Chamber and committees

Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) manages the Scotch and Specially Selected assurance schemes, including their marketing and branding, helping to highlight the quality and provenance behind them.

This activity is funded through levy payments as per the Quality Meat Scotland Order 2008. No Scottish Government funding has been provided to assist in the promotion of Scotch Beef, Scotch Lamb or Specially Selected Pork since 2021. In addition, no promotional funding has been provided to any organisation for game.

In 2025-26, the Scottish Government is providing £45,000 of support for the venison sector which includes £20,000 towards enhancing the Scottish Quality Wild Venison Assurance Scheme, as well as £8,000 towards implementing a promotional work programme, alongside others including the Soil Association and Food for Life, that will inform public sector buyers around venison.

The GlobalScot network is administered by Scottish Enterprise. As this is an operational matter for Scottish Enterprise, I have asked their CEO, Adrian Gillespie to respond to you directly.

The following table captures the number of GlobalScots registered across 2023 - 2026:

The Scottish Government has provided over £8m of funding to NHS Grampian in support of return of obstetric maternity services to Dr Grays since 2023, with a further £1.4m committed for 2024-25. NHS Grampian have appointed consultant obstetricians, paediatricians, midwives and nurses to support the service. Since 2024 NHS Grampian have reintroduced obsetric day care assessment, scanning services and elective caesarean sections to Dr Grays. Recruitment is ongoing for additional obstetricians, anaesthetists and theatre staff with the expectation that full obstetric maternity services will be returned in 2026.

The GlobalScot network is administered by Scottish Enterprise. As this is an operational matter for Scottish Enterprise, I have asked their CEO, Adrian Gillespie to respond to you directly.

The Scottish Government publishes accredited statistics each December that are based on the number of second homes and empty properties on council tax registers as at September each year. A full breakdown by local authority area is available at: Housing statistics: Second homes and empty properties - gov.scot.

The Scottish Government has spent approximately £80m on A96 Dualling. This figure comprises expenditure on the vast range of technical and specialist advisory services required to appropriately inform the design, development, assessment, preparation and promotion of major trunk road improvements to the A96.

£261.3m has been spent on consultancy fees on the A9 Dualling Programme out of an estimated total scheme cost for the Programme of £3.97 billion, at April 2025 prices. This figure is inclusive of VAT where applicable and includes spend for taking the various component projects through design and statutory process stages, acquisition of land, demolition and preparatory works, procurement of contractors to construct the works, as well as costs of administering construction works contracts and monitoring construction works activities undertaken to date.

No specific analysis has been conducted by the Scottish Government on the number of Scottish-domiciled students who have enrolled in undergraduate courses in (a) other UK nations or (b) overseas because their course of choice was not available in Scottish universities.

Universities are autonomous institutions with responsibility for their own course provision

Data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) shows that there are fewer Scottish domiciled students leaving Scotland to enter undergraduate study in the rest of the UK in 2024-25, than there were in 2021-22.

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb273/figure-9

The Techscaler programme does not directly invest in businesses as it is our national platform for creating, developing and scaling tech startups. The Highlands and Islands has 91 members in the region, who can access the national network of tailored education, mentorship, investment access, community infrastructure, and international opportunities available through the programme. A fuller breakdown of regional participation has recently been published in the Techscaler Annual Report 2025.

NHS Boards submitted formal proposals for walk-in services in their Board area in response to a formal commission from DG Health and Social Care on behalf of Scottish Ministers. Proposals – and pilot walk-in centres – are at different stages of readiness and on that basis have varying levels of clarity and certainty on the Whole Time Equivalent number of staff, and staffing required.

Work is ongoing to identify the number of staff employed at all bands across the 13 phase one sites when they are up and running. As proposals for phase two sites have not yet been finalised, total numbers of staff are not available for all of the walk-in services.