Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to collaborate with key partners across the NHS in Scotland to ensure that relevant information, with the appropriate safeguards in place, is available to all healthcare professionals, including community pharmacists, when and where they need it.

As community pharmacists expand their clinical role, there is an increasing need for them to have read/write access to clinical records to ensure that they can safely assess and agree a clinical management plan for a person and any associated actions or treatments can be viewed by other healthcare professionals involved in a person’s care, without any unnecessary delay.

The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer has commissioned work to explore how read/write access to clinical records can be delivered incrementally.

Highly able learners are entitled to support under the Additional Support for Learning (Scotland) Act 2004.

Local authorities oversee the delivery of education and have a statutory duty to identify, provide for, and to review the support that they provide for pupils with additional support needs. This includes highly able children and young people.

There is existing guidance in the Additional Support for learning Statutory Guidance: Additional support for learning: statutory guidance 2017 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).We have committed to refreshing this during this Parliamentary term and have been working collaboratively with a range of education partners and policy areas to ensure it continues to fully support schools and local authorities to fulfil their duties under the ASL Act.

Education Scotland provide guidance for teachers of learners who are working, or who are capable of working, significantly ahead of their peers. This guidance was last updated on 28 June 2024 and is available here: A summary of resources relating to highly able learners | Resources | Education Scotland.

The Scottish Government does not record this information. The First-Tier Tribunal for Scotland, Additional Support Needs (ASN) Jurisdiction is a separate and independent body.

Yearly statistics Tribunal Forum | First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Health and Education Chamber) (from 2016 onwards) are published on the total number of applications to the ASN Tribunal in relation to additional support needs following the annual Tribunal Forum, broken down by Education Authority and high-level reason for the hearing.

ASN Tribunal Decisions are published, providing detail of each case, and can be accessed via the Tribunal website: Decisions | First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Health and Education Chamber). Not all decisions are published, based on permission from the parent / child and the education authority concerned.

Alan Gray, Director of Health and Social Care Finance, wrote to Chief Executives of NHS Scotland on 04 December 2024 to provide the details of the indicative funding settlement for NHS Boards in the Scottish Government Budget 2025-26. This letter set out the Scottish Government position that brokerage would not be available in 2025-26.

NHS Borders are at Level 3 of the NHS Support and Intervention Escalation Framework. and the Board continue to receive enhanced monitoring and support commissioned by Scottish Government’s NHS Scotland Finance Delivery Unit; to support the Board to return to financial sustainability.

Under the terms of this support, the Scottish Government’s NHS Scotland Financial Delivery Unit maintain frequent contact with NHS Borders Executives regarding its financial position. At present, these conversations are focussed on securing a credible path to balance and, once this has been established and on course to be achieved, conversations will commence on brokerage repayment.

The amount of brokerage owed by each NHS Board is outlined in the following table:

The Fraser of Allander Institute said in an article, published on 26 March, that “we'll have to wait until the OBR has been able to look at the whole policy package in aggregate before we understand the full scale of the impact both on the UK and Scotland”.

The Scottish Government published analysis of the impact of the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) on Scotland’s labour market in July 2024; Scottish Child Payment and the labour market - gov.scot and concluded it had not negatively affected labour market outcomes at scale in Scotland’s economy, while supporting the families of nearly 330,000 children.

Our analysis shows that typically around 2% of Scottish households in receipt of Universal Credit (UC) with children aged under 16 have low monthly UC awards of less than £100. This suggests very few families experience the high effective marginal tax rates that can be present when low UC awards and therefore SCP are close to being withdrawn due to the earnings of a household.

The Scottish Government continues to assess how SCP is interacting with the labour market. A further evaluation of SCP is due to be published this summer and will include a survey of recipients including questions about how and why SCP has affected their labour market activity.

The Scottish Public Finance Manual (SPFM) requires that all land or property not needed are declared as surplus and should be disposed of as quickly as possible. The SPFM sets out a number of ways disposals can achieve best value for money and wider public benefit.

As recent examples, Scottish Government officials discussed Knocknagael Farm, Inverness with Highland Council. As part of the local development plan, some land at the farm was zoned for housing which was sold to Knocknagael Ltd via community asset transfer.

Dumfries and Galloway Council is updating its local development plan and have issued a call for sites. Scottish Government officials submitted an application in March 2025 and have suggested that land at Crichton Farm, Dumfries could be zoned for residential development or economic development.

There are robust measures in place in Scotland to help all social and private sector tenants in rent arrears, including those with children, to sustain their tenancy. Pre-action requirements/protocols for tenants facing eviction for rent arrears are in place in both the social and private rented sectors. This ensures that social landlords have exhausted all attempts to resolve rent arrears with the tenant before taking action to evict and that tenants in rent arrears in the private rented sector are provided with information and sign-posted to support to sustain their tenancy wherever possible.

Tenancy sustainment is also a key outcome which social landlords must aim to achieve for their tenants and other customers as part of the Scottish Social Housing Charter. This includes tenants who may be in, or at risk of falling into, arrears with their rent and who may need support to maintain their tenancy. The Scottish Housing Regulator monitors social landlord performance against the standards and outcomes in the Social Housing Charter on an annual basis to help drive up performance.

We have strengthened the protection against eviction for tenants in the private rented sector. In line with the social rented sector, all grounds for eviction are now discretionary. This enables the First-tier Tribunal to consider the specific circumstances of each individual case, including how an eviction order would affect both the tenant and the landlord, before making a decision on whether an eviction order should be issued.

We have also committed to further rented sector reform and the Housing (Scotland) Bill 2024 includes provisions to further strengthen eviction protections in both the private and social rented sectors by placing a duty on the Court and Tribunal to always consider whether there should be a delay to the enforcement of an eviction order granted on rent arrears grounds based on the circumstances of the individual case.

Vessel deployment is an operational matter - as such, Ministers expect the operator to assess all the options, and present that recommendation in consultation with Transport Scotland.