Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 28 January 2026
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the Scottish Spending Review 2026, how it plans to achieve a reduction of £384 million in 2026-27, £374 million in 2027-28 and £303 million in 2028-29 in efficiency savings in the health and social care portfolio, and how many jobs will be impacted each year as a result.
As set out in the Scottish Spending Review 2026, the majority of these efficiency and reform savings will come from the 3% target NHS Board recurring savings.
The NHS Scotland Finance Delivery Unit (FDU) is hosted by Scottish Government and aims to work with all NHS Boards to drive sustainable improvement, deliver insight and provide hands on capacity, for example, through the use of the ‘15 Box Grid’. Since the FDU was established in 2023, savings delivery in NHS Scotland has increased significantly, and recurring savings across NHS Scotland have doubled.
The FDU supports NHS Boards to achieve the 3% target by providing benchmarking and sharing best practice across NHS Boards. It also assesses local, regional and national opportunities, and sets the medium to long term financial forecast assumptions for NHS Scotland linking closely to the evolving work on reform.
On other operational efficiency and productivity savings, The Fiscal Sustainability Delivery Plan sets out measures and actions to deliver efficiencies including deprioritising lower impact spending and better targeting of existing resources. For example, we have established an Investment and Value Board to improve the evidence base for the impact of existing spending and new spending proposals, to drive evidence-based investment/disinvestment decisions.
Health efficiency and service renewal is also being taken forward through the NHS Scotland Operational Improvement Plan, the Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework, and Population Health Framework.
Our approach to health and social care reform and efficiency is multi-facetted, including service redesign, prevention and investment in technology. Our work on reform and change will be developed in partnership with trade union colleagues. It is not possible to provide the cumulative impact of all our actions on the number of jobs impacted each year.