Chamber and committees

Ministers are in the very early stages of considering how to take forward this commitment and cost estimates will be developed in due course.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on registration and participation centrally. Public Services Delivery Scotland publishes information on patient registration and participation for NHS Boards, including NHS Dumfries and Galloway: NHS dental data monitoring report.

In considering the provision of specialist services, NHS Boards are expected to plan capacity in line with population need and service demand, supported by regional and national collaboration where appropriate.

We are aware of pressures within some specialist services, including in the West of Scotland, and expect Boards to take these into account as part of their ongoing service planning and prioritisation.

Procurement is underway for a national artificial intelligence solution to support rapid identification of patients who would benefit from a thrombectomy procedure. A further update will be provided following the conclusion of the procurement process.

The Scottish Government has a clear focus on ensuring women have access to safe, person-centred and high quality maternity care, and I look forward giving a statement to Parliament in the coming weeks on how the Scottish Government will be further improving maternity services across the country.

It is already a matter of public record that the Scottish Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce is reviewing the issues facing rural communities, including Caithness.

The Scottish Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce has met three times, most recently on 25 March 2026, and the minutes from all three meetings have been published on the Taskforce webpage Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce - gov.scot.

I will shortly be setting out to Parliament a statement detailing what the independent review will consider, how it will be led and how it will engage with stakeholders, including in Caithness. As has been the case under the previous Cabinet Secretary for Health and Minister for Public Health, there will continue to be close engagement with groups such as Caithness Health Action Team (CHAT), indeed Ms Minto engaged regularly with CHAT and with local stakeholders to discuss the issues women face and this Government will continue to do so.

Data on collisions which cause injury and take place on the road network, including adjacent pavements and cycle lanes, is collected by Police Scotland as part of the Great Britain-wide dataset known as STATS19.

The following tables provide the number of injury road collisions recorded as involving an e-bike or an e-scooter and pedestrians between 2016 and 2024, the last full year for which we currently have data.

E-scooters and e-bikes are not designated vehicle types collected within STATS19, and as such they can only be identified using free-text fields which capture other vehicles and similar. This is likely to represent an incomplete record of e-bikes in particular, as it is not always possible to identify where e-bikes may have been recorded as bicycle or electric motorcycle, which are both designated vehicle types.

Transport Scotland is currently part of a working group led by the Department for Transport, which is considering how the collection of injury road collision data for different vehicle types, and for e-bikes in particular, can be improved.

Number of injury road collisions involving e-bikes and pedestrians

I look forward to giving a statement to Parliament before summer recess which will set out further detail on what the independent review will consider, how it will be led and how it will engage with stakeholders, including in Caithness.

The Scottish Government supports Skills Development Scotland (SDS) and training providers to work with employers to raise awareness of the benefits of apprenticeships to their business.

SDS promote all types of apprenticeship opportunities, including bricklaying, as an attractive career path through their all-age career service, in every local authority. An SDS Careers Adviser is embedded in every school in Scotland to highlight the career options available to people, including apprenticeships.

The My World of Work website, used in schools to support young people, includes in depth information about apprenticeships, whilst apprenticeships.scot is promoted to all ages as the main source of information about Scottish Apprenticeships. SDS also work with partners and employers to highlight the importance of apprenticeships particularly through Scottish Apprenticeship Week.

SDS has also explored how to better support the construction workforce through the recently published research they commissioned, on behalf of the Skills and Workforce Group of the Construction Accord.

In tandem, a short-life working group led by the Scottish Funding Council, has focused on developing practical solutions to strengthen learner pathways and improve workforce retention in the sector. This work, in collaboration with the Scottish Government, college sector, SDS and the Construction Industry Training Board, is nearing completion.