Chamber and committees

SQA Accreditation quality assures and regulates qualifications offered in Scotland. It does this by approving awarding bodies and accrediting their qualifications, ensuring that accredited qualifications are of an appropriate standard and meet the needs of learners.

The Scottish Government is committed to working across the economy to maximise the opportunities for economic growth in Scotland. Scotland’s economy is one of the best performing in the United Kingdom with GDP per person growing 10.3% since 2007 compared to 6.1% in the UK. Productivity has also grown at an average rate of 1.1% per year compared the UK average of 0.4%.

Our National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET) sets out an ambition that Scotland's economy will significantly outperform the last decade, both in terms of economic performance and tackling structural economic inequalities. The recently published Programme for Government lays out the action which we will take over the remainder of this parliamentary term to boost productivity and grow Scotland’s economy. Scotland’s National Innovation Strategy and Green Industrial Strategy identify the sectors that drive economic growth, and the underlying actions required to deliver that growth.

In response to the Independent Skill Delivery (“Withers”) Review and Purpose and Principles, we have committed to take responsibility for skills planning at the national level, while strengthening regional approaches so that we invest in workers and attract talent to address critical skills gaps in the economy.

We are implementing a co-ordinated programme of activity to attract capital investment to the priority areas of net zero, housing, and infrastructure and we will launch ‘Invest Scotland’, a new portal for investors to profile strategic investment opportunities and build on our new National Project Pipeline of strategic investment opportunities.

The successful New Deal for Business programme helped develop a clearer understanding across portfolios, of the need to consider the individual and cumulative impacts of government activity on business and economic growth and committed in the Programme for Government to create better certainty and stability to make it easier to invest and do business in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is continuing to take action to reduce inappropriate out-of-area placements and delayed discharges experienced by people with learning disabilities and complex care needs through our Coming Home programme.

New Dynamic Support Registers (DSR) were introduced in May 2023 to help with local planning, building on our £1 million investment into Health and Social Care Partnerships through the Community Living Change Fund. It was encouraging to see an 18% reduction in numbers of people reported as being on the DSRs in the most recent quarter, but more needs to be done.

Our ongoing work combines a national focus with strong local leadership. A Peer Support Network has been established and has met a number of times. The Scottish Government and CoSLA co-chaired a Coming Home stocktake event on 12 May 2025, which was attended by system leaders from across health and social care. We are working with CoSLA, including via the co-chaired Collaborative Response and Assurance Group (CRAG), to collectively agree actions from this event and progress the Coming Home vision.

We have also consulted on how the proposed Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodivergence Bill can strengthen our work on the Coming Home programme, in particular the recommendation to establish a National Support Panel and whether there are opportunities to strengthen Dynamic Support Registers in the future.

As this is an operational matter for Scottish Water, and the Scottish Government does not hold this information, I have asked them to respond. Their reply is as follows:

Annual leakage levels are published in Scottish Water’s annual report and accounts which are routinely laid before Parliament and available online at https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/Help-and-Resources/Document-Hub/Key-Publications/Annual-Reports. Data for England and Wales is published by Ofwat at https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/publication/leakage-dataset-june-2025/

The leakage figure reported by Scottish Water currently equates to circa 24.7% of water supplied. Leakage is a function of an ageing asset base, and rates are affected by the increase in extreme weather conditions.

If seeking to compare leakage in Scotland with other parts of the UK, it should be noted that Scottish Water’s network is different to many others due to the remote nature of many rural and island communities, as well as the topography and length of pipework used. Direct comparison is difficult due to the very localised nature of how leakage is calculated. When all the various factors are considered, Scotland’s leakage rate appears marginally higher than the average for the UK, however it is still comparable.

Overall, Scottish Water has made great progress and since 2007 has reduced leakage by some 58%.

The Dynamic Support Register (DSR) provides a mechanism for national data collection relating to people with learning disabilities and complex care needs. However, the DSR does not include data broken down by specific conditions or diagnoses, including autism.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) collect and publish the DSR data quarterly, with the most recent collection for the quarter ending 26 December 2024, published in March 2025. This publication reported that forty people with learning disabilities and complex care needs in Scotland had been in hospital for ten years or more. The DSR full March PHS report is available here: Insights into learning disabilities and complex needs: statistics for Scotland - 18 March 2025 - Insights into learning disabilities and complex needs: statistics for Scotland - Publications - Public Health Scotland. The next DSR data collection will be published by PHS in June 2025.

In 2024, we asked the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland (the Commission) to review the care and treatment of people with learning disabilities and complex care needs who had been in hospital for over ten years. The Mental Welfare Commission Report is available here: Hospital is not home

We are continuing to engage with the Commission and system leaders to address these delays and ensure that people’s human rights are upheld.

The Scottish Government is firmly committed to building a country that ensures equality of opportunity for all by embedding equality, inclusion and human rights into everything that we do. That includes ensuring that the rights of all neurodivergent people, including those with autism, are respected, protected and championed.

We are continuing to deliver work across government and with national and local partners, combining a national focus with strong local leadership.

Work is continuing on the proposed Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodivergence (LDAN) Bill, which presents a unique and world-leading opportunity to help create a society where being neurodivergent or having a learning disability is as accepted as being neurotypical.

I refer the member to our recently published Climate Change Plan Update Monitoring Report for 2025, which shows our progress against the individual policies in the agriculture and land use sectors.

The most recent Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics from 2022 show that, compared to the 1990 baseline, emissions in land use are down 96.3% and agriculture is down 11.9%. The Climate Change Committee’s recent carbon budget advice to the Scottish Government projects that agriculture will form a part of our residual emissions to 2045, to be offset by land use sinks and engineered removals.

Delivery of the Blue Badge scheme is the responsibility of local authorities. While Transport Scotland does not formally assess Blue Badge delivery, officials regularly engage with local Blue Badge teams and stakeholders to encourage a consistent approach to Blue Badge delivery across Scotland.

The following table shows the number of ongoing waits along with the median (days) and 90th percentile (days) by sex for the patients covered by the Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) at 31 March 2025.

The statistics provided include the median wait and not an average.

The median is used to indicate that roughly half of patients waited less than the statistic and half of patients waited longer. The median is used because an average (mean) could potentially be skewed incorrectly by a small number of very long waits that may be recorded in error in the national data. The 90th percentile is also included; this is used to indicate that 9 out of 10 ongoing waits at month-end are waiting less than or equal to the number of days shown.

Table 1 – Total number of ongoing waits as an inpatient or day case for NHSScotland, at all specialty level broken down by sex, at 31 March 2025

The Scottish Government regularly engages with the National Energy System Operator (NESO) on a number of energy related matters in Scotland, including wind energy infrastructure and grid connection.

In October, the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments jointly commissioned the NESO to produce a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) for Great Britain, which is intended to help accelerate and optimise the transition to clean, affordable and secure energy in Great Britain by providing greater clarity on the shape of our future reformed energy system. Scottish Government officials meet regularly with NESO to shape the plan as it develops, including providing representation at formal governance groups.

The Scottish Energy Statistics Hub provides the progress of Scotland’s renewable electricity projects.