Chamber and committees

SPPA has received revised pay information from employers in respect of 202 retired teachers. The oldest outstanding case dates from December 2025, and each recalculation takes around three hours to process. Over the past two years, the average processing time for cases received has been four months.

On the 1 September, as part of the Programme for Government, the First Minister announced the Scottish Government’s intention to simplify the NHS by replacing the current 14 territorial Health Boards with two Strategic Health Boards and build on planned reforms to further reduce the number of special Health Boards.

The First Minister also announced an intensive programme of engagement with local government and partners to consider how health, social care and wider public services can work more effectively together, make best use of public investment and improve outcomes for people and communities. Detailed arrangements will be developed as part of wider public service reform.

On the 1 September, as part of the Programme for Government, the First Minister announced the Scottish Government’s intention to simplify the NHS by replacing the current 14 territorial Health Boards with two Strategic Health Boards and build on planned reforms to further reduce the number of special Health Boards.

The Scottish Government will engage first and foremost with the workforce and we will set out and agree a process with trade unions to ensure the workforce is able to help to shape these plans. We are currently in the design phase of the work, which includes developing the business case. The work will be developed in partnership with staff, staff representatives, trade unions, stakeholders and the public, with a strong focus on the needs of rural and island communities.

Robust local, regional and national governance arrangements will be established to support both the transition and the longer-term model. We will ensure detailed impact assessments will be undertaken as part of the programme's next phase. Equality, fairness and reducing health inequalities will be fundamental considerations in the design of the reforms. The intention is that structural reform will align organisational arrangements with the way many services, staff and patients are already working across East and West Scotland, as a result of the sub-national planning structures.

It is important to highlight that NHS restructuring and Public Service Reform is about improving services for people, not about structures. The intention is to simplify how people access care, reducing 14 different approaches to one joined-up system delivered through 2 strategic boards. The plans are about reducing the variation in how services are currently delivered across Scotland and the specific needs of rural and island communities will be taken into account.

The East Coast Arc will boost productivity and innovation in North East Fife and ultimately help contribute to our key objective of growing the Scottish economy. Information on the proposal, which was introduced in our ambitious Programme for Government, will be set out in more detail soon.

The Scottish Government published its Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline back in January, and this featured a range of capital investments in Fife. This includes the completed Dunfermline Learning Campus (Fife College element) project investment of £154.5 million and the Fife Railway Electrification project totalling £311.5 million, as well as a number of infrastructure investments via the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal programme, the Tay Cities Region Deal programme, and the Green Freeports programme. This planned and committed investment, which will support the East Coast Arc, underpins productivity, connects communities to opportunities, and supports long-term resilience in important areas like housing, energy, transport, and digital connectivity.

On the 1 September, as part of the Programme for Government, the First Minister announced the Scottish Government’s intention to simplify the NHS by replacing the current 14 territorial Health Boards with two Strategic Health Boards and build on planned reforms to further reduce the number of special Health Boards.

We remain fully committed to partnership working and will work closely with trade unions throughout this process.

We will be relying on the workforce to achieve high-quality services, so it will need to be involved in the design phase. As part of that process Ministers will develop and communicate timescales and we will also need workforce input on those. There will, of course, be impact assessments as part of any required legislation, and I am committed to a rigorous programme of engagement.

I have asked Stephen Pathirana, Chief Executive of the Scottish Public Pensions Agency (SPPA) to respond. His response is as follows:

A local authority based model was used to estimate the cost and impact of the £2 fare cap. It is based on concessionary fares data scaled to non-concessionary population in each area and calibrated nationally to commercial bus revenue. It uses standard industry assumptions to assess that demand will increase by between around 20% to 40%. This equates to around 2.5 million to 3.0 million journeys in total that will benefit from the cap in the Highlands and Island but is subject to considerable uncertainty, given the original pilot nature of the scheme.

It is estimated that reimbursements made to operators participating in the £2 bus fare cap within Highlands and Islands area, will cost between £23 to £26 million for the 2026-27 financial year. All cost estimates remain subject to change due to the demand-led nature of the scheme

Any organisation provided with Scottish Government grant funding must comply with the terms and conditions set out by Scottish Ministers, ensuring clear accountability and assurance of propriety in the use of public funds and value for money, as per the Scottish Public Finance Manual.

SAMH will receive funding for the Nook programme through a grant authorised by Ministers under Section 16B of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978. All Scottish Government grants require a formal agreement that sets out the purpose of the funding, expected outcomes, terms and conditions, and payment arrangements. These agreements are supported by robust monitoring and reporting arrangements to ensure the funding is used as intended and delivers the agreed objectives.

The Information requested on how many specialist nurses have been employed in NHS boards since 2009, broken down by NHS board, year, and specialism can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence. These workforce statistics are updated on a quarterly basis: Official Statistics on the workforce of NHS Scotland.

Community Nursing Review: from March 2015 the community review of nursing sub job families was finalised. The following sub job families were added/changed definition: community children’s nursing, district nursing, sexual and reproductive health nursing, health visiting, specialist nursing, practice nursing, public health nursing, school nursing, training and administration and treatment room nursing. Data prior to March 2015 are not be comparable to data after March 2015 at this level.

Information on how many specialist nurses have been employed in NHS boards since 1999 to 2006, broken down by NHS board, year, and specialism can be found on the following link: [ARCHIVED CONTENT] Workforce | Historic Data | Health Topics | ISD Scotland

Data on how many specialist nurses have been employed in NHS boards from to 2007 to 2008, broken down by NHS board, year, and specialism can be found in the following table: