Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-43013

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 27 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its draft Budget 2026-27, whether the £135.5 million allocated to planned care in 2025-26 is recurring funding in 2026-27.

Question reference: S6W-43015

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 27 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its draft Budget 2026-27 and the associated level 4 tables, whether it will provide a detailed breakdown of the £2.3 billion allocated to investment for social care and integration.

The 2026-27 Budget has not yet been passed by Parliament and is at draft stage. The level 4 breakdown provided in the budget tables is the most detailed breakdown currently available as spending plans are still being developed. However, the Budget shows total investment of £471 million for Social Care Support. This includes increased investment of £160 million to support an uplift for Adult Social Care (ASC) workers to the Real Living Wage, £7 million for the Care Inspectorate, £12.8 million for the Independent Living Fund (ILF),and £5.7 million to explore enhanced terms and conditions for ASC workers.

In addition to the £471 million set out in the level 4 tables, the Health and Social Care portfolio has also baselined over £1.8 billion of funding to Local Government and NHS Boards for social care, supporting policies such as the Real Living Wage and inflationary uplifts to Free Personal Nursing Care. This takes total investment to over £2.3 billion.

Question reference: S6W-43022

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 27 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its draft Budget 2026-27 and the associated level 4 tables, whether it will provide a detailed breakdown of the £100 million allocated to reform and improvement measures.

Question reference: S6W-43043

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 27 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its draft Budget 2026-27 and the associated level 4 tables, whether it will provide a detailed breakdown of the £24.311 million allocation in the budget line, "Social Care Support - Other Spend".

The 2026-27 budget has not yet been passed by Parliament and is at draft stage. The level 4 breakdown provided in the budget tables is the lowest breakdown currently available as spending plans are still being developed by policy leads.

However, on a provisional basis, the budget is expected to deliver a number of small value budgets such as Learning Disabilities - The same as you?, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Sensory Impairment and the Health Directorate's contribution to the British Sign Language Bill. The budget also now includes staff costs previously included within other Care Support and Rights budgets.

It also includes additional funding for digital telecare pilot as part of commitment to remove non-residential charges .

Question reference: S6T-02862

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 26 January 2026
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 27 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that then health secretary, Shona Robison, u-turned on a promise to carry out an independent audit of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital before it opened to patients.

Question reference: S6W-43018

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 26 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its draft Budget 2026-27 and the associated level 4 tables, whether it will provide a detailed breakdown of the £21.163 million committed to long-term conditions.

The 2026-27 budget has not yet been passed by Parliament and is at draft stage. Provisionally, some of the budget will cover the £18.180 million required for the ongoing cost of consumables for people who received diabetes technologies through our national roll-out programme in years 2024-25 and 2025-26.

There is a spending commitment of £4.5 million to NHS Boards to deliver specialist support for those living with Long COVID, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and other similar conditions. We have also committed a further £100,000 to continue to support the Rare Disease Action Plan.

Question reference: S6W-43042

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 23 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government how much has been provided to local authorities to address delayed discharges, broken down by local authority, in each of the last five years.

The 2026-27 Budget provides a further real terms increase in the Local Government Settlement, delivering record funding of almost £15.7 billion including, a quarter of a billion pounds of unrestricted General Revenue Grant.

However, the Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on delayed discharges, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

Question reference: S6W-43016

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 23 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its draft Budget 2026-27 and the associated level 4 tables, whether it will provide a detailed breakdown of the £245.081 million in funding allocated to the Primary Care Fund.

The 2026-27 budget has not yet been passed by Parliament and is at draft stage. Spending plans are still being developed by policy leads but provisionally the budget will deliver £245.1 million for the Primary Care Fund which pays for various programmes and initiatives supporting general practice delivery e.g. the board employed multidisciplinary teams and GP walk-in service pilots among other measures.

Question reference: S6W-43085

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 15 January 2026
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 21 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the Scottish Spending Review 2026, what savings are expected in each year from each (a) territorial and (b) special NHS board to achieve the savings of £247 million in 2026-27, £290 million in 2027-28 and £220 million in 2028-29.

All NHS Boards are required to deliver at least 3% recurring savings against baseline funding each year to support long-term fiscal sustainability. It is for individual Boards to determine how best to deliver these efficiencies without impacting patient care.

The Scottish Government’s Finance Delivery Unit (FDU) carries out three-year financial planning with NHS Boards. Board financial plans are expected in March 2026 and will provide oversight of boards planned savings for 2026-27. Future year Boards’ savings plans will continue to develop and will be agreed on an annual basis.

The FDU provides Boards with the 15 Box Grid to identify priority areas for delivering savings and securing value for money across workforce, innovation, value-based healthcare and productivity.

Question reference: S6W-43041

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 20 January 2026

To ask the Scottish Government how many of the people who were experiencing a delayed discharge at the November 2025 census point, had been delayed for more than four weeks.

Public Health Scotland publishes monthly Official Statistics on Delayed Discharge in NHS Scotland. The number of people delayed for more than four weeks at each monthly census point can be found in the detailed data tables for Standard delays and Code 9 (complex) delays.

Please note, the number of people delayed for Standard or Code 9 reasons at monthly census point reflects the main reason at the census point, and reasons for delay may change during a delay episode. The number of people delayed for four weeks or more for Standard reasons at monthly census point may therefore include some people who were delayed for complex (code 9) reasons during the same delay episode.

https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/delayed-discharges-in-nhsscotland-monthly/delayed-discharges-in-nhs-scotland-monthly-figures-for-november-2025

https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/media/36782/2026-01-13_delayed_discharges_standard_delays_tables_to_november_2025.xlsx

https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/media/36781/2026-01-13_delayed_discharges_code9_delays_tables_to_november_2025.xlsx