Chamber and committees

Since 2021, the Scottish Government has invested over £5.3 million into Welfare Advice and Health Partnerships (WAHPs), supporting delivery of welfare rights advice within participating GP Practices. Building on the evidence from the WAHPs, since 2023 we have spent £4.7 million on our Advice in Accessible settings Fund which supports partnership working and improving the availability of advice services within a range of community, health and education settings.

As set out in the new Tackling Child Poverty Plan published on 12 March 2026, the Scottish Government is investing more than £27 million over the next two years in welfare, income maximisation and debt advice services. Multi-year grants will help provide stability and certainty for the sector, including improving staff retention and we expect these services to support at least 80,000 households each year. The plan also commits to providing funding of £6 million for the Advice in Accessible Settings Fund by the end of 2028-29, which we expect will support over 7,500 people each year.

The Plan also sets out how we intend to make good quality advice and support on income maximisation more easily available by sharing existing best practice more widely and working with education, health and advice sectors to review how to sustainably embed advice in schools.

Whilst the Scottish Government is one of the biggest single funders of national advice services in Scotland, the primary funder of locally based advice services remains local authorities and it is for local authorities to decide how best to meet the needs of their local communities through the decisions they make for services within their area.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) publish median and 90th percentile for length of time patients wait to be seen as a new outpatient on a monthly basis.

The median waiting time is the middle waiting time, calculated by ordering patients from shortest to longest wait. This represents typical length of time patients have waited. The 90th percentile reflects the upper limit on how long nine out of ten waits have lasted.

The latest data covers all waits for an ongoing new outpatient appointment up to 31 January 2026, as set out in the following table.

Table 1. Gynaecology: New Outpatient Ongoing Waits – 31 January 2026

The Scottish Government will continue to monitor the National Concessionary Travel Schemes to ensure their longer- term sustainability. At present the Scottish Government has no plans to extend the concessionary travel schemes beyond the current eligibility criteria. Any decisions will be for the next Parliament to consider.

The Scottish Government recognises the financial pressures that many households are experiencing, including debts to public sector bodies. Scottish Ministers have consistently encouraged public bodies to share good practice on debt assistance and collection and to show empathy and dignity when working with people struggling with debts including an assessment of affordability to repay debt. This includes using the Collaborative Council Tax Collection Guide[1] and Good practice principles for managing school meal debt[2] published by COSLA in February 2023 following engagement with local government partners. We have allocated £2.22m in 2025-26 to support a national Council Tax Debt Project delivered by Citizen’s Advice Scotland. In addition to enabling increased debt advice provision across the whole of Scotland for those in Council Tax arrears, this project is supporting the development of national resources which can help support the best practice principles in Council Tax collection.

The Scottish Government supported the inclusion of provisions during the passage of The Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 which require a review of how joint and several liability for Council Tax arrears affects people experiencing domestic abuse. This review will help councils navigate these complex cases with greater care and understanding, ensuring that support is available. Scottish Ministers have also committed to consult on the question of prescription periods and Council Tax in the next Parliament, so that any reform balances fairness for households with the need to protect local services and is robust and workable.

The Scottish Government has liaised with the Cabinet Office and HMRC to explore data sharing opportunities which improve Council Tax debtor data-sharing channels between Scottish local authorities and HMRC. New data-sharing pathways have been agreed which will support local authorities in enacting fair debt recovery and help identify and support vulnerable debtors while increasing uptake of the Scottish Government’s means tested Council Tax Reduction scheme. This scheme ensures that nobody in Scotland should have to meet a Council Tax liability they cannot be expected to afford.

These new data-sharing pathways represent an opportunity to support fairer debt recovery, help identify and support vulnerable debtors, and increase uptake of the Council Tax Reduction scheme by identifying eligible non-recipients.

Scottish Ministers continue to work with COSLA through the Joint Working Group on Sources of Local Government Funding and Council Tax Reform to encourage the adoption of best practice on debt collection and advice.

In addition, Social Security Scotland is committed to delivering a debt management service that is responsive to clients’ needs while protecting the public purse. This includes an approach for vulnerable clients that includes training debt officers to identify and sensitively handle potential hardship and vulnerable clients, as well as signposting them to support and advocacy groups.

