Chamber and committees

The Bank makes commercial investments in businesses or projects in line with the three strategic missions set for it by Scottish Ministers:

• Achieving a Just Transition to net zero carbon emissions by 2045
• Extending equality of opportunity through improving places by 2040
• Harnessing Innovation to enable our people to flourish by 2040

The Bank has operational and administrative independence over its investment decisions, and is represented on the Grangemouth Investment Taskforce.

We want patients to be treated as soon as possible. However, we know many are facing unacceptable waits and we are determined to do more. That is why we are targeting an additional £200 million to reduce waits and enhance capacity. Funding of £106m has already been agreed with Boards to improve waiting times during 2025-26.

We are also looking to optimise the full force of the £21.7 billion committed through the Scottish Budget to health and social care to improve performance.

We will continue to target resources to reduce waiting times, particularly for those waiting longest for treatment, through maximising productivity and additional resources.

This is all part of our programme to drive up productivity and tackle waiting lists, supported by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery. Together, our actions will further enable NHS Scotland to maximise capacity, build greater resilience and deliver reductions in the number of patients who have waited too long for treatment.

The Finance and Public Administration Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into the cost effectiveness of Scottish Public Inquiries. I wrote to the Committee on 30 May 2025 providing a detailed response to their request for information from Scottish Government in relation to its role as sponsor of current and previous public inquiries. This response noted that Section 17 of the Inquiries Act 2005 confers responsibility for the procedure and conduct of an inquiry on its Chair, independent of Ministers, and that this includes a statutory requirement for a Chair to act 'with regard to the need to avoid any unnecessary cost (whether to public funds or to witnesses or others)'.

Assessment of value for money would therefore be a matter for a Chair of an inquiry to consider as they deem appropriate within the overall duty to avoid unnecessary cost, and those inquiries which are currently ongoing have responded independently to the call for evidence received from the Committee on costs. Responses are published on the Committee pages of the Scottish Parliament website.

The findings and conclusions of the Committee's inquiry will be considered once known.

We must recognise that our health service has experienced unprecedented pressures over the past few years, including pandemic backlogs, staff shortages and the most difficult winter the NHS has ever faced, with the pausing of all non-emergency treatment inevitably leading to planned care delays and an increase in waiting times.

We have remobilised services but understand that activity levels are still lower than we would wish them to be. Patients requiring urgent care, including cancer treatment, are being prioritised. The Scottish Government remains committed to delivering reductions in waiting times.

Our Budget will provide a record £21.7 billion for health and social care. More than £106 million has been allocated to health boards to help tackle the longest waits for procedures and operations.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes statistics on the length of time patients wait to be seen as a new outpatient or admitted for treatment as an inpatient or day case in the Stage of Treatment (SoT) publication. The latest publication release contains data up to quarter ending 31 March 2025.

At 31 March 2025, there were 5,262 waits over two years for an outpatient appointment.

Trend information of the wait experienced by patients whilst still on the waiting list (ongoing waits) can be found in the ‘Waits over 52 weeks’ data table in sheets ‘Table 3.1.1’ for new outpatient appointments, and ‘Table 3.2.1’ for inpatient or day case admissions. The data is ongoing from 31 December 2019 onwards and can be filtered by health board and specialty: waits_over_52_weeks_may25.xlsx

Reforms to electricity transmission infrastructure and grid capacity reforms are reserved to the UK Government. We welcome the UK Government’s mission to accelerate development of grid infrastructure to deliver Clean Power by 2030. Actions to increase capacity and facilitate quicker connections to the grid are critical to enabling our just transition to net zero.

A grid that is fit for the demands of the future is vital and long overdue. We need to ensure the power generated from increasingly renewable sources can be transported to where it is needed – to our homes, businesses, and communities across Scotland and Great Britain. The Scottish Government will play its part in ensuring the Energy Consent Unit has the capacity to deal with all future applications regarding transmission and electricity generation development.

Forestry in Scotland is guided by the principles of sustainable forestry management set out in the UK Forestry Standard (UKFS) requirements and guidelines and must also operate within the legal requirements regarding biodiversity and wider environmental impacts. Scottish Forestry is the Scottish Government’s agency tasked with regulation and policy advice for forestry. Any felling must either comply with a felling permission granted by SF or be carried out as part of an approved long term management plan. Techniques, such as whole tree harvesting, are only suitable on certain sites and guidance is available to ensure that it is carried out in a sustainable manner. All new woodland creation projects are assessed against the evidence-based UKFS which represents the governments approach to sustainable forestry.

Our immediate priority is to capitalise on the near term opportunities set out in Project Willow, with a focus on bringing forward new jobs at Grangemouth as quickly as possible. The Grangemouth investment taskforce is delivering on this priority by working with businesses with an interest in developing projects aligned to those suggested in Project Willow.

Resource Planning Assumptions (RPAs) support the delivery of local authority priorities as identified in their Strategic Housing Investment Plan (SHIP). Due to the challenging post-Covid delivery climate, delivery partners were not able to use the £724.268 million available capital allocated through resource planning assumptions in 2021-22, and actual spend was £613.169 million. In 2025-26 we are making available £660.064 million through resource planning assumptions for local authorities. Affordable Housing Supply Programme: resource planning assumptions - gov.scot

Information on actual spend by local authority compared to RPA is available in Table 2 of our 2021-22 annual out-turn report: Affordable Housing Supply Programme: out-turn report 2021-2022 - gov.scot. Whilst the published RPA for Glasgow City in 2021-22 was £120.578 million, in the 2021-22 out-turn report it is recorded as £129.030 million as this included £3.741 million for the Govanhill Acquisition Programme and £4.711 million for the Glasgow Housing Association Wheatley Bond.

The 2025-26 Affordable Housing Supply Programme budget of £768 million represents an increase of more than £211 million (38%) when compared to the 2024-25 original published budget of £556 million. This is an increase of more than £181 million capital (44%) and an increase of more than £30 million (63%) in financial transactions. The 2025-26 budget more than reinstates the affordable housing supply programme to 2023-24 levels, with £15.8 million more being available to invest when compared to 2023-24.

We continue to work with partners to increase the delivery of more affordable homes, the majority of which will be for social rent, including meeting the existing commitment to the targeted use of £40 million for acquisitions.

Project Willow sets out what could be possible at Grangemouth if the public and private sectors work together. Scottish Enterprise is triaging proposals from private sector developers and investors. As set out in their 2025- 2028 operating plan, Scottish Enterprise is driving investment at Grangemouth with a view to creating up to 800 direct jobs in low carbon fuels and sustainable manufacturing across the industrial cluster by 2028.