Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government are aware of an increase in ketamine use by young people, and published the Standards for Young People in November 2025, to ensure support in drug services meets their needs.

Several Scottish Government funded organisations are publicising the risks of taking ketamine and where to get help. These include:

• Crew, an Edinburgh based charity, provides Nightlife Harm Reduction at clubs and festivals, offering welfare, advice, harm reduction information and immediate crisis support
• Turning Point, a leading national social care charity, is running a nationwide campaign focusing on early intervention and harm reduction without using scare tactics, aimed at helping youth understand the tolerance limits and mental health impacts of ketamine
• With You, a support charity that is providing information and help to young people on their website, including peer written stories of other young people’s experience with ketamine.

Following careful consideration of Lady Ross’s judgment the Scottish Government has decided not to appeal.

This case involved important considerations regarding Ministers’ legal obligations under the Scotland Act 1998, the Equality Act 2010 and the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as the serious practical implications arising from the issues before the Court, including the risk of suicide recognised in the judgment.

The focus now moves to implementing the law, as clarified by the court maintaining a clear focus on the safety, wellbeing and rights of all those living and working within Scotland’s prisons. The Scottish Prison Service withdrew their Transgender Policy on 22 June, and work is underway to implement transfers of prisoners on 23 June.

The safety, wellbeing and rights of all those living and working within Scotland’s prisons and the welfare of affected individuals will be the primary consideration and operational changes will be taken forward carefully, lawfully and in a managed way.

Scottish Government wants people diagnosed with cancers such as leukaemia to be treated as close to home as clinically possible. We continue to work with NHS Boards, to limit the need for travel where possible and clinically appropriate. This includes through increased use of digital and technological solutions such as Near Me, to improve flexibility of care.

However, some treatments require delivery in specialist centres to ensure the best outcomes. Where travel is necessary, patients in rural areas should be fully supported in accessing these.

The Scottish Government provides the overall guidance to NHS Boards for patient travel expenses reimbursement, with NHS Boards responsible for local arrangements. In addition, the Highlands and Islands Travel Scheme (HITS) reimburses the travel costs of eligible patients who need to travel longer distances for care.

We are also committed to supporting patients to deal with the financial, emotional, and physical health effects of cancer, including those living in a rural area. We are currently working in partnership with Macmillan to deliver the Transforming Cancer Care Programme, which ensures that people affected by cancer in Scotland have access to a specialist key support worker, who can provide and signpost to emotional, financial, and practical support.

At this time the Scottish Government has not carried out any public health campaigns in relation to ketamine use.

The Scottish Government however provides funding to Public Health Scotland, to monitor ketamine use and related harms, through its RADAR (Rapid Action Drug Alerts and Response) program. The system acts as an early warning network to track emerging trends, local clusters of harm, and toxicology data in Scotland.

There are several Scottish Government funded organisations that are publicising the risks of taking ketamine and where to get help. These include:

• The Scottish Drugs Forum provides free targeted e-learning resources for healthcare staff and the public, helping them recognize early warning signs of ketamine dependency and understand how to reduce the risks
• Turning Point, a leading national social care charity, is running a nationwide campaign focusing on early intervention and harm reduction, to help people understand the tolerance limits and mental health impacts of ketamine
• Change, Grow, Live are a health and social care charity that is running an online campaign, to help people understand what ketamine is, detailing the side effects, risks and how to keep safe when taking it.

The Scottish Government continue to prioritise delivery of the Promise by 2030.

The Promise Implementation Plan, published in March 2022, set out the Government’s approach to fulfilling these commitments. A comprehensive update on progress was provided in the Implementation Plan Update, published in September 2024, which outlined the actions taken and the ongoing work required.

Progress is being assessed through the Promise Story of Progress, a joint approach co-authored by the Scottish Government, COSLA and The Promise Scotland. The Story of Progress was update and published in December 2025. One component of this is the Promise Progress Framework, which builds on a theory of change to identify the outcomes for care-experienced children, young people and families that need to improve by 2030, alongside national-level data to help understand where change is happening.

At the end of the last parliamentary session, a significant package of legislative change through the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Act was unanimously approved in Parliament.

The Act will help improve the lives of people across Scotland with care experience, as well as those who care for them. This legislation represents a significant step forward in delivering our commitment to The Promise by 2030, by placing the needs and rights of care-experienced children and young people at the centre of the care system, and responding directly to what people with care experience have said they need to thrive.

The digitisation of records is managed operationally by individual Health Boards and GP practices, information on implementation of digitisation projects within each Health Board is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. Public Health Scotland provide information through Drug and Alcohol Information System (DAISy) the national database that holds data about drug and alcohol services.

The DAISy initial assessments report tables, provide information on ketamine which is grouped into a larger ‘dissociatives’ category and presented at NHS Board of Residence level per financial year. Tables 4.4 and 4.5 relate to the drugs cohort and report on all drugs listed at assessment and main drug only; tables 5.9 and 5.10 are the same but for the ‘both drugs and alcohol’ cohort. These figures relate to the first assessment a person has had in each year, NHS Board and substance type, so do not represent individuals. Disclosure control has been applied so values are not available for every NHS Board. Data are available for financial years 2021-22 to 2024-25 inclusive.

The quarterly RADAR management information dashboard, presents monthly data for the main drug reported at assessment, by NHS Board of treatment, which includes specific data on ketamine (Chart 2: Main Drug). These data can be found on the ‘Service Indicators’ page and are for all assessments recorded in DAISy. The data include all assessments for drugs and both alcohol and drugs so are not equivalent to individuals. Data in the dashboard currently cover November 2020 – February 2026 and no data have been suppressed. Filters at the top of the page can be used to select the area and time period of interest, and there is a filter above the chart to select the drug of interest. To note that there is a minor issue with ‘Chart 1’ in the current version of the dashboard, which means that data for individual NHS Boards are not displayed. Chart 2 is unaffected and the issue will be corrected in the next release (July 2026).

Data held by the Scottish Government on the number of NHS apprenticeships has been provided in the following tables. While this Management Information provides an indication of apprenticeship activity within NHS Scotland, the figures across years should be treated with caution because of the changes in collection method, coverage and definitions. The data records the number of individuals who have been recruited or started on an apprenticeship programme in the reporting year, rather than the total number of apprenticeships delivered.

Data for the total number of apprenticeships recruited is not held by the Scottish Government for 2016-2017 and there is no data for 2019-2020 to 2021-2022, as no annual Staff Governance Monitoring return was undertaken during COVID. Apprenticeship data is not yet available for 2024-25 or 2025-26 but will be collected via NHS Anchors Metrics.

Fees will be reviewed as part of a wider review of court fees within this Parliamentary term.

Each Cabinet Secretary is responsible for delivery of major infrastructure projects within their portfolio, with collective oversight through Cabinet to ensure alignment with the Scottish Government’s overall infrastructure priorities.