Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring everyone has access to a safe, secure and affordable home. We are supporting this through investment in affordable housing, action to improve the quality and energy efficiency of homes, measures to prevent and alleviate homelessness, and strengthened rights and protections for tenants.

The Scottish Government, through the Affordable Housing Supply Programme has allocated £123.283 to Glasgow City Council and £32.384 million to South Lanarkshire Council. This supports the delivery of affordable homes and helps meet local housing needs.

The first phase of the cervical screening HPV self-sampling pilot is expected to conclude in summer 2027, with subsequent phases anticipated thereafter, subject to evaluation findings. The Scottish Government remains committed to increasing uptake of cervical screening across Scotland and, in particular, to reducing screening inequalities. HPV self-sampling is one of a number of interventions being progressed to support this aim, alongside wider efforts to improve access to and participation in the cervical screening programme.

The Scottish Government does not routinely collect information on the number of planned new-start patients commencing hybrid closed-loop (HCL) systems in each NHS territorial board and therefore does not hold this data.

Responsibility for the funding and delivery of HCL systems rests with NHS Territorial Boards, and projected uptake is not collected centrally. Consequently, the Scottish Government is unable to provide the figures requested for 2026 or compare them with 2024 and 2025.

Scottish Government continue to work with Food Standards Scotland and Public Health Scotland to review the available evidence and consider the potential impacts of the policy on public health, the hospitality sector and on people with lived or living experience of an eating disorder.

The Scottish Government is developing a Diet and Healthy Weight Plan as part of the delivery of our Population Health Framework. As part of this work, we will continue to keep our position on calorie labelling under review and consider any emerging evidence as part of the ongoing development of the implementation plan.

The Scottish Government wants everyone to receive the best possible care and treatment from our health and care services and expects NHS Boards, including NHS Grampian and NHS Tayside to provide safe, effective and person-centred care for people with PoTS. To support this, the interim signposting document produced by Healthcare Improvement Scotland to guide clinicians to current evidence-based resources for the management of PoTS in adults with Long Covid and post-viral syndromes is available on the NHS Scotland Long Covid Network website at: https://www.nn.nhs.scot/longcovid/for-professionals/.

The development and implementation of clinical pathways is led by NHS under established clinical governance arrangements and informed by clinical evidence and service needs.

Where proposals are put forward for pathway development, these are considered through established, clinically led processes by NHS and relevant national delivery partners.

Officials are aware that NHS Wales and Ehlers-Danlos Support UK have been working to develop a national pathway for hypermobility in Wales. Once published, the pathway may provide useful evidence and learning that could help inform future approaches in Scotland.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Cost of Living Crisis resulted in the planned actions from the Tenement Condition: Workplan for 2021 not being completed.

However, we have since progressed recommendations of the Scottish Parliament Working Group on tenement maintenance by instructing the Scottish Law Commission (SLC) to undertake a law reform project on mandatory owners associations for tenement properties.

Officials are now undertaking further scoping work following receipt of the SLC report and recommendations and other relevant information on the current arrangements to common repairs in tenements in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is aware that administering authorities of the Scottish Local Government Pension Scheme do not currently report on the level of investment in Scotland. This is a complex matter, and officials are already engaging with the administering authorities about standardising reporting.

Inclusion of this indicator for voluntary use by local authority led Community Wealth Building (CWB) partnerships was agreed by parliament following scrutiny of the legislation by the lead Committee.

The Scottish Government is currently considering the future development of foundation apprenticeships within the wider context of work-based learning and qualifications reform. The Scottish Funding Council(SFC) will take on responsibility for securing and funding the delivery of foundation apprenticeships under current arrangements on 1 April 2027, ensuring continuity for learners. Any changes to commissioning arrangements will be considered with the SFC and partners taking into account the evidence and learning from the delivery of foundation apprenticeships to date.

Over the past year there has been a focus on medication assisted treatment (MAT) in prison settings and Public Health Scotland(PHS)have had extensive engagement with NHS healthcare staff and the Scottish Prison Service.