Chamber and committees

Information on Care at Home hours is not held centrally. Instead, Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) submit data to Public Health Scotland (PHS), detailing the number of hours of Care at Home services received. This data is published annually and can be accessed via the following link: Dashboard - Care at Home Hours Planned/Received.

The Scottish Government does not centrally hold information on assessed needs. In addition to the annual data, HSCPs also provide PHS with a weekly snapshot of the current demand for Care at Home services. This includes information on the total number of care hours people are waiting to receive following an assessment of their needs. This data is available at: Dashboard - People requiring a social care assessment and care at home services.

The Scottish Government’s human rights due diligence guidance sets out recommendations on how we, our executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies should undertake due diligence on an individual or company’s human rights record before entering into an investment relationship.

It is for the accountable officer of each agency and non-departmental public body to ensure that their organisation complies with guidance issued by Scottish Ministers.

Scottish Enterprise is progressing in its work on its review and the Scottish Government continues to stay in close contact with Scottish Enterprise on this. I will update Parliament and wider stakeholders once the review has concluded.

In her role as Chair of the Working Group, Baroness Kennedy was paid £109,117.20.

Publication costs associated with Working Group totalled £8,182.18, and a further £600 was spent on venue hire for the Report findings launch.

Aside from Baroness Kennedy’s fee, members or advisors of the Working Group were not remunerated.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all people living in Scotland with long term conditions including Chronic Kidney Disease are able to access the best possible care and support, and benefit from healthcare services that are safe, effective and put people at the centre of their care.

We are running our public consultation on the Long Term Conditions Framework from 23 April to 20 July 2025. This is available at Health: Long Term Conditions Framework - Scottish Government consultations - Citizen Space.

We will take the results of the consultation into account when developing the framework which will include identifying areas where targeted condition-specific action will still be needed.

Detailed requirements were outlined by Scottish Government in DL23 (2024) providing guidance on the development of NHS Board Anti-Racism plans was issued to Health Boards on 9 September 2024. This guidance requires Health Board Anti-racism plans to focus on equity within the guidance to Health Boards and emphasises an anti-racism approach in addressing racialised healthcare inequalities.

The guidance challenges specific priorities, and aims to support aligned local and national actions, to tackle racialised health inequalities. By implementing these strategies and initiatives, the Scottish Government aims to create a more accessible, equitable, and patient-centred healthcare system for all, including Black and Minority Ethnic communities in Scotland.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) uses the national waiting times data mart to collect electronic patient records covering the waits that patients experience waiting for treatment as an inpatient or day case under the Treatment Time Guarantee. This data source can be used routinely to identify the specialty of treatment. However, although the records are designed to collect coded information on the procedure that is planned for the patient, this information is often either incomplete, lacking in essential detail and/or its accuracy cannot be assured. In addition, for patients who have completed their wait the procedures that was planned may not always reflect the procedure actually performed after they were admitted for treatment. The latter is not captured through the national data mart. Consequently, PHS is not currently able to report accurately on waiting times to this level of detail.

More detailed information on the procedures that is planned or undertaken for a patient will be held locally by NHS boards.

The Scottish Government monitors trends across the whole childcare sector, drawing on data published by the Care Inspectorate. In recent years the Scottish Government has published financial sustainability health checks and the Sustainable Rates Review, which considered issues relating to financial sustainability.

As part of the evidence gathering phase of the joint Scottish Government and COSLA Sustainable Rates Review, local authorities reported that “they had seen very little evidence of funded services in the private, third or childminding sectors reporting to them that they had been under financial duress or of services closing due to financial sustainability pressures”.

Under the Business Sustainability criteria in the National Standard for funded ELC, providers are required to demonstrate to the local authority that they are financially viable. If a service delivering funded ELC was at risk of closure due to financial difficulties, they would therefore be obliged to make their local authority aware.

The Scottish Government continues to work closely with the sector representative organisations and as part of this engagement we regularly receive updates from these organisations regarding pressures faced by their members. The representative organisations will often highlight any concerns in reports which draw on the responses from members to surveys (and these reports are usually available on the organisations’ website). For example, Early Years Scotland recently published a report highlighting the potential impact on providers as a result of the UK Government’s changes to Employer National Insurance Contributions.

The application window for the Scottish Upland Sheep Support Scheme (SUSSS) scheme year 2025 does not open until 1 September 2025.

In the following table, details are provided of the number of businesses that had a successful or unsuccessful application under the SUSSS in 2024, broken down by local authority area. Applications included as unsuccessful are those applications which were rejected as they did not meet the scheme eligibility criteria.

An independent review of the Community Learning and Development (CLD) landscape was commissioned in December 2023.

Following the review, the Learning: For All. For Life. report was published in July 2024 which set out 20 recommendations varying in complexity and scope. The report can be accessed at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/learning-life-report-independent-review-community-learning-development-cld/.

In December 2024, the Scottish Government and CoSLA accepted the first recommendation of the report to set up a CLD Strategic Leadership Group (SLG). The SLG are collectively considering the remaining recommendations of the report, including those relating to youth work.

In January 2024, we implemented a Scotland-wide policy reimbursing home dialysis patients for their extra electricity costs incurred in their treatment. At the time of implementation, there was a commitment to undertake a review 6-12 months later to ensure that the Policy had been fully applied across all NHS Boards. This Review has been completed and concluded that all Boards had reimbursement policies for eligible patients. This removes the financial disincentive to making a choice for home dialysis over in-centre treatments, allowing personal choice in where and how to receive treatment.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-38244 on 17 June 2025 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/questions-and-answers.