Chamber and committees

These matters fall within the responsibility of train operators in their capacity as employers.

The Scottish Government is currently prioritising support for those households facing the greatest barriers to EV adoption, including those in rural and island communities who often face higher travel costs. This helps ensure limited public funding is directed where it can have the greatest impact. Eligibility criteria are reviewed and updated annually.

Where contingency analysis is prepared in relation to strategic businesses in Scotland such plans are not published to protect commercial interests.

I refer the member to the answer to question S7W-02426 on 2 September 2026. 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/written-questions-and-answers.

The Domestic Charge Point Fund is currently prioritising support for households in areas classified within categories 5 to 8 of the Scottish Government's Urban Rural Classification, in recognition of the additional barriers to EV adoption often faced in rural and island communities and to help ensure limited public funding is directed where it can have the greatest impact. Eligibility criteria are reviewed and updated annually.

Any recommendations made by the Office of Rail and Road regarding these matters are for train operators to consider.

Scottish Government engages with the UK Government regularly on the steel industry. Our priority is to see the plant operational.

We will outline our Income Tax policy decisions for 2027-28 in the Scottish budget on the 3 December 2026.

Our manifesto set out our ambition on income tax, including not increasing rates or number of bands, ensuring the majority of Scottish taxpayers can expect to pay less than those in the rest of the UK and our intention to simplify the system by the end of Parliament, with any future changes putting low and middle income earners first.

The Scotland on Tour programme supported 365 performances between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023, reaching a total audience of more than 20,300 people. The information requested for 2022 and 2023 separately is not available in the programme evaluation report which reports outcomes for the programme period as a whole. An evaluation report, the Scotland on Tour Final Report (August 2023), was produced by Active Events and assessed the outcomes of the programme.

The cancer waiting times standards were originally monitored against 10 major cancer groups: breast, colorectal, head and neck, lung, lymphoma, ovarian, melanoma, upper gastrointestinal, urological and cervical cancers. These were selected because they accounted for a large proportion of cancer cases and referrals, allowing meaningful performance measurement.

Many rarer cancers, such as endometrial cancer, have very small patient numbers, making quarterly reporting less statistically reliable and potentially raising patient confidentiality concerns when results are published by NHS Board and tumour type.

However, The Scottish Government commitment to ‘carrying out a clinically led review of latest data and evidence to determine whether there is merit in specific additional or alternative cancer waiting times standards for different types of cancer and cancer treatment’ is underway.

A project steering group is being established which will support the review, determining if any amendments to the standards would enhance patient experience and meet the needs of the NHS for the future.

Evidence review commissions were shared with key partners in April with the full clinical consensus review expected to conclude with recommendations within 18- 24 months.

Monitoring and accountability of standards of care for endometrial cancer is still provided through a number of different means including national set of Quality Performance Indicators (QPIs), developed through the Scottish cancer quality programme and overseen by Healthcare Improvement Scotland, with performance reported by Public Health Scotland. These indicators are used to support continuous quality improvement in cancer services across NHS Scotland.