Chamber and committees

Free personal and nursing care is underpinned by the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002, which places a duty on local authorities to secure the provision of personal and nursing care, without charge, for individuals who are assessed as eligible. Once eligibility has been confirmed, local authorities must put arrangements in place as soon as reasonably practicable. Operational factors such as care planning and provider availability can affect timescales, but financial pressures or resource constraints do not remove or suspend the underlying statutory duty. The entitlement is not discretionary and applies equally to those who are self-funding their accommodation costs in care homes.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-43803 on 5 March 2026. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

No such information has been sought.

In dealing with recent Urgent Questions in Parliament (18 February and 25 February 2026), the Lord Advocate has advised the practice of providing updates to Scottish and UK governments pre-dates devolution in 1999. The Lord Advocate explained and provided examples of occasions on which this has been done, which involved prosecutors properly sharing information with the government which is not in the public domain at the time it is shared or will not be made public.

There has been no political interference in the criminal case against Peter Murrell.

This is an operational matter for Scottish Enterprise (SE) and as such I have asked Adrian Gillespie, Chief Executive of SE to write to you with a full response.

In 2025-26 we allocated £315,000 to FareShare to redistribute high quality surplus food to community organisations with an emphasis on shared meals and promoting cash-first.

We also allocated a total of almost £200,000 to the four established regional community food networks in Scotland, which are Community Food Initiatives North East, Lanarkshire Community Food and Health Partnership, Edinburgh Community Food and the Glasgow Community Food Network. This funding helps tackle food insecurity, promotes community food and supports improved health and wellbeing.

Through our Investing in Communities Fund, we have provided around £2.8 million of funding each year between 2023-26 to 32 organisations to enable them to provide holistic support services to address poverty and inequality, including activities to directly tackle food insecurity.

Following the publication of the draft Scottish Budget, we have agreed funding to support an extension of the Investing in Communities Fund for the existing organisations supported by the Fund. This transition funding will provide support for 2026-27, and we are working with eligible organisations to assess their funding needs.

I opened an event with clinicians and third sector organisations on 25 February to set out the role and remit of the work on long term conditions going forward.

The opening Health Capital position in each year begins with a projected overcommitment that is then managed to arrive at a breakeven outturn position.

The following table provides a forecast of costs in 2026-27 under a breakeven assumption, but are subject to change as the year progresses.