Chamber and committees

Scotland already has some of the strongest rights in the UK for tenants, and we are taking forward measures in the Housing Bill that will strengthen these protections further including the introduction of rent control.

We recognise the concerns raised about how rent adjudication currently operates, particularly the potential for rents to be set at a level greater than that proposed by the landlord. We have taken action through the Housing Bill to ensure the Rent Officer, or Tribunal, cannot raise the rent above that requested by the landlord, should the Bill be passed by Parliament.

In my statement to Parliament on 2 September, I set out a suite of urgent actions to be taken in response to the housing emergency. Some of the measures to reduce homelessness include:

• Committing to a multi-annual, multi-billion pound affordable housebuilding project worth up to £4.9 billion over the next four years, capable of delivering up to 36,000 affordable homes or put another way, providing 24,000 children with a safe, warm and affordable home.
• Doubling investment in our immediate acquisitions fund from £40 million to £80 million this year. This will support the acquisition of at least 1,200 homes over the 18 months of the fund, helping families move out of temporary accommodation and into permanent tenancies without waiting on the construction of new homes.
• Investing a £3 million capital grant to expand Housing First and create new tenancies, alongside a £1 million uplift to local authorities to accelerate existing Housing First programmes.
• Extending rapid rehousing transition plan funding to 2026-27 to enable local authorities to prioritise settled housing for homeless households.
• Rolling out a £1 million new national ‘fund to leave’. This could help up to 1,200 women and their children to leave abusive relationships.
• Investing up to £2 million through the discretionary housing payments scheme to support households currently in temporary accommodation to find settled homes in the private rented sector. This is in addition to £97 million already being invested in discretionary housing payments in 2025-26 including £79m to mitigate the UK Government’s Bedroom Tax.

I called on partners across the housing sector and beyond to support work to accelerate the delivery of high-quality homes of all tenures, with a focus on the delivery of affordable and social homes. I have also set out the government’s expectation that local authorities, in compliance with ALACHO guidance, should contact every family in good quality temporary accommodation to explore opportunities to convert those temporary tenancies to permanent tenancies.

The Scottish Government continues to support free income maximisation, welfare and debt advice services with £16.9 million invested in
2025-26, a significant increase on the £12.3 million invested in 2022-23.

This investment supports a range of advice and income maximisation services including the Advice in Accessible Settings Fund. Since launching in 2023 the Fund, which aims to increase the availability and accessibility of advice in places that people already go, has supported more than 13,000 clients and unlocked £27 million in financial gains. The fund supports and encourages partnerships between existing advice providers and a wide range of other community based services. This includes charities, housing and homelessness services, specialist health services, carers support services and 3 partnerships involving schools.

The rules on local connection were changed in November 2022 to give homeless households – like other households – choice and control about where they settle. The SSI in November 2022 stopped referrals of homeless households between Scottish local authorities on the basis of their local connection. Referrals to England and Wales are still permitted and the SSI did not change local connection rules for refugee households. The rules covering refugee households who have just left asylum accommodation are set out in the Homelessness etc. (Scotland) Act 2003.

Homelessness statistics on local connection following changes to the legislation remain stable with 3% of households seeking homelessness support in an area where they do not have a local connection. The evidence to date shows that people are exercising choice about where they want to live as the legislation intended. We continue to monitor the flow of people moving in and out of each local authority area to inform our understanding of the impact of the legislative change.

The duties that local authorities owe to homeless refugee households were not affected by the November 2022 changes to local connection. It is section 7 of the Homelessness etc.(Scotland) Act 2003, passed by the last Labour / Liberal coalition which outlines that the time spent in Home Office asylum accommodation does not establish a local connection for newly recognised refugees, as the household has not had any choice about where they lived while accommodated by the Home Office. If a household receives a positive asylum decision while living in asylum accommodation in a Scottish local authority and presents as homeless, they cannot be referred to the local authority where they were accommodated by the Home Office on the basis of local connection.

Conversely, Section 199 (6) of the Housing Act 1996 states that a local connection is established if a person was at any time provided with accommodation in that district. This means that people granted refugee status in England and Wales are found to have established a local connection with the authority/authorities where they have resided in asylum accommodation – despite having no choice in where they were placed. This limits where they can make a homelessness application in England and Wales.

