The work by the Promise Scotland an excellent starting point for consideration of how to address challenges in our current legislative landscape. The Independent Review of Scotland’s Legislative Framework for Children’s Care will build upon that work, not replicate, and will engage widely across the Children’s services landscape. It is vital that this engagement takes place in order to produce clearer commendations on how best to make the maximum practical difference, including potential legislative change, to children and families, and those involved in the care and support of children, aligning with the principles of The Promise, UNCRC, and GIRFEC.

The Review will run until January 2027, with findings to be published on conclusion.

The Scottish Government remains committed to ensuring that people living with dementia and their families have access to consistent, high-quality care and support throughout every stage of their condition.

To support these ambitions, the 2026-27 budget includes record funding of £22.5 billion to health and social care, including supporting the pay uplift for our valued adult social care workforce. The budget also delivers a real terms increase of £700m in the Local Government Settlement between 2025-26 and 2026-27, taking this to over £15.7 billion. This includes an investment of over £2.3 billion for social care, exceeding our commitment to increase funding by 25% by the end of this Parliament.

As part of the national Dementia Strategy and first two-year Delivery Plan, which is jointly being taken forward with COSLA, the voices of lived experience, local and national delivery partners, we have prioritised efforts to ensure the right supports are available in our communities. This helps people living with dementia to access care in the setting of their choice and helps reduce the need for more intensive health and social care interventions for any longer than is clinically necessary. To support these ambitions, we have invested across the lifetime of the Delivery Plan around £1.45 million to increase direct support to dementia community groups and settings nationally, and £7 million via Health and Social Care Partnerships to increase the number of people who benefit from our commitment to a minimum of 12 months’ Post-Diagnostic Support.

The Scottish Government also recognises the invaluable role of care partners and unpaid carers, including those supporting people living with dementia. To help sustain and improve the health and wellbeing of carers across Scotland, we are progressing the Carers Act to further enhance and extend the rights of adult and young carers by investing £88.4 million per year in local carer support through Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 funding; £600,000 in 2025-26 for local carers centres in addition to local authority funding; and £13 million this year for the voluntary Short Breaks Fund.

While the commissioning of local services appropriately sit with local authorities, so that they can best respond to and meet local need, we are focused on wider social care reform and the National Care Service to improve people’s lives. The Care Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 and the new National Care Service Advisory Board, alongside other national programmes including GIRFE, Coming Home, the Self-directed support improvement plan and Support in the Right Direction funding, are all playing a part to improve services across Scotland and will be vital pillars in the National Care Service going forward. These programmes all work towards ensuring that people living with dementia receive the support they need.

Following the parliamentary question asked on 24 January 2022, Public Health Scotland (PHS) published a statistical report in May 2022 on inpatient deaths for patients with learning disabilities and autism at the request of the Scottish Government. The full report can be found on the PHS website:

https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/psychiatric-care-inpatient-deaths-for-patients-with-learning-disabilities-and-autism.

The first phase of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) self-sampling pilot within the cervical screening programme will begin in some of Scotland’s most deprived areas within the Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Arran, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and Lothian health board areas. Eligible women who have never, or have rarely, attended a cervical screening appointment will be offered a self-sampling kit when they visit participating GP practices. Following this initial phase, the pilot will expand into additional GP practices and healthcare settings within these health boards.

The learning from this pilot will be used to inform the national roll out of self-sampling, which is currently in the planning stages. This work will play a key role in increasing uptake of the cervical screening programme, supporting Scotland’s ambition to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040.

We want people who need continence support to receive the care that is right for them and their medical circumstances, including those with palliative care needs.

Patient assessment and the subsequent prescription of continence products are typically the responsibility of local continence teams given their specialist knowledge. GPs would not be expected to play a role in the prescription of continence products after a patient has been referred to, and assessed by, the Board’s continence team. Given this, we would expect any changes to a patient’s prescription to be agreed by the continence team to ensure that the new product is appropriate for the patient and will fully meet their needs.

It is also important to reflect that community Practitioner Nurse Prescribers (who are mainly district nurses, specialist community public health nurses (formerly health visitors), and school nurses) with prescribing qualifications known as v100 or v150 qualifications, can prescribe any appliance or reagent in the relevant Drug Tariff from the Nurse Prescribers Formulary (NPF) for Community Practitioners, including incontinence appliances to help ensure that patients are supported appropriately and their dignity is respected. As such we currently have no plans to review prescribing powers.

The Scottish Government is considering proposals for amendments to the Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 proposed by a joint review by the Ethical Standards Commissioner and Standards Commission. As the same Act would need to be amended via primary legislation to expand statutory suspension provisions for councillors, it may be possible for this to be considered as part of any future amendments to the 2000 Act.

As recognised in the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, it is necessary to maintain appropriate space for Ministers to receive advice from officials. The Scottish Government therefore would not release such material. The statement I delivered to Parliament on the 2026-27 Scottish Budget, on 13 January 2026, is available online at the following link: Scottish Budget 2026-2027: Finance Secretary's statement - 13 January 2026 - gov.scot. The status of the A9 and A96 is set out in the Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline, annexes A and B, which is available at the following link: Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline 2026 - gov.scot.

Financial monitoring requirements, as set out in legislation and statutory guidance, apply to Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) for functions that are delegated to IJBs.

IJBs commission palliative care services, including independent hospices, to meet the needs of their local communities. This commissioned work is set out through service level agreements, which include monitoring and reporting requirements as set by the IJB.

Details of brokerage received by individual NHS Boards in 2024-25 are contained within each Board’s published 2024-25 Annual Report and Accounts, and publicly available Board papers.

During Stage 3 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill Scottish Ministers committed to explore how non-domestic rates reliefs, particularly Small Business Bonus Scheme relief, can be better targeted.

Following consideration and engagement through the budget process, the draft Budget for 2026-27 set out that shootings and deer forests will be excluded from eligibility for Small Business Bonus Scheme relief and Fresh Start relief, with prescribed exclusions. For example, where shooting rights in shootings or deer forests are exercised solely for the purposes of environmental management, eligibility for Small Business Bonus Scheme will be maintained.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission, which is responsible for forecasting non-domestic rates income, has judged that the removal of some shootings and deer forests from eligibility for the Small Business Bonus Scheme falls below their materiality threshold.

To support deer management we have provided funding via pilot projects over the last few years intended to trial methods of supporting deer management and will continue to consider how we best provide support to deer managers directly.

We are aware of the concerns raised by the rural sector and will ensure these concerns are considered before the regulations are laid, to come into force, on 1 April.