Chamber and committees

The tool is currently live in six territorial boards, and work is continuing to implement the tool for the remaining territorial health boards and National Hospital Golden Jubilee. In line with the NHS Scotland Operational Improvement Plan (https://www.gov.scot/publications/nhs-scotland-operational-improvement-plan/pages/1/), all territorial health boards, and National Hospital Golden Jubilee, have been scheduled into the current theatre scheduling tool rollout plan, as at the end of June 2025.

Scotland should be a place where everyone can participate fully within society, access their rights and thrive within their communities. To realise this vision, we must make bold and sustained progress in tackling discrimination and advancing equality across Scotland.

To support BSL users to communicate by phone in their preferred language, the Scottish Government funds Contact Scotland BSL, a free national Video Relay Service that enables British Sign Language (BSL) users to make phone calls via qualified BSL interpreters, available 24/7. A new contract for this service is currently being tendered, and the Government has engaged with the Deaf and Deafblind communities and their representative organisations to understand their needs and priorities for the future service.

The Scottish Government expects all public bodies to fully comply with their legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010, including the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). This duty requires public authorities to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations between different groups. These responsibilities should be embedded in all aspects of decision-making, including the design and delivery of services.

While enforcement of the Equality Act, including the PSED, lies with the courts and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)—which operates independently of the Scottish Government—the Government supports compliance through guidance, engagement with public bodies, and monitoring how the PSED is implemented in practice.

Good deer management is about achieving balance, what that looks like in different local areas will vary depending on the immediate environment and the impact deer may be having. That is why we have introduced new purposes for deer management in our Natural Environment Bill. We recognise, however, that we need to use both regulation and incentive to support our deer management aims.

Three pilot incentive schemes led by NatureScot and the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) ran in 2024/25 to financially support deer managers to control numbers of deer in specific parts of Scotland in response to the climate and nature emergencies. Pilot schemes are expected to return in these areas for the 2025/26 season as well as expand to further locales including within Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.

In addition to this, in the lowlands specifically we are supporting deer management through the Low Ground Venison Supply Chain Project which will explore ways to help low ground deer managers improve the infrastructure for handling and chilling venison carcasses and increase throughput. 13 applicants have been issued grant funding to date.

As set out in our 2025-26 Programme for Government, we are committed to working with stakeholders on “the development of local pilot projects on deer management programmes, including an implementation plan and funding models deer management”.

The commitment to deliver 40,000 additional operations and diagnostic tests was set out in the NHS Recovery Plan published in 2021. Progress reports have been published annually, the most recent being in December 2024: NHS Recovery Plan 2021-2026: annual progress update report 2024 - gov.scot.

In his speech on NHS reform and renewal in January this year, the First Minister announced that in 2025-26 the NHS will deliver of 150,000 extra appointments and procedures as part of the Operational Improvement Plan (OIP). This will be done through recruitment, extended working and regional and national working, including in the National Treatment Centres.

This additional activity will be backed by an additional investment of over £100 million this year. Activity will be targeted at long waits, ensuring that by March 2026 no one is waiting longer than a year for their new outpatient appointment or inpatient/day-case procedure.

As noted within the OIP, SG will report against progress publicly and to Parliament within 2025-26, using published statistics.

The dental therapy degree, BSc (Oral Health Science), is delivered by Glasgow Caledonian University, University of Dundee, University of Highland and Islands and University of Edinburgh. The Scottish Government had an agreed annual target of 40 dental therapists across Scotland in a year with all four institutions. The University of Edinburgh indicated in December 2023 that it no longer wished to offer this qualification after 2027. We are continuing to look at how we can expand the capacity in other universities to make up for this future loss of places.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on current student numbers.

Westminster austerity does continue to impact on public services. For example, the increase to employers’ national insurance without fully funding the impact of this on public service delivery has the impact of reducing the actual funding for delivery of programmes and was taken forward by the UK Government irrespective of the impact of that reduction on the outcomes of those programmes and activity.

The Scottish Government recently published the Tax Strategy for Scotland, which along with Scottish Budget 2025-26 and the Medium-Term Financial Strategy, sets out the next steps in our approach to tax, identifying priorities to support economic growth and Government objectives of eradicating child poverty, tackling the climate emergency and improving public services.

Projections for social security costs in the coming years are established in the recently published Medium-Term Financial Strategy. Our approach to taxation is established in the Tax Strategy, which has already set out that we will not introduce any new bands or increase the rates of Scottish Income Tax in this parliament.

I was informed of the publication of cancer waiting times, scheduled for 24 June 2025, and provided with pre-release access to the statistics on 19 June 2025.

Tax code matters such as allowances and reliefs are reserved to the UK Government. The Scottish Government has no plans currently to change the number of Income Tax bands