Chamber and committees

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) provide an all-age career service in every local authority, with SDS Careers Advisers in secondary schools and SDS centres and community locations nationwide. Careers advisers highlight the career options available across all sectors - including the Print industry - to people across Scotland, including Apprenticeships.

SDS also works with partners and employers to highlight the importance of Apprenticeships particularly through Scottish Apprenticeship Week which took place in 02 – 06 March 2026. We continue to work closely with SDS to support the promotion of Apprenticeships throughout Scotland.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that people with respiratory conditions receive the best possible care and treatment to enable them to live longer, healthier, and more independent lives. Through our Respiratory Care Action Plan for Scotland, we have supported national work to strengthen prevention, diagnosis, care and support for people living with respiratory conditions.

The Scottish Government has embedded the prevention of respiratory disease into wider policy through the launch of the Cleaner Air for Scotland Strategy, Warmer Homes Scotland Scheme and the refreshed Tobacco Action Plan.

National clinical pathways for severe asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and interstitial lung disease are being developed through the Centre for Sustainable Delivery. This work includes enhanced referral triage and innovations in the diagnosis and management of sleep apnoea, helping to ensure that people receive the right care at the right time.

We also published the Quality Prescribing Guide for Improvement, which aims to keep people at the centre of their treatment, and promote safe, evidenced based, sustainable prescribing. A core component of this has been to create user friendly digital tools for both people living with lung conditions and healthcare professionals

To improve access to pulmonary rehabilitation, a key intervention for people with chronic respiratory conditions, we are working in partnership with Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland to develop a digital first model. This will provide self-management tools, resources and videos that can be accessed anywhere in Scotland and will be hosted on the My Lungs My Life platform.

We recently published the Scotland's Population Health Framework and the Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework in which we outline our shared, long-term vision for reforming and renewing health and social care services to ensure they are more sustainable, preventative, and equitable.

We are exploring a Long-Term Conditions Framework to ensure equitable and sustainable access to services that everyone with long term conditions needs, such as those living with a respiratory condition. A series of advisory groups, including respiratory, will be established to make initial recommendations to the Scottish Government and these will produce an authoritative set of recommendations to inform the new government’s work on long-term conditions.

We will continue to work with clinicians, NHS, Boards, and national delivery partners and the third sector to ensure that people with lung conditions can access timely diagnosis, effective treatment and ongoing support as part of safe, high quality respiratory care.

I am pleased that we will invest £4 million in 2026-27 to support Local Transport Authorities to build business cases for local bus improvements through franchising, using powers created in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019.

Work to develop appropriate governance arrangements and the detail of administering the fund is at an early stage. This will be considered with key stakeholders, including COSLA and Local Transport Authorities.

The Scottish Government announced its intention to launch ScotZEB on 17 November 2025 with the scheme opening to bids on 5 December 2025. Officials met with interested stakeholders on request, and responded to all queries regarding eligibility, scheme guidance and technical requirements, both directly and through the scheme administrator, the Energy Saving Trust. The Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT) was also notified at the point of scheme launch.

ScotZEB3 is a capital grant subsidy scheme rather than a procurement exercise. As such, the Procurement Act 2023 does not apply. The Scottish Government does not directly procure buses; vehicle procurement is carried out by bus operators.

The Scottish Government respects the independence of Local Government and the position of each council, including Glasgow City Council, as an independent employer with responsibility for their own budgets, workforce planning and job evaluation processes. The Scottish Government has no formal role in these issues at a local level and encourages all councils to make decisions, through engagement with trade unions, that meet their responsibility to secure value for money and meet their legal obligations to their employees.

At the Strategic Outline Case stage of a project it is important to consider a range of alternative approaches so that the benefits and disbenefits of each approach are considered in terms of fit with strategic policy considerations. For this project, the strategic approaches under consideration are Repair, Replace and Remove; each of which provides different benefits and disbenefits. Whilst it is recognised that the Remove approach is anticipated to have major detrimental impacts on the traffic flows, network and Glasgow's local roads, it has been included to ensure that a comprehensive assessment is undertaken of all potential approaches. The preferred approach will balance a range of engineering, environmental, economic, health and safety and social value factors.

Scotland is the perfect stage for events and has an enviable record in hosting mega events including this summer’s Commonwealth Games. We work closely with partners to attract events to Scotland and have an outstanding pipeline of events in the coming years with the Tour de France Grand Depart in 2027, UEFA EURO 2028 and the bid for the 2035 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Any hosting bid to the International Olympic Committee would need to follow the IOC guidance. It would be led by the British Olympic Association, who are not in any active discussions with the Scottish Government at this time.

I am aware of the concerns raised by the Scottish Huntington’s Association regarding the running of Huntington’s services, and I met with the charity last year to discuss this.

The latest statistics show that as at 31 December 2025, of those waiting for Radiology tests, 62% had been waiting six weeks or less; higher than 30 September 2025 (58%) and December 2024 (57%). The radiology list size also decreased by 18.1% compared to last quarter. We are determined to continue to build on this momentum, ensuring people receive the treatment they need as soon as possible.

Throughout 2025-26, all Boards were expected to incrementally ramp-up activity as the capacity provided by the £22 million additional funding operationalised, with some high volume initiatives commencing in the latter part of the year.