Chamber and committees

The information as requested is not held centrally. The Scottish Government funds hundreds of organisations and does not monitor which organisations have campaigned for gender self-identification.

There are currently no plans to introduce direct dermatology referral pathways from community optometry and pharmacy.

Our Digital Dermatology programme has provided GPs across Scotland with access to a new app which allows them to securely use their own mobile device to attach an image to a dermatology referral. This has the potential to significantly reduce the dermatology waiting list by diverting 50% of patients each year either back to their GP with advice or direct to treatment through the creation of a digital triage process in secondary care.

The establishment of the National Social Work Agency is underway. It will be an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government and will be established by Spring 2026. The Agency will be created from within existing budgets and will not add any additional cost to the public purse. Future budgets will be subject to annual budget process.

Our flagship Childsmile programme has supported a reduction in child oral health inequality over the long term, with the latest National Dental Inspection Programme results showing that the gap between P1 children with no obvious tooth decay living in the most and least deprived areas, is at its lowest on record – decreasing from 32.2 percentage points in 2010 to 23.5 percentage points in 2024.

However we know there is more to do. We continue to invest in our flagship Childsmile programme, which offers universal oral health interventions including supervised toothbrushing, fluoride varnish application and dietary advice to children and young people in nurseries, early years schooling and in dental practices - with targeted interventions for children living in the most deprived areas.

Since 2022-23 we have provided additional annual funding of £1.85m to NHS Boards to scale up delivery of the Programme, including through the recruitment of additional Dental Health Support Workers who work directly with more vulnerable communities.

The following table provides data on proceedings and convictions for ‘having an article with a blade or point’. It is not possible to disaggregate these figures by the specific type of weapon involved.

The most recent information on proceedings and convictions is available for the financial year 2022-23.

Number of people prosecuted in Scottish courts for crimes related to having an article with a blade or point, where main charge, 2013-14 to 2022-23.

Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service are independent, operationally and constitutionally, from the Scottish Government.

The rising and increasingly complex prison population remains a major challenge as it does across the UK, and we are taking sustained action to reduce it. This includes the Prisoners (Early Release) Scotland Act 2025 which changes the point of release for some short-term prisoners and regulations to widen the use of home detention curfew. Additional funding of £25m over two years has been provided to increase the capacity of community justice services to support a sustained increase, where appropriate, in the use of alternatives to custody. This brings the total funding for community justice to £159m in 2025-26.

We have also established the independent Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission to review how custody and community-based interventions are used, with a focus on reducing crime, supporting rehabilitation, and ensuring a sustainable prison population. Final recommendations will be delivered by the end of 2025 and will inform further action in this area.

The establishment of the National Social Work Agency is underway. It will be an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government and will be established by Spring 2026. Plans and engagement on office locations are underway, in consultation with staff and the unions and will be finalised over the coming months.

The fiscal regime for offshore oil and gas, as well as the regulatory regimes for licensing and consenting, are all matters that are currently reserved to the UK Government.

We continue to call on the UK Government to listen carefully to concerns being expressed by businesses and trade bodies around the impacts of its Energy Profits Levy.

We are now awaiting the UK Government’s response to its recent consultation, which must clearly set out how a stable and long-term fiscal regime will be used to deliver business and investor certainty for the North Sea. The Energy Profits Levy was always supposed to be a temporary measure and we must see the earliest possible end date, as it is now affecting investment and jobs in the North East.

In 2023 the Scottish Government commissioned a Scottish Expert Advisory Group (SEAG) to inform implementation considerations for a targeted Lung Cancer screening programme.

The SEAG provided the Scottish Government with an evaluation of costs and set out detailed considerations around the scale of workforce, equipment and IT requirements. It acknowledged that UK-wide challenges securing both staff and equipment are potentially rate limiting factors, and these in part contribute to the overall time frame for rolling out a full programme. This reflects the experience of England, which has been piloting lung checks since 2019, but still anticipates national coverage will not be achieved until 2030.

The planned 2027 pilot will support a real world understanding of constraints and limitations, and will inform long term planning for national implementation. For further information on the pilot, I refer the member to the question S6W-40236 on 16 September 2025. 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.

It is unclear where the figure of a net loss of over 30,000 private landlords since the COVID-19 pandemic has come from.

The most recently published figures show a reduction in registered landlords of 6,644 from January 2022 to July 2025, although it should be noted that the number of registered properties has increased in during the same period. The latest Scottish Landlord Register data shows the number of registered properties for rent in Scotland between August 2022 and July 2025 has increased by 2.9%. Over the same period, the number of registered landlords has decreased by 2.4%.

While these changes may point to some landlords choosing to leave the sector, the evidence suggests that their properties are remaining in the sector, or new properties are being offered for rent.

It should be noted that there are some limitations to the administrative data from the landlord register, including the time-lag in landlords deregistering properties that are no longer available to rent. These statistics should therefore be treated with some caution.