and committees

The establishment of the National Acquisition Programme (NAP), was backed by investment of at least £60 million from local authority resource planning assumptions within the Affordable Housing Supply Programme in 2023-24 to help to reduce the number of households in temporary accommodation. A total of £83.146 million was spent through the National Acquisition Programme in 2023-2024. The NAP enables local authorities and registered social landlords to acquire properties of the right types, in the right places, in line with their strategic priorities.

The following table provides a breakdown of how much each grant applicant received and the corresponding percentage of this spend when compared to the total spend figure of £83.146 million.

This commitment will be funded through reprioritisation of the existing overall Scottish budget, with a number of areas currently being reviewed. This will be reflected through the normal parliamentary budget review and approval process.

The Women’s Health Plan Foreword by the Minister for Public Health, Women's Health and Sport - Women's health plan - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) sets out the Scottish Government’s ambition for Women’s Health which is that ‘women and girls enjoy the best possible health, throughout their lives’ - this ambition is not limited to the lifespan of the current Plan.

The current iteration of the Women’s Health Plan comes to a close in August 2024. The Women's Health Plan First Women's health plan: progress report - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) and Women's health plan: second annual progress report - January 2024 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) Second Annual Reports on Progress set out the progress on implementing the Plan.

In order to dedicate the necessary effort to the delivery of the current Plan, work will begin on a successor to the Women’s Health Plan after that time.

From September, consultation will take place with women and girls, including our lived experienced stakeholder group, clinical experts, academics and those working in the women’s health arena on the content of the policy.

During the interim phase between the end of the current policy and the development of future policy, work will continue to improve women’s health driving forward the ambitions, aims and longer term actions of the current Women’s Health Plan.

We recognise the financial challenges faced by all students, including nursing and midwifery students, and know that this has been exacerbated by the current cost of living crisis.

At this juncture, there are no definitive plans to increase the student nurse bursary, however, following the publication of the Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) report ‘Nursing Student Finance: the true cost of becoming a nurse’ improvements have been made in response to the recommendations within the report surrounding student clinical placement expenses (which include travel and accommodation costs). Those improvements were taken forward in collaboration with the RCN and further work is planned to review the full package of support for those in receipt of the nursing, midwifery and paramedic student bursary. This work will be taken forward in conjunction with the Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce, which will shortly be making recommendations about the education and development of students and the existing workforce as part of its’ wider remit to make Scotland the best place to be a nurse or midwife.

The Scottish Government package of support for Scottish student nurses and midwives is at its highest level and remains the highest level of support available to nursing and midwifery students across the UK. The annual £10,000 bursary is non-means tested and non-repayable. Eligible pre-registration students also receive free tuition and funding for placement expenses – this includes travel and where appropriate accommodation expenses. Furthermore, uniforms, disclosure checks and health checks are also provided.

Students may also choose to explore registering with the Bank of healthcare workers at local NHS Boards which can provide a variety of paid opportunities, indeed many already take this up to supplement their income and experience. Whilst Bank work does not provide guaranteed work, it allows NHS Boards to offer students employment as and/or when the need arises in their local area. Once a student is registered with the Bank some Boards may also offer students a part time fixed term contract at a maximum of 15 hours per week. The opportunities which are available will vary between Boards, depending on their current and future requirements.

The Scottish Government does not hold the detail of this funding. Local decisions on how to allocate funding is the responsibility of NHS Boards.

The 2024-25 Budget provides funding of over £19.5 billion for NHS recovery, health and social care – giving our NHS a real terms uplift and providing over £14.2 billion investment in our NHS Boards.

This Budget continues to support prevention and early intervention which is critical to addressing system challenges and longer term reform, with key investment including:

• Supporting investment in excess of £10 billion for the NHS paybill to support the workforce including Allied Health Professionals and which has rewarded NHS staff in recent years during the cost of living crisis. The budget for the NHS workforce is not allocated by workforce group.
• £2 billion for social care and integration, an additional £1 billion compared to 2021-22 spend. This delivers on our Programme for Government commitment to increase social care spending by 25% over this Parliament two years ahead of our original target.
• Over £2.1bn for primary care, which includes funding for Allied Health Professionals, to improve preventative care in the community, supporting the development of multidisciplinary teams in general practice, sustaining NHS dental care through enhanced fees and continuing free eye examinations.
• Supporting spend in excess of £1.3 billion to support mental health services, with £290.2 million direct investment – more than doubled since 2020/21 - enabling record numbers of staff in providing more varied support and services to a larger number of people than ever before.
• Sustaining increased funding to address the twin public health emergencies of drugs deaths and the harms from alcohol, by maintaining our commitment to provide an additional £250 million funding over the life of this parliament to address the drugs death emergency.
• Protecting those most at risk with increased investment of over 55% for our routine childhood and adult vaccination programmes.

Scottish Government officials are engaging with National Grid on the Project Union initiative exploring the phased repurposing of the UK’s natural gas National Transmission System (NTS) to create a UK hydrogen backbone carrying 100% hydrogen. Decisions on the future of the Gas Grid are a reserved matter and are expected to be made in 2026 by the UK Government. We continue to routinely engage with UKG on a range of hydrogen policy matters including recent consultations on Transport and Storage Hydrogen Business Models

SGN are core members of the Scottish Hydrogen Industry Forum.

The Prince of Wales Nursing Cadet Scheme has been successfully piloted in NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Tayside, with evaluations demonstrating positive experiences for both participants and NHS placement staff. Learning and good practice from these pilots has been shared with health boards.

The role of the Nursing Cadet Scheme is being considered by the Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce in anticipation of the Taskforce providing recommendations on, inter alia , opportunities for attracting new entrants into nursing and midwifery careers, to support in building a sustainable and attractive workforce for the future.

We are convinced that hydrogen will play an important role as an energy storage and balancing asset to the wider energy system electricity and gas grids as the share of renewable generation continues to increase.

We published a report in 2023 which can be found here investigating the options for storing energy in the form of hydrogen in Scotland and its potential for reducing curtailment of renewable energy and the role of hydrogen peaking power plants for electricity generation during times of low renewable energy generation.

The study found that hydrogen storage will play an important role in balancing an energy system that has large amounts of intermittent renewable energy. These findings have informed our position and engagement on strategic programme discussions such as the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA) and Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) and the ESO Constraints Collaboration project, which is seeking solutions for thermal constraints, which can reduce costs to the consumer or reduce the curtailment of renewable generation.

The Scottish Government remains committed to improving the A96. This is despite stark challenges we face as a result of the severe budgetary restrictions imposed by the UK Government including an almost 9% cut in our capital budget.

The current plan is to fully dual the route and as part of this process we are undertaking a transparent, evidence-based review of the programme, which includes a climate compatibility assessment and other statutory assessments.

The significant interest in the review’s initial consultation, with nearly 4,600 responses, generated 11,000 options to improve the corridor. It is only right that appropriate time has been taken in order to properly examine and fully appraise these.

It is expected that the draft outcomes from the Review, including the climate compatibility assessment, will be consulted on in the coming months, before a final decision can be reached.

This is an operational matter for ScotRail.