Chamber and committees

In 2025-26, the Scottish Government allocated more than £150 million additional funding to health boards to help tackle the longest waits for planned care. This funding delivered thousands more appointments, operations and procedures in 2025-26 compared to 2024-25 and saw waits of over a year decrease by 49% for inpatient and day-case and by 76.7% for new outpatient appointments between 31 July 2025 and 31 July 2026.

This shows our plan is working and delivering for the people of Scotland and, although demand pressures remain, we are seeing the tangible impact of our investment.

We are determined to continue building on this momentum and have invested an additional £100 million this year to build on the progress made in the 2025-26 NHS Operational Improvement Plan. In July, the First Minister also announced a further £90 million to support those waiting the longest for treatment and help to create more capacity within our wider healthcare system.

The Programme for Government (PfG), published on 1 September, outlines our intention to continue investing in elective services over the next 5 years to grow capacity as we work towards meeting the 26 week wait target by the end of 2031, ahead of recovering the 12 week Treatment Time Guarantee and New Outpatient standard.

We are transforming health and care services so that people in Scotland receive the best treatment, care and support to stay healthy, independent and connected to their communities for as long as possible.

We will simplify the NHS by replacing the current 14 territorial Health Boards with two Strategic Health Boards that will cover the East and West of the country. These two new boards will be responsible for the planning and delivery of NHS services across the whole of Scotland, with particular focus on making sure provision best represents local communities, particularly our rural and island communities. Within this planning framework, the Strategic Health Boards East and West will support and oversee planning and performance, identifying further opportunities to increase capacity, improve access to services and reduce waiting times.

The Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme team continue to support NHS Boards including NHS Forth Valley, NHS Borders and NHS Lanarkshire, with a focus on promoting best practice, supporting innovation in care pathways and advising how challenges in service delivery can be addressed.

Through the governance arrangements of the Scottish National Audit Programme, each Health Board is held to account for its performance against the stroke standards. Where performance is a negative outlier, the board is required are asked to produce an action plan which is reviewed after six months. These action plans also inform discussions during each Stroke Improvement Programme board review.

The Scottish Government has not undertaken a formal assessment of the implications for NHS Scotland of the Fifth Universal Definition of Myocardial Infarction published in August 2026.

The implications of updated international definitions, guidance and standards are considered, where appropriate, through established clinical governance, audit, coding and guideline development processes.

While the University of Dundee is an autonomous institution and responsible for its own strategic and operational decisions, the Scottish Government expects compulsory redundancies to be considered only as a last resort, after all other cost-saving measures have been fully explored.

Through the Ministerial Direction issued under Section 25 of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) are responsible for monitoring the University of Dundee’s compliance with funding conditions published in March 2026, including in relation to meaningful engagement with staff and students, adherence to Fair Work principles and compulsory redundancy processes.

The SFC is also responsible for monitoring compliance of universities with Fair Work principles through annual reporting and accounts, and as part of their Outcomes Framework and Assurance Model and considers any appropriate interventions to support compliance.

I meet regularly with Education Scotland and local authority representatives to discuss a range of education policy and delivery matters.

As per answer to Parliamentary Question S7W-03170 on 21 September 2026 Education Scotland has published strengthened national guidance Learning to Read in the Early Years. That guidance makes it clear that systematic phonics, including synthetic approaches, is an essential and evidence-based method to promote decoding.

In addition, Education Scotland is strengthening the Literacy and English curriculum through the Curriculum Improvement Cycle. This will include a period of engagement and feedback in autumn 2026, providing an opportunity for a wide range of stakeholders to provide comment on that framework.

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.

Angela Constance: The Health and Care Improving Flow Plan 2026-2031recognises that hospitals often operate at high occupancy levels, which can contribute to delays in patient flow and longer waits for care. To address this, the Plan sets out a range of actions to improve the flow of patients into, through and out of hospital, supporting timely access to care and reducing unnecessary delays.

Reducing delayed discharge is a key priority within the Plan, as it plays an important role in improving patient flow and reducing hospital occupancy. The Plan will support the wider adoption of Discharge Without Delay, Home First and Discharge to Assess approaches, alongside enhanced system co-ordination and increased Hospital at Home capacity. Through these measures, we will continue to support NHS boards to reduce avoidable hospital occupancy, improve capacity and resilience, and ensure patients receive care in the most appropriate setting.

We will keep our approach to performance measurement under review as the Plan is implemented and as evidence emerges on the most effective ways to monitor and improve patient flow across the system.

The reasons for longer door-to-needle times out-of-hours vary between Boards but can include a lack of in-person stroke consultant presence, differences in radiology service provision, and increasingly busy stroke on-call rotas.

The Health and Care Improving Flow Plan 2026-2031 sets out a coordinated national response to reduce delayed discharge, improve urgent and unscheduled care performance, strengthen community alternatives and support faster, safer discharge from hospital. All hospital departments and the wider health and social care system have a part to play and must work collaboratively to improve patient flow through the system - thereby ensuring patients can receive the right care in the right place with no unnecessary delays to the patient journey.

The Plan includes implementing Discharge Without Delay principles across all territorial NHS Boards, with discharge planning beginning on day one of a hospital stay and setting up of Integrated Discharge Teams to support patients back home with the right support throughout the full week. The DWD Programme recognises that sustainable improvements in flow cannot be achieved through hospital-based interventions alone and require a whole-system approach involving community health services, primary care, social care, rehabilitation, reablement, Home First approaches and effective discharge planning.

The National Orthopaedic Plan is currently being finalised and will be published following completion of the necessary governance and ministerial approval processes. An announcement on publication will be made in due course.

The primary purpose of the National Orthopaedic Plan is to support NHS Boards to work more collectively to improve access to orthopaedic services, reduce variation, and make best use of available capacity across Scotland. Detailed modelling of the impact on activity levels, including additional activity delivered through implementation of the Plan, is ongoing and will be set out as appropriate following publication.

Funding arrangements to support implementation of the National Orthopaedic Plan are currently being considered as part of ongoing planning work. Further details will be set out in due course.

While the Scottish Government has not undertaken a specific assessment of whether women are more likely than men to experience delays in the diagnosis or treatment of a heart attack in Scotland, we recognise that there can be sex differences in the presentation, diagnosis and outcomes of heart attacks and remain committed to ensuring that all patients have equitable access to timely diagnosis, treatment and care following a suspected heart attack.

Through Public Health Scotland's Scottish Cardiac Audit Programme and dedicated myocardial infarction audit, which includes a number of measures reported by sex, including incidence, mortality and survival following heart attack. This enhanced audit will support ongoing monitoring of outcomes, identification of variation in care and outcomes, and quality improvement activity across NHS Scotland.