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Published figures from Healthcare Improvement Scotland estimate that in March 2025, acute and older people’s Hospital at Home services provided care equivalent to approximately 575 beds with an assumed occupancy rate of 80%. This is similar to the size of Western General Hospital and larger than University Hospital Wishaw.

In 2024-25, it is estimated that Hospital at Home services prevented 15,470 people being admitted to hospital, reducing pressure on unscheduled care and delayed discharges.

Officials are working with PHS Scotland to develop a new national data set for Hospital at Home activity and related admission alternative services. Data collection is due to commence later this year and will be expanded to include other Hospital at Home pathways such as heart failure, respiratory, paediatrics and Outpatient Parenteral Antibiotic Therapy (OPAT). Public Health Scotland plan to publish figures as this develops during 2026.

The Scottish Government regularly engages with the UK Government on a range of issues regarding Scotland’s fuel security and sites of national significance for Scotland such as Mossmorran. We are committed to ensuring that we support businesses as they seek to decarbonise and working collaboratively with the UK Government on these issues.

The responsibility for energy security is reserved to the UK Government and as is any contingency planning. However, the Scottish Government works closely with the UK Government on a range of issues to ensure Scotland’s needs are met.

Whilst the Independent Review of the Victim Notification Scheme (VNS) made 22 main recommendations, some of these recommendations included further separate recommendations, for example, recommendation 8 involved nine separate recommendations.

In our response to the review we set out our position on each of the review’s recommendations:

• Agree in principle: 14 recommendations (or parts thereof)
• Agree: 18 recommendations (or parts thereof)
• To note: three recommendations

In our response to the review, the Scottish Government committed to a programme of work that would bring about transformational change to the VNS. We are delivering that programme of work through legislative and non legislative routes.

We have prioritised those recommendations which required changes to primary legislation through the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill (VWJR Bill) as outlined in our letter to the Criminal Justice Committee on 4 March 2025. The Stage 2 amendments were passed by that Committee and we will lodge the amendments at Stage 3 of the Bill. Together these amendments relate to 11 of the recommendations of the review. We will only be able to take forward these recommendations if the VWJR Bill is passed by Parliament.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-39643 on 15 August 2025. In relation to the number of recommendations and those that we have taken forward through legislation. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

We highlighted in our response to the Review that along with the legislation the other priority for Scottish Government was the setting up of the Victim Contact Team (VCT) which was the key innovation from the review.

Not all the recommendations were for Scottish Government to take forward, but we are working closely with criminal justice partners and stakeholders to take forward the reform of the victim notification scheme and establish the VCT. This is so we can take a holistic view of the changes and put the victim at the heart of them.

As outlined in the review response we will produce an annual report to review progress of these key reforms, later this year.

The independent review of the VNS ran from spring 2022 to spring 2023. Its report which can be found at: Victim Notification Scheme (VNS): independent review - gov.scot, made 22 main recommendations for change, some of which contained multiple individual recommendations. The Scottish Government published its response to the review in October 2024, in which it accepted, or accepted in principle, the majority of these recommendations.

The complex multi-agency nature of the VNS was recognised in the approach that Scottish Government adopted in responding to the review. We therefore worked with the partners who administer the scheme: the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (which identifies relevant victims and send registration packs to them), the Scottish Prison Service (which registers victims and provides information), the Parole Board for Scotland (which considers victim representations), and victim support organisations, to properly inform our response found here: Victim Notification Scheme - Independent Review: SG response - gov.scot, to each recommendation.

We continue to take this partnership approach as we progress reform of the VNS, ensuring delivery of a more person-centred and trauma-informed VNS.

The annual assessment and reporting of air quality and Low Emission Zone (LEZ) performance is a statutory responsibility of the relevant local authorities.

Glasgow City Council published their most recent annual air quality report in August 2025. The report found that when comparing 2024 with 2022, the last full year before enforcement of the LEZ, locations within the zone experienced an average reduction of the air pollutant nitrogen dioxide (NO2) of 34% whilst locations outside of the zone observed an annual reduction of 21%.

More generally, in 2024, the first full year of Glasgow’s LEZ enforcement, air quality within the whole of the city met all applicable statutory objectives. This is the first time full compliance has been recorded since the Local Air Quality Management process was established under Part IV of the Environment Act 1995.

In addition, in June 2025 an LEZ Update Report produced by Scottish Environment Protection Agency considered air quality in the zone since the introduction of Phase 1 of Glasgow’s LEZ (which applied only to buses from December 2018). This report found that nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels on Hope Street (historically the most polluted street in Scotland) fell from 61 µg/m³ in 2018—above the legal limit of 40 µg/m³—to 34 µg/m³ in 2024. Furthermore, tailpipe emissions of particulate matter (PM10) had reduced by over 80%, with CO2 emissions also declining.

The City Council’s for Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh will publish their annual air quality reports in the coming months. However, as enforcement of LEZs in these cities only began in mid-2024, the 2024 air quality data will not fully reflect the impact of LEZs in these cities.

While it is therefore too early to assess the impact of the LEZs in all four of Scotland’s cities, Glasgow’s LEZ demonstrates a clear and direct link between a specific policy intervention and air quality benefits.

It is the Scottish Government’s assessment that the Clyde Tunnel does not sufficiently meet the criteria to be incorporated into the strategic motorway and trunk road network and is currently appropriately classified in the hierarchy of Scotland’s roads as a principal “A” class road. Principal A Class roads are best managed locally rather than centrally and function as main roads which distribute traffic to and from the strategic trunk road network.

Local authorities have a duty under the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 to manage and maintain local roads in their area and duties under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to secure the expeditious, convenient and safe movement of traffic.

The 2025-26 budget provided local government in Scotland with record funding of over £15.1 billion, one of the largest increases in funding in recent times and a real terms increase of 5.5 per cent.

In 2025-26, Glasgow City Council will receive over £1.7 billion to support day to day services, which equates to an extra £86.5 million or an additional 5.3% compared to 2024-25.

However, the Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on road maintenance, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

This matter is not currently under consideration by the Scottish Government. Any proposal to alter road responsibilities would raise a number of propriety and legal considerations, including the statutory basis for such a change. As the designated roads authority for the Clyde Tunnel, it would be for Glasgow City Council to take the lead in developing any proposal. This would involve engaging with relevant stakeholders to ensure that all implications including legal, operational, and strategic, are fully explored as part of a robust and transparent process.