Chamber and committees

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

SPS recognises that where the Court supports a claim, the appropriate compensation should be paid. This may include incidents where the belongings of someone in custody have been lost or damaged, where an injury has occurred or in the limited occasions where someone has been detained in error.

SPS can confirm that in the last five years, prisoners have been awarded compensation. Compensation has been awarded for reasons such as personal injuries, damaged or lost property and unlawful detention, however we are unable to release the specific reasons for individual compensation payments, as this could lead to the indirect identification of the person involved.

The Scottish Government remains committed to implementing a high quality and clinically safe thrombectomy service. We have invested £39 million to date on expanding access to thrombectomy. While we continue to face significant financial challenges, we are committed to further expanding the service, ensuring access is as equitable as possible.

Whilst the Scottish Government cannot currently provide a timeline for expanding the service, Scottish Government officials and NHS planners have been asked to work at pace on developing a plan for the next steps for service expansion.

We have provided funding for thrombectomy nurse posts in spoke sites with high rates of ischaemic stroke, including NHS Borders, and this will support maximising access to thrombectomy across Scotland.

Procurement of a national artificial intelligence imaging tool is underway and, once implemented, this will help delivery of the service by improving detection of patients with strokes suitable for thrombectomy.

The 2025-26 budget delivered record funding of over £15.1 billion for Local Government, a real terms increase of 5.5 per cent, as confirmed by the Accounts Commission.

As part of the record funding package for Local Government, in 2025-26 North Ayrshire Council will receive £383.8 million to support day to day services, which equates to an extra £21.2 million or an additional 5.8 per cent compared to 2024-25. Taken together with the decision to increase Council Tax by 7 per cent, North Ayrshire Council will have an additional £25.7 million to support front line services in 2025-26.

Decisions on future local government finance settlements will be the subject of negotiations with COSLA on behalf of all 32 local authorities and announced as part of the outcome of future Scottish Budgets.

However, the record funding settlement for Local Government in 2025-26 was the result of early and meaningful engagement between Scottish Government, COSLA and Councils. We remain committed to ensuring the sustainability of local services going forward and budget engagement ahead of the 2026-27 Scottish Budget has already commenced.

Following a review of the impact of the Regional Improvement Collaboratives, I confirmed to Parliament in 2023 that funding would be tapered in 2024-25 and repurposed thereafter, including to support the establishment of the Centre for Teaching Excellence.

The following table shows funding that has been provided to support the work of each Regional Improvement Collaborative (RIC), in each of the last five financial years:

Information on the criteria used to assess applications for the Housing Infrastructure Fund and how to apply can be found here: Housing Infrastructure Fund : guidance for applications - gov.scot

The National Specification is intended to be published by the end of 2025,

Data are available on the number of SMEs operating in Scotland, that are registered for VAT and/or PAYE, broken down by Scottish parliamentary constituency. These estimates, sourced from the Businesses in Scotland 2024 publication, are shown in the following table.

Table 1: Number of registered SMEs operating in Scotland, by Scottish Parliamentary Constituency, 2024

A study by the Competition and Markets Authority on the housebuilding industry noted that small and medium housebuilders face higher costs, in per-plot terms, than larger competitors, due to the small-scale nature of their developments. The Scottish Government recognises that this could lead to smaller developers being disproportionately impacted by the introduction of the Scottish Building Safety Levy.

Scottish Government commissioned Consulting firm RSM-UK to undertake detailed modelling work to fully map the capacity requirements across the system to inform capacity building and implementation of the new model. The report looked at current establishment and expected additional workload and describes a required increase of 10 cots at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, 4 cots at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and one cot at Aberdeen Maternity Hospital,

We are working with Regional Planning Chief Executives to plan and deliver this service change, informed by the testing that has been underway since 2018 in Ayrshire and Fife, and supported by SG funding of over £6m since 2019.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. More detailed information on cancelled appointments will be held locally by NHS boards.