Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government carries out its work to help improve Scotland’s direct international connectivity on an airport-neutral basis. By definition, our work on direct international connectivity does not apply to Heathrow or any other UK airport.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting the safety and wellbeing of displaced people from Ukraine and to providing opportunities to integrate and thrive in our communities for as long as Scotland is their home. We will continue to engage with the UK Government on issues which impact people living in Scotland, including refugees, people seeking asylum and displaced people.

Since the Homes for Ukraine scheme began, Scottish Government officials have been regularly meeting with their UK Government counterparts to share best practice and look at how we can strengthen the scheme in order to protect the safety and sustainability of sponsorship.

We will continue to engage with the new UK government to ensure a system that is effective and more humane.

The following table details the resource planning assumptions for each local authority for (a) 2024-2025 compared with the assumed figures that were published on 15 July 2021. These figures do not include the additional £40 million for 2024-2025, the allocations of for which are still being considered. No resource planning assumptions have yet been agreed for (b) 2025-2026.

Cleaner Air for Scotland 2 (CAFS2) was published in July 2021 with two actions on the topic of nitrogen deposition. At the time of publication these actions were assigned a medium term timescale for delivery by 2024.

In April 2022 the Nitrogen Impacts on the Natural Environment (NINE) project led by the James Hutton Institute commenced as part of the Strategic Research Programme for air quality. In considering how to take the CAFS2 actions forward, Scottish Government worked with the NINE project team to ensure it would deliver the CAFS2 evidence needs. Following commencement of the NINE project we revised the delivery milestones for the CASF2 actions to align with the project deliverables.

The NINE project was commissioned on time and continues to be on track for delivery by 2027, with CAFS2 elements to be delivered in 2026.

We are committed to reducing waiting lists backed by an initial investment of £30 million has been allocated to Health Boards and will target reductions to the national backlogs that built up throughout the pandemic. This funding is being targeted at a series of national and local plans to reduce backlogs by maximising the use of local and national resources across Scotland. As part of this, we have allocated additional funding to Gynaecology services which we expect to l deliver around 3,500 New Outpatient Appointments.

NHS Scotland’s Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) is also playing a central role in working with Health Boards to ensure that they are able to continually identify new ways to increase capacity, and to respond to demand through service innovation and redesign.

CfSD programmes have developed strong clinically-led Specialty Delivery Groups (SDG), including one for Gynaecology, which promote multidisciplinary team working, and support local adoption of service improvement programmes. These groups are now well established and have supported several new and innovative pathway developments, many of which are now being successfully scaled up across Scotland, including Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT), Patient Initiated Review (PIR) and Enhanced Recovery after Surgery (ERAS).

This is all part of our programme to drive up productivity and tackle waiting lists, supported by the CfSD. Together, our actions will further enable NHS Scotland to maximise capacity, build greater resilience and deliver year-on-year reductions in the number of patients who have waited too long for treatment.

Scottish Government officials are currently undertaking scoping work with a variety of stakeholders including healthcare professionals (representatives from British College of Aesthetic Medicine and British Association of Cosmetic Nurses), hair and beauty industry representatives, Environmental Health Officers, Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS), and other UK Governments in order to bring forward proposals regarding the potential further regulation of non-surgical cosmetic procedures within the beauty sector in Scotland.

The scoping of further regulation of non-surgical cosmetics procedures includes the consideration of age restrictions, the levels of insurance, training, qualifications and supervision required to safely perform various types of non-surgical cosmetic procedures that pierce and penetrate the skin, is underway.

We hope to be in a position to update Parliament on timescale for this in due course.

The anticipated cut by the UK Government to the Scottish Government's capital budget of up to £1.3billion in real terms over the coming years has consequences. In December 2023, given the extremely challenging capital funding position, NHS Boards were instructed to pause any project development spend and instead direct capital budgets towards maintenance of the existing estate and essential equipment and digital replacement. Boards were notified that the Scottish Government does not anticipate starting construction of any new project over the next two years at least. Obviously should the UK Government change course on capital investment we have an opportunity to look at this again alongside the capital review ongoing across the Scottish Government.

There is therefore no change to the position on NHS Capital Projects as a result of the ongoing review of the Infrastructure Investment Plan.

All applications are subject to site specific assessments which are expected to address cumulative impacts. Where there is a need for co-ordination between applicants proposing development in the same area, the Scottish Ministers expect all parties to work together to co-ordinate development and minimise any impacts on communities and the environment. When determining applications made under the Electricity Act 1989, the Scottish Ministers are required to seek advice from planning authorities to ensure that decision-making is co-ordinated to reflect local circumstances.

We recognise the financial challenges faced by all students, including nursing, midwifery and paramedic students, and know that this has been exacerbated by the cost of living crisis.

The Scottish Government package of support for Scottish student nurses, midwives and paramedics is at its highest level and remains the highest level of support available to nursing, midwifery and paramedic students across the UK. The annual £10,000 bursary is non-means tested and non-repayable.

Last year the Scottish Government created a short-life working group comprising representatives from the Scottish Government, Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) and higher education institutes (HEIs) to review the clinical placement expenses guidance. This was in response to growing student concerns and following the Royal College of Nursing roundtable.

This group recently concluded its review and the revised guidance was finalised on 1 July 2024. This work will ensure students continue to be refunded as promptly as possible and provides students with greater clarity and flexibility on issues such as claiming advance payments. A national frequently asked questions document has also been developed to ensure greater consistency in the application of the guidance by HEIs across the country.

In addition to this, the Scottish Government has committed to carrying out a review of the package of financial support for those in receipt of the nursing, midwifery and paramedic student bursary.

We recognise the significant potential of collaborating across sectors and with industries, including fintech, to harness technological advancements to improve the quality and delivery of public services.

Through the CivTech programme we have supported a number of open innovation challenges, working with a cross-sectoral pool of expertise to identify solutions that ensure the data that supports our public services can be accessed and used as easily and efficiently as possible.

As part of CivTech 10, launched on 30 July, we are committed to exploring possible solutions that use technology to share data seamlessly across public sector body boundaries. By streamlining data management processes to improve accessibility across public bodies and departments, we can unlock the value of data to enhance efficiency and productivity in the public sector.

We are contributing, in an advisory role, alongside FinTech Scotland, to Scottish Enterprise’s Blockchain and Digital Trust Task Force, to help drive adoption of blockchain and digital technologies across the finance, energy, manufacturing and health industries. We are also aware of Smart Data Foundry’s work on a cost-of-living dashboard with East Renfrewshire Council . We have had initial discussions with Smart Data Foundry and will explore how we can share learning from their innovative data-driven approaches and expertise with emerging technologies with public sector data communities.