Chamber and committees

The National Trust for Scotland are reviewing the positive and negative implications of both current and alternative options for managing the sheep of St Kilda, and these are matters for the National Trust for Scotland rather than the Scottish Government.

The National Trust for Scotland has an email address that any questions concerning the review, can be sent to: [email protected]

The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission (SAWC) is finalising its report and once completed, hopefully in the autumn 2026, will be published on the Commission’s website at -SAWC’s web page.

Implementation of the Scottish Government’s Feminist Approach to International Relations is underway across ministerial portfolios, following the publication of the position paper in 2023, with ministers and officials continuing to apply its principles to policy development, programme design and international engagement.

For example, we are delivering our participatory Women and Girls Fund in our international development partner countries of Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia. This programme seeks to both advance gender equality and equalise power with the Global South through supporting women and girls in our partner countries to define and meet their own priorities.

In the climate action and rural affairs portfolio, the Scottish Government is continuing to put climate justice at the heart of our international action. We are embedding participatory approaches in our programmes and mainstreaming gender equality considerations by addressing structural inequality and ensuring all programmes have specific gender equality objectives.

Future Farming Investment Scheme grants were paid in advance specifically to give businesses the cash flow to make the approved investments, which was one of the main barriers experienced with previous schemes. Verification before Basic Payment Scheme payment protects public funds by ensuring funds were used as agreed, and establishing whether any grant is recoverable before further support is paid. The Scottish Government has extended the deadline for businesses to submit evidence to 30 September, providing additional flexibility. As of 15 September 2026, 423 beneficiaries are still to provide evidence that the funded investment was carried out.

Scotland follows the advice of the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), the independent expert body that advises all four UK nations on screening programmes.

On 28 May 2026, the UK NSC recommended that prostate screening should be offered to men aged 45 to 61 who have both a confirmed BRCA2 gene variant and a family history of breast, ovarian, pancreatic or prostate cancer. We have accepted this recommendation.

The UK NSC currently does not recommend prostate screening for other groups of men. It has found that there is not yet a suitably accurate test for a national screening programme of asymptomatic men, and there is currently insufficient evidence that the benefits of screening outweigh the risks for other groups of men.

However, ongoing research studies, such as TRANSFORM, will provide new evidence about screening other potentially higher-risk groups and different screening methods. The UK NSC is monitoring emerging evidence closely and will consider whether it supports expanding their current recommendation. The Scottish Government and NHS partners are exploring what would be required to extend prostate cancer screening to other groups should the UK NSC expand its recommendation.

Planning work being undertaken by Public Services Delivery Scotland will provide the information necessary to develop a 24/7 thrombectomy service across Scotland.

This work will include consideration of the specific requirements of rural and island communities, including those of people living in Dumfries and Galloway.

We continue to discuss the closure of the ECO4 scheme with the UK Government, our main focus is ensuring that poor quality work delivered to homes in Scotland as part of the ECO4 scheme is promptly remediated. We engage regularly with our stakeholders in the retrofit supply chain, as well as meeting with individual home energy installers and other businesses impacted by the UK Government decision to end the ECO4 scheme.

The Scottish Government has had ongoing discussion with the National Records of Scotland, The National Archives, and the UK Government about the future of the Wallace Letter.

While the letter was originally intended to return to England permanently it will now go on display at Kew in 2027 as part of The National Archives’ public programme before returning to Scotland from 2028. This new loan will similarly allow for curated display in Edinburgh and potentially more widely across Scotland, working with other Scottish cultural institutions.

The Scottish Government believes the letter should be in Scotland and will engage on the matter of permanent settlement during the coming, newly negotiated loan period.

The national minimum amounts for School Clothing Grant are £120 for eligible primary pupils and £150 for eligible secondary pupils. These amounts were agreed with local government in 2021. Local authorities are responsible for administering the School Clothing Grant, including setting eligibility criteria, and have the flexibility to pay families more than the national minimum.

The Scottish Government is providing increased funding of £14.6m in 2026-27 financial year to support local authorities to maintain the School Clothing Grant. This includes a £400k inflationary increase on the previous year’s funding and represents an increase of £2.8m since 2021-22. We have committed to uprating funding in line with inflation during this Parliament.

The Scottish Government's fuel poverty and energy efficiency schemes continue to deliver the same range of retrofit measures as the ECO4 scheme. However Scottish Government schemes already include some measures, such as battery storage, that are not available from ECO4 installers.

In most cases, households that were eligible for ECO4 finance will continue to be eligible for retrofit measures delivered through Area Based Schemes (ABS), Warmer Homes Scotland (WHS) or the Home Energy Scotland (HES) Grant and Loan scheme. We encourage households interested in making their homes warmer and less expensive to heat to get in touch with Home Energy Scotland for further advice about the assistance available from the Scottish Government.