Chamber and committees

The scope of the digital dermatology pathway is for new referrals from primary care into secondary care dermatology services. The Scottish Government’s NHS Operational Improvement plan has set out that no one is waiting longer than a year new outpatient appointments and committed an additional £100 million in 2025-26 to target long waits for procedures that include diagnostic tests, resulting in an extra 150,000 appointments. The Scottish Government has been working closely with NHS health boards to target this investment and coordinate effective delivery to identify and address their own waiting lists.

As part of a commitment made in its improving urban waters routemap, Scottish Water installed 1000 new overflow monitors by December 2024 and it now publishes overflow information online. It is not correct to state that combined sewer overflows spill every 90 seconds as the data published by Scottish Water only covers a subset of overflows.

Scottish Water aims to install an additional 700 monitors during 2025. Information gathered by overflow monitors allows Scottish Water to optimise the management of its sewer networks and understand where spills occur most frequently and why. This information is critical in informing future investment needs to achieve the greatest benefit for customers and the environment.

Furthermore, Scottish Water’s investment in its assets has contributed towards 87% of Scotland’s entire water environment being assessed by SEPA as having a ‘high’ or ‘good’ classification for water quality and 97% of Scotland’s bathing waters currently achieve the bathing water quality standards.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

SPS do not record this information. SPS’ Disciplinary Hearings guidance does not provide a specific ‘breach of discipline’ relating to having illicit articles obtained via a drone. Any prosecution remains a matter for Police Scotland and the Crown and Procurator Fiscal Service.

The Scottish Government does not collate data on the number of people with ADHD appearing before the courts in Scotland.

The information held on the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Services (SCTS) live operational case management systems is structured to support the processing of court business, rather than for statistical reporting or research purposes. SCTS and their staff provide administrative support to the Scottish courts, tribunals and their judiciary and rely on information provided by justice partners to consider any adjustment that may be required to facilitate a court hearing. Their computer systems do not record information of this nature.

In criminal proceedings, adjustments for vulnerable witnesses are requested by the Crown or defence - usually in advance of hearing - and are considered by the sheriff or judge. In civil proceedings, information is provided to the court by parties and solicitors. This information is typically only names and addresses of the parties and their legal representatives.

The Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodivergence (LDAN) Bill aims to ensure that the rights of neurodivergent people, including people with ADHD, are respected, protected and championed. The Bill consultation sought views on proposals for how the Justice system (including the Courts system) could be improved for neurodivergent people.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. Local Authorities are responsible for providing a range of public services, including education, so the member may wish to approach local government for the information requested.

This question relates to operational matters that are the responsibility of the Scottish Court and Tribunals Service (SCTS) corporate body. The question has been passed to the Chief Executive of the SCTS who reply in writing within 20 days.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6O-04553 on 23 April 2025. All answers to Oral Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at Official Report: search what was said in Parliament | Scottish Parliament Website

In 2025/26, an additional £28m will be invested in additional support for learning, to support the recruitment and retention of the ASN workforce at a local level, to help enhance professional learning on inclusion for all teachers at all stages of their careers and to support teacher specialism in inclusion. A further £1 million will be provided to support national initiatives, which will enable us to build on the work being delivered through our Additional Support for Learning Action Plan.

The Scottish Government is providing £23.4 million of funding in 2025-26, to the Regional Transport Partnerships and their local authority partners through the Active Travel People and Place programme. One of the key areas of investment in this programme is “Schools and Young People”, which targets investment in behaviour change initiatives to encourage more children and young people to use active travel as a way of travelling to school. The aim of this programme is to make sustainable travel choices the most desirable way to travel for young people and families by providing the necessary interventions and adaptations that make active travel more attractive.

This year, we will also increase our funding (to £2.5m) for Bikeability Scotland, the national cycle training programme for school aged children. Bikeability Scotland provides the next generation of cyclists with the skills and confidence they need to ride safely on our roads. In 2023-24, the last period for which data is available, more than 54,039 children received cycle training. We expect that figure to rise to 70,000 this year.

We allocated over £100 million across a number of infrastructure programmes to develop and deliver walking, wheeling and cycling infrastructure in 2024-25. This includes funding through the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund (ATIF), our primary vehicle for supporting infrastructure projects.

Through the ATIF, Transport Scotland directly funded 16 local authorities and one Regional Transport Partnership for projects that are: improving routes and junctions at various locations to ensure children can cross safely; addressing missing links; supporting safer routes to school; and enhancing safety by improving lighting.

The funding support provided through the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund will continue in 2025-26, giving local authorities the autonomy to support the design, development, and delivery of active travel infrastructure measures according to their individual local priorities.

More than £1bn will be provided through the Attainment Scotland Fund (ASF) to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap during this parliamentary term. This funding can be used to provide additional tutoring support, if headteachers and education authorities want to deploy this support in a way that targets those who will most benefit from this kind of intervention.

The Scottish Government has provided multi-year funding for mentoring programmes, which has been shown to support confidence building and attainment in care-experienced children and young people and those affected by poverty. In March 2021, the Scottish Government announced a £19.4 million fund over five years for mentoring programmes to support young people as part of the Scottish Mentoring and Leadership Programme (SMLP), including funding for MCR Pathways to further rollout provision across Scotland to a much larger cohort of young people.

An interim evaluation report on the SMLP programme published in December 2024 found that mentoring had increased participant’s academic confidence, attainment/achievement, social confidence, and confidence in doing well at a job in the future. A Value for Money and Impact Evaluation report is due to be published in 2025. Previous independent evaluation of the MCR Pathways mentoring programme showed that there were statistically significant positive differences between the outcomes of care-experienced young people who were mentored and care-experienced young people who were not mentored, in staying on rates, attainment, and positive destinations.