Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not collect information on maintenance costs for imaging equipment held by NHS Boards. As holding bodies, NHS Boards are responsible for the management of their infrastructure assets and for identifying maintenance requirements. Maintenance costs are usually met from Boards’ delegated budgets.

The Scottish Hospitals Inquiry was established in 2020, to investigate planning, design, construction and maintenance of both the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital/ Royal Hospital for Children (QEUH/RHC) and the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People/Department of Clinical Neurosciences (RHCYP/DCN). To that end, the Inquiry recently concluded 12 weeks of hearings into the QEUH/RHC’s built environment and the potential causal links to hospital acquired infections.

The evidence which was presented and heard at the recent hearing has been published by the Inquiry and is available on the Inquiry’s website (https://www.hospitalsinquiry.scot/).

In Counsel to the Inquiry’s closing statement, concerns were raised regarding the recommended guidelines for ventilation at the QEUH/RHC.

Lord Brodie has made it clear that the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry is on-going and therefore no conclusions should be taken from submissions to the Inquiry at this stage. Further oral hearings into the QEUH/RHC are scheduled for later this year.

Like all hospital sites, there is a comprehensive system of clinical oversight and patient safety monitoring at the QEUH/RHC. There has been no information reported through our robust governance arrangements which questions the safety of the hospital.

In addition, there have been no healthcare associated infection incidents reported to Scottish Government in the last 12 months relating to concerns on ventilation control.

To provide additional assurance, I have written to Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to undertake a formal review of the action plan arising from their Infection Prevention and Control inspection in 2022; to check the progress made against the recommendations and requirements.

The Scottish Government does not collect information on the age profile of scanning equipment held by NHS Boards. As holding bodies, NHS Boards are responsible for the management of their infrastructure assets and for identifying maintenance and replacement requirements.

The online app for health and social care, which is part of our ‘digital front door’ programme, will initially be available to a small cohort of people in Lanarkshire from December 2025. Whilst work continues on preparing for that initial release, we are simultaneously engaging with Health Boards and COSLA to develop the rollout approach beyond Lanarkshire. It is our intention to set this out in more detail from Summer 2025.

Our workforce plans remain under regular review as we deploy the workforce in line with Ministerial priorities, providing public services as efficiently and effectively as possible, and operating within the direction set out in the Budget.

The Scottish Government does not have any plans to review the legal status of first-cousin marriages in Scotland.

The core Scottish Government has grown its workforce in the last decade in order to respond to newly devolved powers, such as Social Security, the impact of exiting the European Union, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Since March 2022 the core Scottish Government has enhanced its recruitment controls and has been reducing its total workforce. This has decreased in each financial year, including the current financial year to date, with the reduction reaching 4% for the period from March 2022 to December 2024. In this period the workforce has been deployed to new priorities such as the establishment of ScotWind and to respond to the conflict in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis.

The Scottish Government reviews the workforce size routinely in governance forums, alongside information on the delivery of the organisation and the financial position both of the portfolio and more specifically the operating cost. The delivery reviewed is both in terms of progressing the Programme for Government, as well as activities such as responding to Freedom of Information requests. It also includes the delivery of corporate services that are resourced from the core Scottish Government, and provided to many different public bodies.

These regular reviews ensures that there is an ongoing assessment of the efficiency and effectiveness of the workforce.

The Budget has established the total operating cost for the next financial year and workforce plans will be adjusted accordingly, with an expectation that there will be reductions in the workforce.

Social security is an investment in the people of Scotland. Our priority is to ensure that people receive the support to which they are entitled and that in doing so they are treated with dignity, fairness and respect. The Scottish Government are investing around £6.9 billion in Social Security benefits in 2025-26, this is projected to increase to around £8.9 billion by 2029-30.

Scotland does not have an equivalent body to NHS England, health services are managed by NHS boards, which operate within Scotland’s devolved system of government.

The UK Government’s decision to move the functions of NHS England to the relevant UK government department bring it in line with the situation in Scotland where NHS Scotland is already a part of the core Scottish Government civil service.

Regarding public bodies more widely our programme of Public Service Reform is addressing all opportunities identified to remove duplication from the public sector landscape, including consolidation of public bodies where appropriate and where a value for money case can be made. This work is part of our wider focus on driving a culture of continuous improvement to support efficiency and effectiveness across the delivery of public services.

The Scottish Government has already streamlined the public sector landscape by reducing the number of Scottish public bodies under our control from 199 in 2007 to 131 at the end of 2024. The Ministerial Control Framework also makes clear that establishing any new public bodies should be a last resort, ensuring any new bodies are established only when absolutely necessary.