Chamber and committees

The Women’s Health Plan sets out that healthcare for women should be holistic, inclusive, respectful, centred around the individual and responsive to their needs and choices.

In 2023, we carried out research on ‘Women's experiences of discrimination and the impact on health ’ so that we can better understand the lived experience of women and girls in Scotland and the discrimination they have experienced when seeking healthcare.

Through the Women’s Health Platform on NHS Inform we have created resources that can be used by women and girls and healthcare professionals to support shared decision making and a patient centred approach. This includes symptom questionnaires on menopause and menstrual health and clinical tools such as the Endometriosis Care Pathway and the Heavy Menstrual Bleeding Pathway to support informed discussions and provide better understanding of the next steps on a healthcare journey.

We have also funded the development of educational resources to support health professionals to learn more about menstrual health, endometriosis and menopause, the symptoms and treatment options.

The Scottish Government has commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to develop a set of maternity standards, designed to drive improvements in care at a local level and support consistency of service design and delivery across Scotland. This process has started, and we expect the standards to be completed in late 2025.

In addition, we welcomed the announcement from Healthcare Improvement Scotland in 2024 that they would initiate inspections of maternity services as part of the Safe Care Inspection process. These inspections started in late January 2025.

Our Best Start programme described a range of measures to improve care, the vast majority of which are now in place. We continue to work closely with NHS Boards, clinical leaders, the third sector and national partners to share learning, respond to emerging evidence and identify opportunities for continuous improvement at the national level.

For disability benefit applications, Social Security Scotland requires one piece of supporting evidence on an individual’s condition or disability to understand the impact their condition has on their daily life.

Applicants can request Social Security Scotland collects supporting evidence on their behalf. While gathering this information can take time, it allows for robust decision-making.

Social Security Scotland works with Local Authorities, Health Boards and GP practices across the country to make it faster and easier for them to send supporting information. Social Security Scotland also encourages people to provide supporting information which they may not realise they have, such as prescription lists, medical reports, and social care assessments.

The Adult and Child Disability Payment application forms also invite clients to tell Social Security Scotland about any supporting information to allow their application to be processed more efficiently. Supporting Information can be uploaded digitally or sent to Social Security Scotland in the post.

Social Security Scotland has a dedicated application route for terminally ill children and young people, and anyone in Scotland diagnosed with a terminal illness by their healthcare professional can apply for disability benefits under Special Rules for Terminal Illness.

Social Security Scotland has reduced processing times for disability benefits, with latest statistics showing decisions on new applications have been made faster than the previous financial year. Latest statistics can be found at: Social Security Scotland - Statistics.

Ministers listened closely to the sector in the development of this year’s budget, and we are investing over £1.1 billion in university teaching and research. In addition, the Scottish Government has made a further £25m of funding available to the Scottish Funding Council to support the sector in mitigating financial challenges.

The Scottish Funding Council monitors financial sustainability across the sector and Ministers have confidence in their ability and expertise. There are many factors impacting universities at the present time, including UK migration policies and the UK Government’s increase to employer national insurance contributions. The latter is estimated to cost Scottish universities over £48 million.

The Scottish Government has made £25m of funding available to the Scottish Funding Council to support the sector. The Scottish Funding Council has allocated £22m of this to the University of Dundee to support the university in addressing its immediate financial challenges.

The Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council will continue to explore all means possible and consider any reasonable asks to further support the University of Dundee as it develops a plan to secure a sustainable future. The Scottish Government will carefully consider any approaches for further emergency funding in relation to the financial challenges faced by the university.

The Scottish Government would be willing to look at proposals from either the Scottish FA or SPFL. To date, we have not received any proposals.

We have no current plans for legislative change regarding battery energy storage systems. Our Fourth National Planning Framework (NPF4) guides spatial development, sets out national planning policies, designates national developments and highlights regional spatial priorities. It is an integral part of the development plan and so influences planning decisions across Scotland. NPF4 Policy 11 part e) (energy) recognises that potential impacts on communities and individual dwellings, including residential amenity are important considerations in the decision making process and all applications are subject to site specific assessments.

Under the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, the statutory responsibility for the provision of education in Scotland rests with individual local authorities.

School catchment arrangements are a matter for individual local authorities, which have the responsibility to manage their own school estates in consultation with local communities.

Any proposal to redraw school catchment areas is subject to the requirements of the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010, which sets out clear procedures for public consultation to ensure that local communities have the opportunity to express their views.

There have been no discussions between Scottish Ministers and COSLA about the redrawing of school catchment areas – that is because a decision pertaining to changing catchment areas for Schools in Scotland is a matter for Local Authorities, not Scottish Ministers.

Through the actions in our Women’s Health Plan we have taken steps to support both women and health professionals to learn more about endometriosis, the symptoms and treatment options, so that waiting times for diagnosis can improve.

This includes the development of an Endometriosis Care Pathway for NHS Scotland; funding the development of educational resources for healthcare professionals and our Women’s Health Platform on NHS Inform which aims to provide women with the information and tools they need to make informed decisions about their health.

The Women’s Health Plan highlights the need to improve the data on women’s health. That is why we published the Women’s Health Plan Data Landscape Review in November 2024. Improving data on women’s health and on endometriosis will continue to be a priority as we develop the next phase of the Women’s Health Plan.

Information about the progress to date against each of the priorities in the Women’s Health Plan can be found in the Women’s Health Plan Final Report.

The Scottish Government have no plans to review the criteria for trunk roads. The extents of trunk road network was last considered in 2008 by the first Strategic Transport Projects Review with no changes noted.

The second Strategic Transport Projects Review, published in 2022, considered local roads to be “out of scope” unless they provided direct access to a major port or airport; linked to a nationally significant National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) development site; or where a local road intersected a trunk road where bus priority or active travel measures where proposed. None of these criteria applied to the A890.