Chamber and committees

The £13.6 million was allocated to Health Boards for distribution to Health Boards alongside the £59.6 million GMS uplift agreed following the DDRB’s recommendations with £66.89 million of the total put into the Global Sum, £2.31 million into uplifting Income & Expenses Guarantees and £4 million into increasing Enhanced Services funding.

The Global Sum is shared among GP practices on the basis of their weighted patient lists.

Some practices receive Income & Expenses Guarantees to ensure no detriment to their funding following a revision of patient list weightings in 2018.

In addition to their core work, practices can also carry out enhanced services for additional funding. This is based on participation.

The provision, supply and procurement of fuel is a matter for CalMac as the operator and this is managed through existing contracts with their suppliers. For MV Glen Sannox this applies both to LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) and MGO (Marine Gas Oil), and while the vessel is either in service or undergoing repairs.

The requested information on how many new midwives and nurses have been recruited at maternity units in each year since 2020-21 is not held centrally.

Information on the number of nurses and midwives employed by each NHS board, as well as the numbers joining the nursing and midwifery job families each year, can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence .

The Scottish Government supports the principle of alignment with the EU where it is meaningful to do so and contributes towards maintaining and advancing environmental standards.

This includes developing a producer responsibility approach to textiles and measures to address the disposal of unsold consumer goods, which could include textiles. International waste export legislation is currently a reserved matter for the UK Government; however, the Scottish Government will continue to engage with the UK Government on waste export legislation to seek EU alignment where appropriate.

As set out in the draft Circular Economy Strategy for Scotland, we are committed to improving the management of post-consumer textiles.

On 17 June 2025 a Scottish Government consultation closed on whether to make kerbside collection of textiles by local authorities a mandatory service. This consultation fulfilled a commitment in the Circular Economy & Waste Route map. Independent analysis of responses to the consultation is now being undertaken and a report will be published in due course which will also inform the co-design work on the Household Recycling Code of Practice.

The Scottish Government recently held a consultation on whether local councils should be required to collect textiles at the kerbside. This was part of a commitment in the Circular Economy & Waste Route Map.

The consultation closed on 17 June 2025 and received 60 responses. Independent analysts are now reviewing the feedback, and a report will be published soon. The findings will also inform the co-design work on the Household Recycling Code of Practice.

The report will include analysis of feedback provided about the potential effects of household collection on charity shops, as well as reuse and resale organisations.

Funding for these activities is included within this year’s budgets; future year budgets are to be confirmed. The Zero Waste Scotland Business Information Hub is designed to be an online self-service tool, building business knowledge of circular economy opportunities and benefits and arming businesses with a suite of tools so they can independently take steps to adopt more circular practices.

We have provided over £320 million to our enterprise agencies in 2025-26 to support their work with businesses and communities, which includes support for circular businesses.

In recognition that Scotland’s colleges are a vital part of our economy and wider society, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) allocations provide a 2.6% sector increase in teaching funding for 2025-26 compared to last year, with an increase of almost 5% in capital maintenance funding over the same period.

The Scottish Government is engaging very closely with Colleges Scotland on issues affecting the sector, while the SFC robustly monitors the position of the sector and the challenges faced, and considers appropriate forms of support, including to address short-term cash flow challenges.

The Scottish Government’s Building Standards Division (BSD) requires local authority verifiers to notify BSD under Section 34 of the Building (Scotland) Act 2003 when certain methods are used to demonstrate compliance with mandatory building standards. Specifically, notification is required where:

• BS 8414 fire performance testing and associated guidance in BR 135, or
• Extended field of application assessments under BS 9414

Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, Local Authority Building Standards Scotland (LABSS) played a key role through participation in expert working groups and panels convened by the Scottish Government, which included consideration of the role of BS8414.

Energy prices are reserved and we have been pressing the UK Government to tackle energy debt by immediately delivering a targeted and automatic unit rate discount on energy bills.

In 2025/26, we are delivering a £16.9 million package for free advice on income maximisation and debt, including over £11 million to debt advice services, with almost £1 million of additional funding for energy debt advice.

We are also providing an estimated £28.3 million through our Winter Heating Payment, £11.4 million through our Child Winter Heating Payment, and £157 million through our Pension Age Winter Heating Payment.

The statutory guidance to local authorities sets out how they should exercise their powers under the Act to implement Firework Control Zones lawfully. It takes into consideration wider legal requirements than just the Firework Control Zone provisions in the Act as passed by Parliament.

The guidance notes that the geographic size and area of a zone must be evidence-based and proportionate. It states that firework control zones have not been designed as a measure to cover a whole local authority area, or to cover extensive parts of a local authority area.