Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government regularly engages with rural and island NHS Boards to ensure health workforce planning accounts for the unique recruitment and retention challenges faced in these areas. Any future expansion and improvement plans for Golden Hellos will be set out in due course.

Transport Scotland has yet to commence discussions with Glasgow City Council regarding the Clyde Tunnel.

These discussions will help inform the development of a range of options on how the manifesto offer to “take on responsibility for the maintenance of the Clyde Tunnel, freeing around £1 million of cost to the local authority…”, could practicably be delivered. This work will also consider responsibilities for discharging statutory duties and likely cost of these options.

Rail Recharged: Scotland’s Fleet Transition Strategy, published in November 2025, sets out how we will renew ScotRail fleets as they reach the end of their operational life in the coming years.

ScotRail is committed to ensuring its trains remain safe, reliable and fit for purpose. This is delivered through a programme of ongoing maintenance, periodic overhaul and targeted upgrades across its fleet. These activities are designed to sustain performance, extend asset life and enhance the passenger experience.

Improvements, including those made to class 158 trains so far, have involved upgrades to interiors, passenger information systems, and accessibility features, alongside technical modifications to support reliability and operational resilience.

This approach ensures the fleets can meet current service requirements while supporting wider objectives around passenger satisfaction and network performance.

The second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2) appraised a potential new rail link between the Highland Main Line (HML) and the West Highland Line (WHL). However, this option did not progress beyond the Preliminary Appraisal stage, and there are currently no plans to develop a direct connection between the two lines. Further information on STPR2 recommendations is available at:

Final technical report - December 2022 - STPR2 | Transport Scotlandappendix-g-groupings-related-to-recommendations-december-2022-stpr2.pdf

Transport Scotland continually reviews its programme of works against priorities in the context of available funding. This ensures it can deliver the right projects at the right time as it seeks to progress its rolling programme of decarbonisation, whilst also delivering rail passenger and freight services that meet user expectation.

In June 2025 we published the Medium-Term Financial Strategy and the Fiscal Sustainability Delivery plan.

The Medium-Term Financial Strategy provided our assessment of the scale of the fiscal challenge over the next five years. This was £2.6 billion for resource spending and £2.1 billion for capital spending by 2029-30.

The Fiscal Sustainability Delivery Plan set out clear actions we would take to close the resource deficit, through driving forward reform and efficiencies and having a robust focus on public spending, identifying up to £2.9 billion of resource budget savings within the MTFS period. The progress of the Fiscal Sustainability Delivery Plan is monitored through internal quarterly reporting, supported by a robust governance framework. Progress on the FSDP measures will be reported externally on alongside the next Medium-Term Financial Strategy.

Building on the actions set out in the FSDP, we published Portfolio Efficiency and Reform Plans alongside the 2026 Scottish Spending Review, which set out around £1.5 billion of savings by 2028-29. These will drive efficiencies through shared corporate platforms, consolidation of public bodies, estates rationalisation and accelerated digital delivery – for example, extending ScotAccount and the NHS Digital Front Door, and moving 25% of correspondence to digital by 2030 (saving at least £100 million a year).

To address the capital spending gap, we published the Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline which is underpinned by prioritisation decisions and capital spending plans set out in the 2026 Scottish Spending Review. It sets out an affordable and deliverable pipeline of investment for the next four years.

Timetable development is a complex and iterative process and primarily a matter managed by ScotRail working in collaboration with Network Rail and other passenger and freight operators. Network Rail considers key constraints such as headways (safe spacing between trains), junction margins, and platform availability (headways, junction margins, and platform availability can be particular constraints on the approaches to and inside in busy stations such as Glasgow Central). Transport Scotland ensures that Scottish Government policies and strategies inform service planning decisions.

As announced in Parliament on 03 March 2026, CMAL, as Procuring Authority for the MV Lord of The Isles replacement project, will follow the industry standard two stage competitive procurement. Following the initial SPD stage, qualifying shipyards able to bid for the contract. Scottish Ministers play no part in the procurement process.

Also announced on 03 March was our intention to direct award vessels from the next phase of the Small Vessel Replacement Programme to Ferguson Marine as part of a wider suite of publicly funded vessel projects, subject to the necessary due diligence and processes.

I refer the member to the answer to question S7W-00174 on 5 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

Local authorities are encouraged to consider any specific housing requirements relating to key workers in the area. The definition of key workers is determined by individual local authorities based on local priorities. Local Housing Strategy Guidance sets out how local authorities are expected to take the needs of Key workers into account including through specific policies, including allocations. There is no one size fits all approach and it is for local authorities to set their own policies. Key workers can include doctors, nurses, teachers and police officers but also extends to private sector businesses, both temporary and permanent staff.

The Scottish Government would expect to see support for key workers set out in a local authority’s Local Housing Strategy and Strategic Housing Investment Plan, including any projects to be delivered through the Rural Affordable Homes for Key Workers Fund.

The Scottish Government remains committed to the Aberdeen to Central Belt Enhancement project.

The timescales for the Aberdeen to Central Belt Service Improvement project remain under review and will be subject to investment decisions based on a Final Business Case. In terms of affordability, it has been determined that the project, and associated benefits, can be delivered in a phased manner with the first of those phases being the section from Dundee to Arbroath. This has been communicated to stakeholders including Nestrans and Aberdeen City Council via its City Region Deal Joint Committee.