Chamber and committees

This is a matter for Public Health Scotland who collate and manage this data.

Since its inception, excluding staff costs, 2.1% of the Techscaler budget spent to date has been invested in international activity, spotlighting Scotland’s growing reputation as a leading tech hub. This is helping our startups secure investment and compete in the international marketplace. Multiple export contracts have been secured, six participants have secured £5.4m of investment and several other firms are in dialogue with investors.

To ensure transparency and accountability, the Scottish Government commissioned an independent evaluation of the Techscaler programme following my committee appearance in 2024. EKOS were formally appointed in December 2024 to carry out this evaluation. The findings will be published in full and made publicly available by early 2026.

The latest available estimates from the Scottish Household Survey 2023 (available here: Households in Scotland by housing tenure: Scottish Household Survey, 2023 - gov.scot show that between 90,000-110,000 households are on housing lists and 7,000-14,000 of these households had applied for social housing using a choice based letting system or similar within the last year. These estimates include some households already living in social rented housing, looking to transfer to a different home. Estimates from the 2024 Scottish Household Survey are scheduled for publication at the end of 2025.

Legislation does not require Scottish Ministers to consult before using the Emergency Early Release (EER) power contained within the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993 (as inserted by Section 11 of the Bail & Release from Custody Act 2023) due to its emergency function.

Building owners should refer to the existing guidance on Large Panel System (LPS) buildings, which has been available for several years. This guidance supports the investigation of the building’s condition and structural performance, and where necessary, outlines appropriate mitigation measures.

The Scottish Government has no plan to commission an independent review of records retention and data gaps that affect the identification of people exposed to the pregnancy medication, stilbestrol (DES). This is because there was no central system for recording which medicines were prescribed for individuals available at that time and individual paper medical records from this period are unlikely to be retrievable which would make any such exercise extremely challenging.

Scottish Government maintains a regular dialogue with BDA Scotland; and is committed to addressing oral health inequalities.

The latest Public Health Scotland statistics to June 2025 show that NHS patient registration in SIMD 1 areas is higher than the Scotland-wide average. This report also indicates that children and adults from the most deprived areas were less likely to have had contact with NHS primary dental care than those living in more affluent areas.

The latest National Dental Inspection Programme results show 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.

The Scottish Government has established the sunbed safety group to review the existing sunbed regulations and procedures for enforcing those regulations.

As part of the group's work, the Scottish Government has worked with Young Scot, NHS Inform and education colleagues to produce information in an accessible format for younger adults. This includes a sunbed safety toolkit for pupil support teachers to discuss sun-safety with their students and published a new NHS inform page to promote awareness of sunbed and tanning safety which includes information about seeking medical advice for changes to your skin.

I don't recognise the member's timeframe of 3 months. As Independent Contractors, it is the responsibility of NHS dentists to manage their patient lists in line with clinical guidelines.

However, I can advise that the Scottish Government is taking several steps to improve access to NHS dental services across Scotland.

Public Health Scotland statistics published in August show that over 7 million courses of NHS dental treatment have been delivered to patients since the introduction of payment reform in November 2023, demonstrating that our policy is delivering on our aims to sustain NHS dental services. The 2025/26 Budget reinforces our commitment to NHS dentistry, with an increase of almost 15% in funding for primary care dental services agreed - taking total funding to over half a billion pounds for the first time.

Furthermore, our recently published Operational Improvement Plan sets out a package of funded actions to bolster the NHS dental workforce and support increased access now and into the future. Within this we will:

• support the dental workforce pipeline through i) the immediate expansion of domestic dental student numbers and ii) the development of an innovative new training package to support international dentists in joining the NHS Scotland workforce; and
• support the ongoing sustainability of practices through revision of our existing allowances to secure and improve access in Scotland’s most rural communities.