Chamber and committees

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) holds operational responsibility for the delivery of apprenticeships across Scotland, including the assessment of sectoral demand. Within the roofing sector, there are currently three distinct apprenticeship pathways, all of which are embedded within the Construction Modern Apprenticeship (MA) frameworks.

The Scottish Government continues to prioritise funding for Modern Apprenticeships in construction, recognising the sector as one of the largest contributors to MA starts and in-training figures for 2024-25.

Modern Apprenticeship allocations are informed by consultation with employers and industry stakeholders. This includes demand statements from Sector Skills Organisations and representative bodies, input from Industry Leadership Groups, and insights drawn from Skills Investment Plans and Regional Skills Assessments.

In 2025-26, we are investing £300 million in heat in buildings programmes to increase energy efficiency and provide financial support. At the same time, we are prioritising skills development for Scotland’s current and future workforce—working closely with the sector to ensure training provision aligns locally with business needs and future demands, supporting our transition to net zero.

Through our Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray, we have allocated £75 million since 2022 to create jobs, support innovation and secure the highly skilled workforce of the future.

Clinical radiology specialty training programmes have been filled at 100% in Scotland from 2014 to 2024, with 230 resident doctors successfully completing the training in this period.

The Scottish Government continues to invest heavily in radiology training. We are currently funding around 190 specialty training places in clinical radiology, including 78 extra places which have been added since 2014, based on modelling and future workforce need.

The Scottish Government has launched the Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Risk Factors programme to improve CVD outcomes with an aim to ‘reduce avoidable CVD death by 20% in 20 years’. The focus is on improving the identification and management of key risk factors which are; high blood pressure, high cholesterol, raised blood sugars, obesity and smoking.

We have also established a new GP enhanced service from the 2025-26 Reform Fund to support 100,000 patients who are at risk of developing CVD.

Our Population Health Framework, soon to be published in partnership with COSLA, will support the creation of environments that positively supports health and wellbeing. It will focus on prevention and tackling the building blocks of health—including good early years and education, fair work and income, healthy places, equitable healthcare, and the broader social and economic drivers of ill health.

The Scottish Government highly values the support provided to young people by youth workers. Violence towards youth workers is unacceptable and all employees, including youth workers, have the right to be safe at work and to feel safe at work.

Through introduction of the Violence Prevention Framework, the Scottish Government continue to take action by funding activities for young people to prevent and reduce harm from violence.

The Scottish Government encourages anyone who experiences antisocial behaviour or violence at work to report the incident immediately to their employer and Police Scotland. Youth workers should be fully supported by their employers to understand their organisation’s policies regarding antisocial behaviour and the support available if situations escalate.

We have established the National Oncology Coordination Group to provide a coordinated and collaborative response to immediate and foreseeable service pressures. This group provides rapid real-time assessment of highest risk services and proactively develops risk mitigation proposals, in line with the overall strategic aim for cancer. Officials also meet with Boards’ Cancer Management Teams monthly to identify immediate challenges, explore solutions and share best practice.

The Scottish Government has mobilised an ambitious Oncology Transformation Programme and are working closely with NHS Board and regional leaders from across the country to address longer-term pressures. We have also committed to further funding for Chemotherapy and Acute Oncology services using a phased approach to ensure we build a sustainable workforce. The funding will reach up to £10 million per annum and will support increased regional working, workforce recruitment and maximise capacity across the existing workforce. £6.6 million has been provided in 2025-26 and will support NHS Boards to develop sustainable plans.

Alcohol harm prevention is firmly embedded in the Scottish Government’s approach to improving Scotland’s health, as demonstrated by our world leading policy of minimum unit pricing. Work is underway to consider the range of options for any future uprating of minimum unit pricing. There will be full engagement with all stakeholders on any options considered.

The Scottish Government remains committed to progressing work on protecting children and young people from exposure to alcohol marketing. Public Health Scotland has been commissioned to carry out a review of the evidence for the range of options that are available to the Scottish Government under devolved powers.

The Population Health Framework, to be published in the coming weeks, will set out what more can be done in the coming decade to mitigate against the social and economic drivers of ill health and health inequalities to build a Scotland, with places and communities, that positively supports health and wellbeing. This includes factors that can harm health including alcohol.

As part of this approach, work has also begun on developing the future approach to addressing the harms caused by drugs and alcohol, with a focus on ensuring that alcohol deaths and harms are a key area of focus and priority. We will be working with partners to build on learning and progress to date, including from the national mission, and consider how we tackle both drugs and alcohol related harms and deaths with equal emphasis.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the collection and use of data in health and social care, ultimately to improve outcomes for people.

For example:

a) We have set up the Social Care Data and Intelligence Programme Board (SCDIPB) to support and optimise the development and analysis of social care data. The Board is working to implement the recommendations of the Care Home Data Review (https://www.gov.scot/publications/care-home-data-review-full-report/) to streamline and improve the collection and use of social care data. Changes to TURAS Care Management have also reduced the data burden on care homes, providing a picture of available beds, occupancy and pausing duplicate data collections.

b) We have made significant progress in the data made available to General Practice, such as the collection of weekly capacity and pressures data provided by NHS Health Boards, and monthly activity data published by Public Health Scotland (PHS). We have also commissioned NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) to develop a Primary Care Data and Intelligence platform for March 2026, which will provide a single point of controlled access to general practice data.

c) In addition, we continue to improve NHS data collections by developing new diagnostic activity statistics and new data on Hospital at Home. This is being undertaken in collaboration with PHS and NHS NSS as set out in Scotland’s Data Strategy for Health and Social Care, published in February 2023. The Strategy sets out our commitments to improve the collection, use and sharing of data, more information can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/data-strategy-health-social-care-2/.

Tackling health inequalities is a key part of the preventative care role for school nurses, general practice nurses and health visitors and is aligned to public health priorities to improve health and wellbeing outcomes, particularly for women and children. District nurses have a role in disease management in populations affected by health inequalities, delivered in community settings, and support people to stay healthy at home.

As referred to in the Royal College of Nursing’s report, The Nursing Workforce in Scotland 2025, published on 6 May 2025, the Scottish Government published the Ministerial Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce report in February 2025.

The report includes 44 recommendations to tackle all barriers to recruitment and retention of nursing and midwifery staff, beyond pay, terms and conditions. Phase 2 has commenced and a Ministerial Oversight and Implementation Group have been established to develop a detailed workplan which will be agreed shortly to take forward the agreed recommendations. Members of the Taskforce acknowledged that implementation will take time and investment to ensure genuine change for our nursing and midwifery staff.

The Scottish Government recognises the heightened risk of social isolation in rural areas. To support the delivery of our Social Isolation and Loneliness Delivery Plan, we are providing £3.8m over three years to 53 community projects across Scotland through the Social Isolation and Loneliness Fund that is providing opportunities for people to connect. At end of year one projects reached 11,293 individuals with a focus on priority groups most at risk of social isolation and loneliness. We continue to support the National Rural Mental Health Forum to build the confidence of rural organisations to deliver mental health support to their members and networks. We also provide funding to Befriending Networks, who support befriending services across Scotland, and currently have 118 Scottish members; of which approximately 1 in 4 members are independent community organisations operating in rural areas.