A decision by the UK Government in December 2022 to clear the backlog of legacy asylum claims resulted in an increased number of refugee households seeking support, with this increased pressure being most acute in Glasgow. More recently, the Home Office decision (27 August 2025) to end the temporary extension of the move-on period for single adults is likely to exacerbate the pressures being faced by local authorities. The Scottish Government supports the call from Glasgow City Council that the UK Government must provide adequate funding to allow local authorities to support newly recognised refugees and communities.

Scottish Ministers do not want to roll back the rights of homeless households and do not intend to make any further changes to local connection legislation at this time.

NatureScot did not hold any direct discussions with (a) NFU Scotland and (b) Scottish Land and Estates regarding its recent decision to grant licences for the release of six beaver families at two sites in the River Beauly catchment

The main engagement for conservation translocations is carried out by the applicants, in this case, Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS).

The FLS application followed two years of engagement by Trees for Life and FLS. The Abriachan application followed local community consultation hosted by the Abriachan Forest Trust and Scotland the Big Picture. Scottish land and Estates and NFUS were invited to attend a consultation event, which NFUS attended.

The Affric engagement reports can be found here:

https://treesforlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Glen-Affric-and-Strathglass-beaver-consultation-report.pdf

https://treesforlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Deciding-Matters-Beaver-Consultation-Report-28-May-2024.pdf

NatureScot received correspondence from NFUS on this topic on behalf of members prior to and after the application was submitted by FLS.

As Licensing Authority and recognising there remained concerns amongst land and fisheries managers in Beauly and Strathglass about beaver release proposals, NatureScot carried out further engagement over the summer 2025 to better understand these concerns. Site visits were requested by 12 landholdings and three groups representing fishing interests. NatureScot staff met with the land and fisheries managers directly on site to discuss their concerns. A representative from NFUS was present at one of these meetings.

We are developing a Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Needs Assessment Tool which will help build a robust picture of the specific needs of women, children and young people experiencing VAWG in the different local authority areas across Scotland. This follows discussions with a range of specialist stakeholders about the importance of understanding the extent of need for VAWG services across Scotland.

The tool is seen as an important aide in bringing together partners from across different services and policy areas to raise awareness of everyone’s role, help identify opportunities to drive forward improvements and maximise the safety and wellbeing of women, children and young people.

The Needs Assessment Tool is entering a testing phase, supported by £350,000 of Scottish Government investment in 2025-26.

The Scottish Government is taking bold and ambitious action to reform and renew our health and social care systems, with a clear focus on prevention as a cornerstone of our long-term visions where people live longer, are healthier and lead more fulfilling lives.

Through the Scotland's Population Health Framework - gov.scot and the Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework - gov.scot, both published in June 2025, we have set out a strategic and joined-up approach to improving population health and reducing the burden of disease on the NHS. These frameworks work hand in hand to embed prevention across all levels of planning, delivery and accountability.

The PHF focuses on the primary prevention space, on what creates, sustains and protects good health across our society and communities in Scotland. The PHF is based on five key interconnected prevention drivers of health and wellbeing - prevention focused systems; social and economic factors; places and communities; enabling healthy living; and equitable access to health and care.

Working across these five areas is crucial because as much as 80% of what affects health happens outside the health and care system. The NHS is just one part of the whole system – local government, public agencies and a range of sectors and organisations all must have a laser focus on preventing ill health.

Increasing preventative care in the NHS is at the heart of the twinned SRF, which places prevention and early intervention at its core. We recognise that our current model of health and social care focuses most of its resources (workforce, finance, infrastructure) on caring for established sickness or care needs – and for this reason we have focused much of our renewal framework on how to change this.

The SRF sets out five key principles for renewal which provide an evidence-based and value-driven foundation from which to plan, make decisions, and deliver change. The first of these principles is the Prevention Principle – focusing on prevention and proactive early intervention across the continuum of care to realise long term wellbeing and reduce the burden of disease.

We are committed to improving health and wellbeing across Scotland by focusing on prevention at every stage – from helping people stay well, to detecting problems early, to supporting those living with long-term conditions. And this is why, the first change commitment in the SRF is Major Change 1- Prevention, which focuses on services that prevent disease, enable early detection and effectively manage chronic and long-term conditions.

