Chamber and committees

For the Executive Agencies that the Scottish Government holds employee information for, our data shows no employees are assigned on our HR management information system to more than one Executive Agency.

The Scottish Government is not currently planning to establish an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) taskforce.

However, we are undertaking a range of actions to improve access to diagnosis and support for people with ADHD.

The Scottish Government is working with NHS Boards, community partners, and the National Autism Implementation Team (NAIT) to improve access to diagnosis, by supporting local health partners to develop, enhance and redesign existing local neurodevelopmental services.

We are working with NAIT to implement Adult Neurodevelopmental Pathways across Scotland. By implementing a single diagnostic pathway for autism and ADHD, and by adopting a stepped care model, we hope to ensure that diagnostic and post-diagnostic support is provided in a timely and effective fashion.

We also provide funding to NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to deliver training resources to meet the needs of staff working in ADHD services across health and social care. These include webinars on ‘Assessing ADHD’ and ‘Understanding ADHD in Girls and Women’, which are available to all NHS and Social Care staff via an online knowledge hub.

The Scottish House Condition Survey provides a snapshot of the Scottish housing stock in each survey year including the construction age and built form of Scottish domestic buildings. Within this it provides estimates of the number of dwellings with a prepayment meter for gas or electricity.

The most recent estimates of households with a prepayment meter are from 2023, and are presented in the following table:

Table 1: Number of PPM meters by type (000’s)

Work is ongoing to establish how the £16 million funding announced in the draft Scottish budget will be best used to maximise the number of patients able to benefit from thrombectomy.

The new Scottish Budget was presented to Parliament on 4 December 2024 with £16 million allocated to the further development of the thrombectomy service and stroke policy. This details Scottish Ministers spend proposals for the year ahead and the Scottish Parliament will then scrutinise this information through the Scottish Budget Bill. Further details on the Scottish Budget and the Health and Social Care portfolio budget Finance can be found at; Scottish Budget 2025 to 2026.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6W-33751 on 29 January 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

We continue to develop the capabilities of the National Digital Platform (NDP), with core components that will enable individual access, such as standards-based data storage and integration, and access controls and user authentication for the workforce now largely in place.

However, the Platform itself will not provide patients digital access to their medical records or the ability to book appointments, rather it will power the underlying data requirements and systems integration for digital services that are public facing such as the Scotland-wide national vaccine service or the development of a Digital Front Door.

The Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment digital application that is deployed on NDP is currently live in multiple health boards. In the past year, the platform has supported the delivery of the ANIA Digital Dermatology Pathway and will be providing the single source of the truth for Medical Devices Data as part of the Scan for Safety Programme in 2025-26.

The platform will be used to deliver the Digital Front Door service - an online app for patients which will begin to be rolled out in December 2025. The national roll out of this service will be incremental, starting in Lanarkshire. It will allow people to access and manage their hospital appointments online, receive communications, find local services, and access and update their personal information from day one. This will be the first step in a nationally committed, five-year programme for the Programme for Government 2024-25 commitment in launching a new personalised digital health and social care service.

Social media management includes the management of Scottish Government social media accounts across platforms, and the directly related services comprise organic content production and outreach to secure content from creators and influencers.

The Scottish Government, through the National Information Governance Programme and the Digital Health and Care Directorate, supports NHS boards by providing comprehensive guidance on enabling patients to access their medical records. Guidance includes the Records Management Code of Practice, the Confidentiality Code of Practice, and patient-facing guidance on NHS Inform explaining to patients what happens to and how they can access their personal data. Guidance is co-produced through a collaborative Information Governance community from across the NHS landscape, ensuring it reflects shared best practices and is centred on patient needs. This engagement with the NHS Information Governance community provides a valuable feedback loop to monitor compliance with such guidance, alongside direct interactions with patients, ensuring issues are addressed and mitigated accordingly.

A reassuring indicator of compliance within this feedback loop is the positive outcome of the recent ICO audit of health boards, underpinning our determination to ensure full transparency to patients and the wider public.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6W-33748 on 29 January 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

The 2025-26 draft budget provides over £16.2 billion funding for NHS Boards, supporting services and including £1.34 billion funding for NHS Grampian - a real terms uplift.

In addition, increased capital investment of £139 million provides a 5% uplift to Boards’ core capital funding allocations as well as additional investment for priority maintenance and improvements across the NHS estate. To this end, we are working with all Boards, including NHS Grampian, to develop a whole-system NHS infrastructure plan which will support continued safe operation of existing facilities and inform longer-term investment priorities. The first part of this work – to assess immediate investment priorities across all Health Boards – is already well underway.