Chamber and committees

The Agenda for Change pay deal focuses on rewarding staff such as nurses, midwives, paramedics, porters and others for the dedication and effort they provide to NHS Scotland. Delivering a renewed and stronger NHS is a key commitment for the Scottish Government and at the heart of that are our hard-working healthcare staff who we want to ensure feel valued and rewarded.

The approach to pay for staff at the Scottish National Investment Bank aligns with other UK development banks and reflects the need to attract and retain staff with the necessary skills, experience and expertise from the financial services sector.

The Bank now has £786 million of investment commitments and has crowded in over £1.4 billion of third-party co-investment, bringing the total committed by, or alongside the Bank, to over £2.1 billion.

The Bank posted their first operating profit in 2023-24 of £3.2 million and have recently published their annual Impact Report up to the end of December 2024. The Report included these highlights:

• 207,042 people positively impacted by investments since launch
• 742 new homes supported since launch
• 3,091 jobs directly or indirectly supported during 2024
• £227 million supply chain spend in Scotland since launch
• 135,531 tCO2e avoided or removed since launch, equivalent to removing over 72,000 cars from our roads

Considering these positive results, the Bank and the management are delivering value for money.

The criteria for the Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP) are developed by the Bank’s Remuneration and Nominations Committee for the start of each financial year. This committee is a subset of the Bank’s Board and do not themselves benefit from the LTIP scheme. Ministers review and approve the criteria suggested by the committee but have no role after that and are not involved in agreeing or approving any staff payments.

Once the LTIP criteria are agreed, the Bank’s Remuneration and Nominations Committee is responsible for assessing how the Bank’s staff have performed against them and approve any payments.

The Bank’s Annual Report and Accounts include a Report from the Chair of the Bank’s Remunerations and Nominations Committee which might be of interest (see page 96 onwards).

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the collection and use of data in health and social care, ultimately to improve outcomes for people.

For example:

a) We have set up the Social Care Data and Intelligence Programme Board (SCDIPB) to support and optimise the development and analysis of social care data. The Board is working to implement the recommendations of the Care Home Data Review (https://www.gov.scot/publications/care-home-data-review-full-report/) to streamline and improve the collection and use of social care data. Changes to TURAS Care Management have also reduced the data burden on care homes, providing a picture of available beds, occupancy and pausing duplicate data collections.

b) We have made significant progress in the data made available to General Practice, such as the collection of weekly capacity and pressures data provided by NHS Health Boards, and monthly activity data published by Public Health Scotland (PHS). We have also commissioned NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) to develop a Primary Care Data and Intelligence platform for March 2026, which will provide a single point of controlled access to general practice data.

c) In addition, we continue to improve NHS data collections by developing new diagnostic activity statistics and new data on Hospital at Home. This is being undertaken in collaboration with PHS and NHS NSS as set out in Scotland’s Data Strategy for Health and Social Care, published in February 2023. The Strategy sets out our commitments to improve the collection, use and sharing of data, more information can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/data-strategy-health-social-care-2/.

The Scottish Government does not hold full data with regards to waiting times and there are no national targets. However, a maximum wait time of 6 weeks is recommended in critical cases.

Data up to 2022-23 on Social Care eligibility and waiting times is publicly available at Local Authority level via the following weblink:

Social care: eligibility criteria and waiting times Scotland 2022-2023 - gov.scot

Data showing the time waited between referral first contact and completion of a community care assessment service in the final quarter of each financial year can be found in the ‘waiting times new clients’ tab of the Excel workbook which accompanies the publication.

Under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 local authorities and Health and Social Care Partnerships have a duty to assess the social care support needs of people and decide, in light of that assessment, to arrange suitable services, if required.

While the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care support policy in Scotland, it is for local Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) to ensure that social care support services are in place to provide their population with the appropriate support in the right place and at the right time.

We understand the pressures faced and have invested a record £21.7 billion in health and social care in 2025-26, which includes almost £2.2 billion for social care and integration.

The funding committed to date in respect of the circa £100 million extra investment to address long waits is shown in Table 1 broken down by health board and in Table 2 broken down by specialty; this is over and above other funding to improve waiting times.

Table 1.

Local authorities are public bodies and can only place certain people on their allocation schemes or waiting lists for housing, this is set out in legislation, and immigration status is a consideration. There is however no legislation requiring Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) to consider immigration status when allocating social housing. RSLs are independent organisations regulated by the Scottish Housing Regulator who must make their decisions to allocate housing within the law and according to their own policies. However a RSL would discuss rent, affordability, income and benefit entitlement with any prospective tenant, before making an offer.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37757 on 30 May 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

While the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care support policy in Scotland, it is for local Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) to ensure that social care support services are in place to provide their population with the appropriate support in the right place and at the right time.

The information requested is not held centrally for all years requested.

However, weekly data on the number of people waiting for a social care assessment is published monthly by Public Health Scotland at Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) level. The dashboard can be accessed via the following link:

People requiring a Social Care assessment and Care at Home services

Data is available from 24 October 2022 onwards. Comparisons over time should be made with caution due to a change in definitions implemented in January 2024.

Comparison of figures between HSCPs should also be made with caution and should be done in conjunction with the data quality notes available in the dashboard.

Not all Partnerships were able to provide all data. The data quality section of the dashboard provides more information on each of the partnerships' ability to provide data.

Data on the total number of care hours planned for delivery is not held centrally.

Data on the number of hours of care at home funded by Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland is published annually by Public Health Scotland and can be found via the dashboard on following weblink:

Care at Home Statistics for Scotland: Support and services funded by Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland 2023/2024 - Care at Home Statistics for Scotland - Publications - Public Health Scotland

Data are available for 2018-19 to 2023-24.

Data showing the number of hours for people assessed but yet to be delivered, and for number of additional hours of care to be delivered to those already receiving a care package is published by Public Health Scotland at local authority level. This can be found via the dashboard on following weblink:

Overview - People requiring a Social Care assessment and Care at Home services - Care at home - Social and community care - Healthcare system - Public Health Scotland