We are determined to reduce avoidable cardiovascular deaths, by a fifth over 20 years by ensuring people receive timely and high-quality care. That is why by March 2026, we are investing just under £10 million in providing extra GP appointments to support 100,000 patients who may be at risk, due to obesity, smoking, or high blood sugar, blood pressure or cholesterol. This is part of our cardiovascular disease risk factors programme and has a particular focus on supporting people living in areas of deprivation. 95% of practices in Scotland have signed up to provide the service.

By finding risk factors sooner we can support individuals – for instance, if a person is overweight or obese and has developed type 2 diabetes, there is a range of options that their healthcare team can consider with the person. This includes the new national Type 2 Diabetes Remission programme, which is a national digital intensive weight management programme which will support 3,000 people recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. We have invested £4.5 million over three years into this programme, and we expect to help around 40% of people to achieve remission from the condition by the end of their first year in the programme, which will improve each person's health significantly.

This aligns closely to our new Long Term Conditions Framework, which we working to publish by the end of 2025. The Framework will improve the quality of care and support for people living with long term conditions. This includes helping people manage their conditions well, avoid complications and maintain their independence and quality of life.

Another example of work is how we can use pharmacogenetics in prevention. Pharmacogenetics is how a person’s genetics affect their response to certain drugs. We have invested £1.1 million to support testing of recent stroke patients to determine if they have a genetic variation that impairs the benefits of a drug commonly prescribed to reduce the risk of secondary stroke and which would mean an alternative drug should be considered for them. Around 60,000 stroke patients will be tested, with approximately 20,000 expected to be moved to more effective medication, with potential savings of £30 million in future health costs.

Similarly, a programme to provide a genetic test for newborn babies will also receive £800,000 funding to determine if they have a genetic variation which puts them at risk of permanent hearing loss if they are treated with a common emergency antibiotic. 10,000 newborns will be tested, with those at risk of adverse reactions moved to safer antibiotics, helping prevent profound hearing loss and saving an estimated £8 million in health and education costs over their childhood.

Prevention work is also vital for mental health and wellbeing. We are already implementing the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy and updating our delivery plan, recognising how inequalities can affect mental health and understanding the connection between mental and physical health needs. Our approach includes prevention, early support, and ongoing care for those living with mental health conditions.

We continue to invest in community-based prevention and wellbeing initiatives. The Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults has provided £81 million over five years, supporting thousands of local projects focused on prevention and early intervention, with a further £15 million committed in 2026-27. We have also invested over £65 million since 2020 in community mental health support for children, young people and families, which reached almost 80,000 people in 2024-25, and will continue with the baselining of this £15 million per annum funding into local authority budgets from 2025-26. In addition, we have ensured access to counselling services in secondary schools across Scotland, and we continue to support local authorities with £16m a year.

We are committed to a whole-system approach to prevention, ensuring that NHS Scotland is not only equipped to treat illness but is actively working to prevent it, reduce inequalities and improve health outcomes for all. The examples I have given today demonstrate only some of our renewal efforts, and we will all have to lead and drive this shift to focus more on prevention within the NHS to make the impact we need.

The Warmer Homes Scotland scheme has a key performance indicator (KPI) recording the percentage of customer journeys, from referral by the Energy Saving Trust to completion of installation for full jobs, completed within 65 working days.

Prior to the implementation of Oracle Cloud, the Scottish Government’s previous HR Information System did not require Job Title to be a mandatory field for completion. This meant that individuals could be operational in substantive posts, but with missing or out of date job titles recorded on the system.

There are 45 civil servants, directly employed by the Scottish Government, whose Job Title does not appear on the organisation’s HR Information System, Oracle Cloud, when a report is downloaded. Further information on Scottish Government workforce numbers is available here Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot).

A Professions Strategy is in operation within Scottish Government. This enhances workforce management by adopting a classification system that links all jobs to a profession and a related job family and job type. While the majority of jobs have been through this classification system in preparation for Oracle Cloud going live, there is a small minority of roles (~7%) still to be formally classified which Scottish Government are currently progressing.

Falling birth rates are a trend across many high-income countries, with significant implications for our economies, communities and public services. It is not for government to dictate or influence whether an individual should have children, which is rightly a matter for individuals and couples.

Our 2021 Population Strategy sets out our ambition that Scotland is the ideal place to raise a family, and that people are enabled to have the number of children they wish to. In December 2024, the Ministerial Population Taskforce considered potential lessons from family friendly policy interventions internationally, and officials are currently exploring next steps in the Scottish context, including scoping further research into the role of parental leave uptake on decisions to have children.