Chamber and committees

Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes quarterly data on the length of time patients wait to be seen as a new outpatient or admitted for treatment as an inpatient or day case. The latest statistics represent all patients covered by the national standards for these stages of treatment to 31 December 2024. Individual patients are counted more than once if they are waiting to attend more than one scheduled hospital appointment or admission, so the official statistics shown here do not reflect the actual number of individuals involved but the number of waits.

Table 1. sets out the number of ongoing waits over 2 years for a Gynaecology inpatient or day-case admission as of 31 December 2024:

Table 1.

The Scottish Government has created a webpage on www.gov.scot dedicated to documents relating to Ferguson Marine (https://www.gov.scot/collections/ferguson-marine-documents/). This webpage contains links to consultancy documents produced when Ferguson Marine became a state-owned shipyard in 2019 and the ‘Ferguson Marine: Commercial advice information pack’ which was published in February 2025.

As I have set out in my statement to Parliament earlier today, we intend to introduce a Heat in Buildings Bill in Year 5 of this Parliamentary session.

The final decision on the provisions of the Bill will be made collectively by Cabinet ahead of its introduction. This decision will take account of the analysis of responses received in reply to our public consultation on proposals for a Heat in Buildings Bill, but it is our strong intention that this Bill will help build the investment case for new district heating projects in Heat Network Zones.

The Scottish Government recognises that many former patients still live with the consequences of being treated by Mr Eljamel and have waited a long time for answers. As I set out in my statement in February 2024, patients will be at the heart of this inquiry.

I am pleased that today I can confirm that following consultation with many former patients and their representatives by Lord Weir and his team, that I have agreed the Terms of Reference for the Inquiry, and that the Inquiry is now ready to commence from today.

The final Terms of Reference will be made available on the Eljamel Inquiry website today. (https://www.eljamelinquiry.scot/).

The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), along with other children's and youth organisations, supports the Scottish Government, local authorities and other public bodies to fulfil their legal obligations to promote and protect the human rights of children and young people. The SYP is the democratic voice of Scotland’s young people. Their vision for Scotland is of a nation that actively listens to and values the meaningful participation of its young people. Their goal is to make this vision a reality, in order to ensure young people in Scotland grow up loved, safe and respected, and able to realise their full potential.

The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) champions and promotes diversity and inclusion within their organisation to ensure it has broad representation that reflects the demographics of young people living in Scotland. The current membership includes, MSYPs from a wide variety of backgrounds including minority ethnic backgrounds, with experience of care, from rural and low Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) areas, who are young carers, who are neurodiverse, and from LGBTQIA+ backgrounds.

SYP also aims to ensure the voices of young people whose rights are most at risk are at the centre of their programme. It has a particular focus on women’s empowerment and anti-racism.

These lived experiences help to inform an intersectional representation of young people in Scotland. After each SYP election the organisation publishes a summary of the diversity data. The 2024 data can be found in this document: https://syp.org.uk/members/our-diversity/

Universities are autonomous institutions with responsibility for their own pay and remuneration decisions.

The Framework Agreement that exists between the Scottish Government and Ferguson Marine sets out the relationship between the business and Scottish ministers, including matters requiring Scottish Government approval such as the appointment of the Chair, the Board of Directors and approval of the remuneration of the chief executive officer.

Since the nationalisation of Ferguson Marine ministers have not intervened directly in the management and operations of Ferguson Marine.

Since 1 April 2009, Scottish Ministers have declined to accept their full salary entitlement, freezing it at 2008-09 levels.

Between the start of the pay freeze on 1 April 2009 and 31 March 2025, this has resulted Scottish Ministers making over £2.2 million available for public spending from their own pay packets.

The freeze of the Ministerial element of pay at 2008-09 levels will remain in place for 2025-26, recognising the wider economic and fiscal pressures as well as the restraints placed on public sector pay.

The Ministerial element of pay will therefore remain at 2008-09 levels as shown in the following table:

As part of the annual budget process the funding for the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), is announced. The 2025-26 Budget includes over £1.1bn of investment in teaching and research in Scotland’s universities.

NatureScot has published Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA for Tayside, Knapdale, the Forth catchment, Loch Lomond catchment, the River Spey and the Beauly catchments, as well as publishing a screening report for the Rivers Ness and Lochy catchments.

Given the body of work to date and the likelihood of assessing similar environmental effects in different catchments, NatureScot has proposed that it will adopt an SEA screening approach to new catchments to determine if there are novel interests and interactions that may require a more detailed assessment. This will streamline the approach to future SEA assessments. Prioritising assessments will depend on where there is interest from land managers and organisations in hosting beavers.