Chamber and committees

Health Boards continue to report rising demand for health services as a result of Scotland's ageing population and the increasing acuity and complexity of patients' care needs.

Hospital at Home is designed to provide acute-level care in a person's own home where it is clinically safe and appropriate to do so, offering an alternative to inpatient admission. Evidence from Public Health Scotland and Healthcare Improvement Scotland shows that the programme is enabling increasing numbers of people to receive treatment at home and avoid a hospital stay.

Public Health Scotland's latest publication (June 2026) shows that NHS Boards continue to expand capacity, with more than 7,500 patients receiving Hospital at Home care between February and April 2026. The report also highlights a 20% increase in the number of patients treated across Hospital at Home services between November 2025 and April 2026.

I refer the Member to the answer to question S7W-00647 on 11 June 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 Scottish Government routinely monitors property market activity, including residential transactions subject to Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT), and considers a wide range of evidence when developing tax policy.

The decision to move home is influenced by a range of factors, including housing availability, household circumstances, mortgage costs and wider economic conditions.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring the people of Scotland can access NHS services that meet their needs and provide the highest standard of care. Patients are at the heart of our NHS, and everyone in Scotland has the right to expect safe, appropriate and person-centred healthcare. Hospital at Home is an important part of Scotland's wider approach to improving patient flow and reducing avoidable hospital admissions, particularly for older people who would otherwise require an acute hospital bed.

While it is not possible to attribute changes in Emergency Department waiting times to any single intervention, evidence shows that Hospital at Home is helping to reduce demand on hospital services. During 2025/26, more than 17,000 people aged 65 and over received care through Hospital at Home, avoiding a hospital admission. Public Health Scotland data also shows continued growth in activity, with over 7,500 patients treated between February and April 2026 and a 20% increase in the number of patients treated between November 2025 and April 2026.

Emergency Department performance is influenced by a range of factors across the whole health and social care system, including unscheduled care demand, hospital occupancy levels, delayed discharge and workforce pressures. The expansion of Hospital at Home therefore forms part of a broader programme of reform aimed at improving patient flow and reducing pressure on acute services. Together, these measures are intended to improve patient flow across the system and support reductions in Emergency Department waiting times.

We continue to monitor and evaluate the contribution of Hospital at Home and other improvement programmes as part of our wider efforts to improve patient flow and reduce pressures across Scotland's health and care system.

Questions regarding day-to-day operational matters of Historic Environment Scotland, including queries relating to any research regarding vacant listed buildings, are best answered directly by Historic Environment Scotland.

I have asked Historic Environment Scotland to respond directly to the member in writing.

We continue to work closely with Healthcare Improvement Scotland and Public Health Scotland to monitor and review the progress of the Hospital at Home programme.

On the 1 September, as part of the Programme for Government, the First Minister announced the Scottish Government’s intention to simplify the NHS by replacing the current 14 territorial Health Boards with two Strategic Health Boards and build on planned reforms to further reduce the number of special Health Boards.

This work will be done with the workforce, not to the workforce. We remain fully committed to partnership working and will work closely with trade unions throughout this process.

For NHS staff the principal change will, in due course, be the transfer of their employment from their current Board to one of the new NHS Boards.

Staff in NHS Scotland continue to receive the best reward package in the UK, and pay, terms and conditions will remain the same, all underpinned by the Scottish Government’s Fair Work principles, and our ongoing commitment to no compulsory redundancies.

Any future workforce changes will be done in full partnership with NHS Trade Unions in a structured and managed way, in line with existing NHS Scotland policies which have been agreed in partnership with trade unions.

I refer the Member to the answer to question S7W-00647 on 11 June 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.

As per answer to Parliamentary Question S7W-03170 on 21 September 2026, Education Scotland's professional learning resource, Learning to Read in the Early Years (2024), identifies systematic phonics as a critical component of early reading instruction and reflects current research on effective reading teaching.

As part of the work to develop that guidance, Education Scotland examined a range of research evidence. This includes research by McGeown, Johnston and Medford (2012), which found that reading instruction can influence the cognitive skills that support early reading development, and McGeown, Medford and Moxon (2013), which identified evidence that systematic synthetic phonics approaches may be particularly beneficial for some learners, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Key sources of evidence and research are as follows:

McGeown, SP., Medford, E., and Moxon, B (2013) ‘Individual differences in children's reading and spelling strategies and the skills supporting strategy use’,Learning and Individual Differences, 28, pp. 75-81.

McGeown, S., Johnston, R., and Medford, E (2012) ‘Reading instruction affects the cognitive skills supporting early reading development’, Learning and Individual Differences, 22, pp. 360-264.

Castles, A., Rastle, K., and Nation, K (2018) ‘Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert’, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), pp. 5–51.

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 Scottish Government does not hold the information requested. This would be an operational matter for First Glasgow, the operator of the Glasgow Airport Express service.