The budget invests over £2.4bn in post school education and skills and reinforces our steadfast commitment to free education. It includes a significant real terms increase in our investment in Scotland’s College and University sectors so that people of all ages have the opportunity to fulfil their potential, while also ensuring that priority workforce needs are met.

The Scottish Government has committed to introduce a new approach to national skills planning, and strengthen regional skills planning.

Alongside setting up these new arrangements, we recognise the importance of tackling current skills needs in priority areas. We are providing targeted support across a range of sectors, including offshore wind, social care and engineering.

For example, we are providing funding to the college sector in 2025-26 to deliver an Offshore Wind Skills Programme, helping to create region-specific training hubs for offshore wind skills. We are investing almost £12 million over three years to deliver a targeted Offshore Wind Skills Programme. This new funding will enable us to deliver the most critical priorities in our action plan, while keeping the programme scalable as future funding decisions are taken.

We are also investing up to £2 million in 2025-26 to develop engineering skills in the Glasgow City Region through a programme led by Clyde Maritime Cluster with Skills Development Scotland. This is supporting industry-led action to increase the supply of engineering and advanced manufacturing workers and reduce levels of economic inactivity.

Operational decisions such as curriculum delivery are the responsibility of individual colleges.

All NHS Boards are required to deliver at least 3% recurring savings against baseline funding each year to support long-term fiscal sustainability. It is for individual Boards to determine how best to deliver these efficiencies without impacting patient care.

The Scottish Government’s Finance Delivery Unit (FDU) carries out three-year financial planning with NHS Boards. Board financial plans are expected in March 2026 and will provide oversight of boards planned savings for 2026-27. Future year Boards’ savings plans will continue to develop and will be agreed on an annual basis.

The FDU provides Boards with the 15 Box Grid to identify priority areas for delivering savings and securing value for money across workforce, innovation, value-based healthcare and productivity.

We are making good progress on the National Performance Framework (NPF) reform project.

The most recent update to Parliament was 28 November 2025, in response to the Social Justice and Social Security committee’s request for evidence to stage 1 of the Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Bill. [Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill].

We are currently concluding phase two which will make proposals for change and improvement. In phase three we intend to work with partners and stakeholders, up to the pre-election period, to develop these proposals further and we will write to Parliament with further details soon.

We aim to launch the reformed framework in the new parliamentary session following the 2026 Scottish election.

While SEPA typically produces weekly water scarcity reports from May to September, it extends the weekly reporting period as conditions require. In 2025 weekly reporting started in April and continued into October due to conditions.

Weekly reports are designed for the period of highest hydrological risk, when frequent updates offer the greatest value to both abstractors and public bodies. Extending weekly reporting across the full year, rather than responding to when conditions require it, does not represent the best use of resources at this time.

The Scottish Government received a funding bid from the Scottish Museum of Empire, Slavery, Colonialism and Migration to enable them to continue developing revenue projects and capacities regarding recommendation 1 from the Empire Slavery and Scotland’s Museum Steering Group. The Scottish Government has allocated up to £600,000 to the Scottish Museum of Empire, Slavery, Colonialism and Migration in its draft budget for 2026-27.

The Scottish Government have no plans to review the criteria for referral and treatment of varicose veins.

Meetings between Scottish Government and SEPA officials focusing on measures to minimise and mitigate water scarcity take place regularly.

Over the summer, the Scottish Government officials met weekly with SEPA, Scottish Water, and key stakeholders for 28 consecutive weeks to monitor and manage water availability.

SEPA has taken several key actions recently to minimise and mitigate impacts of water scarcity, including improving its website for accessibility, providing clearer guidance, strengthening communications with abstractors, and reviewing abstraction licences to support sustainable water use. Scotland’s National Water Scarcity Plan is available on the SEPA website. This sets out how water resources will be managed prior to, and during, periods of prolonged dry weather.

Officials most recently met SEPA officials in December 2025 to review SEPA’s Autumn Water Situation report, potential implications for 2026 as well as discuss water scarcity mitigation more broadly.

It is not possible for the Scottish Government to answer this question, as the total NHS Scotland expenditure on IT infrastructure and innovation is a matter for NHS Boardsand is not held centrally. Given the variation in approaches and systems in use across individual NHS Boards this information would need to be requested directly from each Health Board.

The First Minister’s proposal for a bank holiday to follow Scotland’s opening game at the men’s FIFA World Cup will create an opportunity for the country to come together and share this landmark occasion.

As employers of school staff, including teachers, we would encourage local authorities to be as flexible as possible to ensure staff and pupils have the opportunity to celebrate the team's success.

The Scottish Government actively encourage disabled people to improve their wellbeing by being more physically active, in a way that suits them. Sport Disability Scotland has invested £750,000 to support this work.

Social Security Scotland make it clear on their website that disabled people are encouraged to improve their wellbeing by being more physically active, in a way that suits them, without it impacting their eligibility for disability benefits. A link to this resource can be read here: Celebrating Scottish Disability Sport Week - Social Security Scotland