Chamber and committees

There are currently four gender identity services providing specialist gender identity healthcare to adults in NHS Scotland. A separate service for young people accepts referrals from across Scotland. The governance of each of gender identity healthcare service remains the responsibility of the respective Health Board running the service.

Several actions from the NHS Gender Identity Services: Strategic Action Framework 2022-2024, published in December 2021, jointly support the NHS Health Boards in strengthening governance arrangements to deliver safe and effective healthcare:

?Healthcare Improvement Scotland has published national Gender identity healthcare services standards. These support national consistency in the multidisciplinary delivery and coordination of high-quality gender identity healthcare, which is based on current evidence and best practice. Standards apply to all services where people may access gender identity healthcare and are clear in expectation that organisations must demonstrate effective and collaborative leadership, governance and partnership working.

• The Gender reassignment protocol for Scotland (September 2024) sets out expectations for pathways and delivery of NHS Scotland adult gender identity healthcare.
• NHS National Education for Scotland (NES) has published their Transgender Care Knowledge and Skills framework for adults and is now developing an annex to the Framework for staff supporting children and young people who are trans or gender-questioning
• On 28 October 2025, Public Health Scotland published, for the second time, nationally collated data on waiting times for accessing NHS gender identity clinics. This follows the first publication on 5 November 2024, which was the first of its kind in the UK.

The Scottish Government published the final report of the Social Tariff Working Group in March 2025. Since then, we have consistently and regularly pressed the UK Government to introduce an automatic and targeted discount on energy bills to address unaffordable energy prices at source.

In November 2025, we published modelling which shows that, based on the 2023 Scottish Housing Conditions Survey, the introduction of a social tariff would result in 660,000 households in Scotland seeing their estimated fuel bills go down by an average of £700.

Developing global events urgently reinforce the need for the UK Government to put in place arrangements for a sustainable and targeted bill support scheme as quickly as possible and we will continue to strongly make the case.

The Scottish Government has provided over £8m of funding to NHS Grampian in support of return of obstetric maternity services to Dr Grays since 2023, with a further £1.4m committed for 2024-25. NHS Grampian have appointed consultant obstetricians, paediatricians, midwives and nurses to support the service. Since 2024 NHS Grampian have reintroduced obsetric day care assessment, scanning services and elective caesarean sections to Dr Grays. Recruitment is ongoing for additional obstetricians, anaesthetists and theatre staff with the expectation that full obstetric maternity services will be returned in 2026.

The Scottish Government does not hold the specific information requested and this would need to be sought from the operator. However, I can advise that the original cost of the CHFS2 contract included a forecast amount relating to agency staff of £729k.

The initial contract award period was extended by one year (Oct 2024 – Sept 2025) and the estimated costings provided did not separate out any agency costs.

The Scottish Government publishes accredited statistics each December that are based on the number of second homes and empty properties on council tax registers as at September each year. A full breakdown by local authority area is available at: Housing statistics: Second homes and empty properties - gov.scot.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government It is the responsibility of local authorities to enforce compliance with the register of tobacco and vapes in their local areas.

As outlined in my response to question S6W-44015, audit recommendations regarding this decision will be implemented by Glasgow City Health & Social Care Partnership (HSCP) officers, who are accountable to the Glasgow City Integration Joint Board (IJB) Finance, Audit and Scrutiny Committee.

All of the audit recommendations were accepted by Glasgow City IJB management, with implementation completion dates of 31 January 2026 to 30 June 2026.

The HSCP has advised that wider organisational learning will also be applied as an outcome of this implementation process.

The Scottish Government provides funding to Health Boards and Local Authorities and it is ultimately for local partners to agree a joint, integrated budget which will enable them to meet the needs of local people in line with their Strategic Objectives. It would therefore not be appropriate for the Scottish Government to intervene in relation to specific local decisions.

While we cannot intervene in decisions made by IJBs, we have facilitated engagement between health boards and HSCPs around the commissioning of support services for Huntington’s Disease. We continue to encourage all partners to work together to find solutions that put the needs of local people at the centre of decision making.

The Ministerial Oversight Board in relation to the Union Street fire first met on 11 March 2026 and has subsequently met a further three times. These meetings drew together Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers with a role in the response to and recovery from the fire, as well as policy and operational teams across the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland. We also extended the invitation to the meetings to senior leaders from Glasgow City Council. Processes to ensure effective Ministerial oversight will be kept under review by the group as we move from the immediate response into the longer-term recovery phase.

Each structure on the trunk road network is inspected every two years. Any defects found are recorded and categorised in terms of severity and extent. Currently, of the 2069 bridges on the trunk road network, 1939 are recorded as having defects. An assessment of the extent and severity of these defects is used to prioritise works and produce one and three year programmes for repair. 270 bridges are deemed to have defects severe enough to programme specific works. Programmes are updated every year taking into account data from the previous year’s inspections.

Spreadsheet A contains a list of structures with defects along with their positions on the trunk road network.

Spreadsheet B contains a list of structures with programmed repairs along with the year in which they are due to commence, , with some schemes devised to address similar defects on multiple structures.

These can be found in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. Number 66564)

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. It is the responsibility of local authorities to enforce compliance with the register of tobacco and vapes in their local areas.