Chamber and committees

The independent evaluation of the Just Transition Fund (JTF) found that, in its first two years of operation, the Fund created and safeguarded 230 jobs, alongside the provision of more than 750 training places, and leveraged over £34 million in additional investment.

Two housing developers have received debt finance from the Scottish National Investment Bank since inception as follows:

DITT construction: £730,000 investment to support the construction of six high-quality, one-bedroom homes in Lerwick. These homes are designed for key workers who struggle to find affordable accommodation.

Strathcarron Homes: £3.9 million loan facility will support the construction of 25 high quality family homes built to be sold to local social housing tenants and first-time buyers. The builders are about to start construction at Nitshill Road in Glasgow.

The Bank has also made equity investments in to the following funds:

Thriving Investments: (Bank is a Limited Partner) £60 million committed to their mid-market rental housing fund which has delivered 742 new homes to date.

Social & Sustainable Capital (SASC): (Bank is a Limited Partner) £10 million committed to their SASH II fund. This will allow charities and community interest companies to buy properties which they would otherwise not be able to attain, building their financial strength, capacity and resilience to enable them to provide high quality services to their tenants.

The regulation of medicines is reserved to the UK Parliament and the eligibility of individuals to prescribe, supply or administer medicines relies upon both profession and medicine-specific amendments to the Human Medicines Regulations 2012. The Scottish Parliament and Scottish Ministers have no statutory role in this matter.

Scottish Government sets the strategic policy direction for the NHS in Scotland, operational matters – including staffing for prescribing medication and treatment – are in the first instance the responsibility of the relevant NHS Board.

We continue to work closely with health boards and clinical professionals across Scotland to understand challenges regarding the recruitment and retention of professionals trained to prescribe ADHD medication.

To address specific challenges in the recruitment and retention of psychiatrists in Scotland we established a Working Group which has recently reported to Ministers (23 June 2025). Funding also continues to be provided to Boards for the additional roles to help mental health pharmacy services including within community mental health pharmacy support to improve medication use and prescribing practices.

The Scottish Government is engaging widely on the creation of a new approach to care and support for people impacted by alcohol. The recommendations made in the Public Health Scotland review of ABI are a key component of our engagement.

Our aim is to publish our new approach in 2026. This will include actions for re-affirming our commitment to brief interventions in all settings as well as how we will meet the recommendation to embed conversations about alcohol over 10 years.

It is well known that GFG Alliance continues to progress its global refinancing despite challenging market conditions.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-38617 on 17 June 2025. 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.

There are commitments with the Guarantee and Reimbursement Agreement that require a personal undertaking from Sanjeev Gupta.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6W-39215 on 30 July 2025. 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.

The Vessels and Ports Plan, published as part of the Islands Connectivity Plan, indicates delivery of new tonnage to replace the three NIFS Ro-Pax vessels is expected within Phase 3 (2031-2036). Work on planning for and procuring their replacements will commence during Phase 1(2021-2026). The outline business case for the replacement vessels, including concept design work and project cost estimates, is expected to be presented to Transport Scotland and then Ministers in 2026. The specific timeline of business case activity, procurement and delivery is still currently being developed and will be dependent upon resource, required approvals and available funding.

The information requested on how many staff it has qualified to deliver cataract surgery in 2025, and how this compares with 2015 is not held centrally.

Information requested on how many Ophthalmology consultants are employed from 2015 to 2025 can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence.