Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government will interact with the UK Government and Ministry of Defence to support the opportunity for any significant contracts with the potential to provide ongoing employment opportunities for shipyards and fabrication businesses in Scotland.

There are several Scottish yards that possess the capabilities and specialist workforce skills needed to deliver this kind of infrastructure project, and we would encourage the MOD to utilise those resources. It is of course a commercial matter for each business to bid for work, however we would support any bid that ensured the work is delivered in Scotland.

I refer the member to the Committee debate of 12 December 2024 where I set out that to help employers address all potential barriers to recruitment in rural and island areas, a whole system approach was required.

Telehealth as a term can represent a range of digital and remote access to services across healthcare. As such, there are multiple telehealth services on offer at a national and local level across Scotland and therefore it is not possible to provide a complete number undertaken across all services provided.

Scotland will take part in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) at two grade levels - P5 and S2 - and we have confirmed our participation with the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, which administers the study. Procurement of a provider to deliver the assessments in Scotland is currently underway. The field trial is planned for 2026, with the main study to follow in 2027.

Table 1 shows the estimated net savings to ratepayers from freezing the Basic Property Rate at 49.8p, compared to an inflationary increase to 50.6p. The net estimates include adjustments for reliefs, as well as in-year adjustments such as reductions due to proposals or appeals and write-offs.

The Scottish Government does not hold property-level data on industry sectors. Property class is a classification used by Scottish Assessors to describe the type of property and does not necessarily accurately reflect the use of a property.

Figures are rounded to the nearest 100,000 and may not sum due to rounding.

Table 1: Estimated net savings from freeze to the Basic Property Rate (£)

Source: Scottish Assessors’ Valuation Roll as at 1 October 2024, local authorities’ billing information as at 1 June 2024

The management of the school estate is the statutory responsibility of local authorities. Decisions about the closure of schools are also a matter for local authorities.

There are additional provisions to protect schools from closure in place, particularly those in rural areas, via the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010. Local authorities must undertake a full statutory consultation on the permanent closure of schools. Ministers have powers to “call-in” any proposals to permanently close schools.

Through our Addressing Depopulation Action Plan, published in February, we acknowledge the important role that education provision plays in terms of local population attraction and retention. Through this Action Plan we have provided £90,000 in funding to Dumfries & Galloway Council in this financial year, which will be used to further explore locally-identified priorities around depopulation and design a campaign to encourage people to move to the area along with inward investment, among other measures to support the long-term sustainability of communities.

The Scottish Government will also provide over £15 billion in the 2025-26 Local Government Settlement. This represents an increase of £1 billion, a real terms increase of 4.7% compared to 2024-25.

In 2025-26 Dumfries and Galloway Council will receive £444.5 million of funding, which equates to an extra £62.9 million or an additional 16.5% compared to 2024-25. In addition, all councils will receive their fair share of the currently undistributed sum of £563 million.

The Scottish Government remains committed to reducing health inequalities and supporting people to live longer and healthier lives. Tackling underlying drivers such as poverty and inequality remain the best way to improve population health outcomes and life expectancy. We are undertaking a range of actions to achieve this.

In 2024-25 we continued to allocate around £3 billion a year to policies which tackle poverty and protect people as far as possible during the ongoing cost of living crisis. This is in addition to initiatives to promote healthy lifestyles through tobacco control, preventing alcohol related harm, promoting healthy eating and physical activity.

These actions are coupled with national support to enable local approaches to address regional health disparities. Through the Place and Wellbeing Programme, the Scottish Government is tackling health inequalities by supporting health and social care bodies to operate as effective anchor institutions; empowering the community and voluntary sector to complement the public sector; and working to achieve fairer health and wellbeing outcomes through the coordinated efforts of Community Planning Partnerships.

Furthermore, the Scottish Government is working with its partners at a local, regional and national level to develop a Population Health Framework, to take a cross-government and cross-sector approach to improve the key building blocks of health including: good early years and education; good work and income; healthy places; and equitable health care. The Framework’s overarching ambition is to accelerate the recovery and improvement of population health in Scotland, focussing on a whole system approach to preventative action. Actions under the Framework will be targeted to areas and communities most in need to ensure an equitable approach to address regional disparities between Scotland’s communities.

A key way Scottish Government will develop its understanding of a whole system approach is through the recently announced collaboration between Public Health Scotland, University College London’s Institute of Health Equity and three of Scotland’s local authority areas. The Collaboration for Health Equity in Scotland (CHES) will work with Aberdeen City, North Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire to strengthen and accelerate action underway to improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities. Insight and learning from the Collaboration will be shared through a national learning system to support work across the whole country.

In addition, there are targeted actions within the Scottish Government’s Women’s Health Plan aim to address women’s health inequalities through raising awareness across women’s health, improving access to healthcare for women across their lives and tackling inequalities in health outcomes for women and girls.

This information is in the public domain and can be found on the Scottish Government’s website where the Scottish Budget sets out the Scottish Government’s proposed spending and tax plans for 2025-26 as presented to the Scottish Parliament. Please see the following link.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2025-2026/

Further details on the Scottish Budget, such as the split by HMT aggregate, outturn comparisons and Level 4 Budget tables, can be found in the following link.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2025-2026/documents/

Special care dentistry is predominantly carried out by the Public Dental Service (PDS). The PDS are NHS Board-run services and therefore the responsibility of the health boards.

The Scottish Government undertook engagement with stakeholders on issues relating to non-core and discretionary support, including support for part-time students following the response to the recommendations of the Independent Review of Student Support. Further work in this area, including the launch of a public consultation, was unable to continue due to the reprioritisation of resources to deal with issues related to Brexit and then the response to the Covid-19 Pandemic.

As a Government, we recognised the importance in continuing this work and as a result, the Post-school education, research and skills - initial priorities set out the commitment to undertake a review of student support for part-time students. This commitment was also incorporated in the 2023-24 Programme for Government.

We are in the process of considering the best way to engage with the sector to ensure that the relevant views of key stakeholders and students are captured. All issues impacting on part-time students will be given careful consideration as part of this Review. As an initial step, we have opened up living cost support to disabled students who are studying full-time distance learning courses and who are unable to study campus based courses because of their disability.