[1]Collaborative Council Tax Collection (improvementservice.org.uk)

[2]Good-Practice-Principles-for-School-Meal-Debt-Management.pdf (cosla.gov.uk)

The Scottish public sector delivers a wide range of digital services, and ensuring these are secure and resilient is critical. For more than five years, the Scottish Government has encouraged public bodies to adopt a proactive, risk-based governance approach, anchored in clear board-level accountability, to strengthen their cyber resilience.

The refreshed Strategic Framework for a Cyber Resilient Scotland (published November 2025) sets out the key priorities to build the cyber resilience maturity of the public sector. These include implementing robust security standards, controls and governance; maintaining and routinely testing incident response plans; ensuring staff are well-trained; and embedding learning from cyber incidents across Scotland and beyond.

The Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre (SC3) plays a central role in coordinating multi-agency responses to cyber incidents affecting the public sector. SC3 provides national support by working directly with organisations, sharing real-time and emerging threat intelligence and helping them mitigate risks. This strengthens preparedness for cyber incidents and ensures public bodies have the standards, tools and skills they need to build strong cyber resilience and fend off attacks.

In addition, the Scottish Government hosts quarterly Public Sector Cyber Resilience Network webinars, bringing together cyber and information security professionals from more than 180 public bodies. These sessions enable the sharing of good practice and lessons learned, provide updates on evolving threats and risks and help identify common challenges where government support.

The most recent Scottish Criminal Justice Survey, published earlier this month shows that the majority of adults are confident in the effectiveness of the police to deal with incidents, solve crime, and catch criminals. Furthermore, the survey showed that 59% of adults have confidence in the police to respond quickly to appropriate calls and information from the public. This is higher than in 2008/09, when it was 54%.

While there are a complex range of factors behind confidence in policing it would be remiss not to acknowledge that overall trust has fallen in recent years. This mirrors a similar trend in England and Wales over the same period, suggesting the issues involved may not be solely specific to Scotland.

Confidence in our police service is vital for a safe and just Scotland and Police Scotland are already taking steps to respond – from strengthening community policing to improving how they engage with victims and local communities. That work is backed by record investment of £1.64 billion this year, which will increase to over £1.7 million in 2026-27.

Improving public trust and confidence is also a cornerstone of Police Scotland’s 2030 vision and is embedded within its three-year business plan and local policing plans.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) will publish waiting times data covering the period up to 31 March 2026 on 28 April 2026.

PHS uses the national waiting times datamart to collect electronic patient records covering the waits that patients experience waiting for treatment as an inpatient or day case under the Treatment Time Guarantee. This data source can be used routinely to identify the specialty of treatment. However, although the records are designed to collect coded information on the procedure that is planned for the patient, this information is often either incomplete, lacking in essential detail and/or its accuracy cannot be assured. In addition, for patients who have completed their wait the procedures that was planned may not always reflect the procedure actually performed after they were admitted for treatment. The latter is not captured through the national data mart. Consequently, information on the average waiting time for surgery for endometriosis or fibroids is not available at a sub-speciality level.

Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) manages the Scotch and Specially Selected assurance schemes, including their marketing and branding, helping to highlight the quality and provenance behind them.

This activity is funded through levy payments as per the Quality Meat Scotland Order 2008. No Scottish Government funding has been provided to assist in the promotion of Scotch Beef, Scotch Lamb or Specially Selected Pork since 2021. In addition, no promotional funding has been provided to any organisation for game.

In 2025-26, the Scottish Government is providing £45,000 of support for the venison sector which includes £20,000 towards enhancing the Scottish Quality Wild Venison Assurance Scheme, as well as £8,000 towards implementing a promotional work programme, alongside others including the Soil Association and Food for Life, that will inform public sector buyers around venison.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on the number of epilepsy specialist nurses currently in post in Scotland.

I refer the Member to the answer to question S6W-41594 on 10 November 2025. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

As in previous years, St Andrew’s House and Victoria Quay will be lit purple for epilepsy awareness on 26 March 2026.