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Ministers listened closely to the sector in the development of this year’s budget, and we are investing over £1.1 billion in university teaching and research. In addition, the Scottish Government has made a further £25m of funding available to the Scottish Funding Council to support the sector in mitigating financial challenges.

The Scottish Funding Council monitors financial sustainability across the sector and Ministers have confidence in their ability and expertise. There are many factors impacting universities at the present time, including UK migration policies and the UK Government’s increase to employer national insurance contributions. The latter is estimated to cost Scottish universities over £48 million.

The Scottish Government would be willing to look at proposals from either the Scottish FA or SPFL. To date, we have not received any proposals.

The Scottish Hospitals Inquiry was established in 2020, to investigate planning, design, construction and maintenance of both the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital/ Royal Hospital for Children (QEUH/RHC) and the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People/Department of Clinical Neurosciences (RHCYP/DCN). To that end, the Inquiry recently concluded 12 weeks of hearings into the QEUH/RHC’s built environment and the potential causal links to hospital acquired infections.

The evidence which was presented and heard at the recent hearing has been published by the Inquiry and is available on the Inquiry’s website (https://www.hospitalsinquiry.scot/).

In Counsel to the Inquiry’s closing statement, concerns were raised regarding the recommended guidelines for ventilation at the QEUH/RHC.

Lord Brodie has made it clear that the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry is on-going and therefore no conclusions should be taken from submissions to the Inquiry at this stage. Further oral hearings into the QEUH/RHC are scheduled for later this year.

Like all hospital sites, there is a comprehensive system of clinical oversight and patient safety monitoring at the QEUH/RHC. There has been no information reported through our robust governance arrangements which questions the safety of the hospital.

In addition, there have been no healthcare associated infection incidents reported to Scottish Government in the last 12 months relating to concerns on ventilation control.

To provide additional assurance, I have written to Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to undertake a formal review of the action plan arising from their Infection Prevention and Control inspection in 2022; to check the progress made against the recommendations and requirements.

The information requested on how many consultants specialising in endometriosis there are, broken down by NHS board is not centrally held.

Unlike the NHS App in England, which is currently just for the NHS, our planned service is for both health and social care. The development is also linked into wider digital developments for Scottish public services overall, particularly in relation to a common approach to how the people of Scotland receive official communication digitally. Officials have, however, engaged extensively with NHS England to explore both whether we could use the NHS App and to take learning from the approach to the development of the NHS App.

The online app for health and social care, which is part of our ‘digital front door’ programme, will initially be available to a small cohort of people in Lanarkshire from December 2025. Whilst work continues on preparing for that initial release, we are simultaneously engaging with Health Boards and COSLA to develop the rollout approach beyond Lanarkshire. It is our intention to set this out in more detail from Summer 2025.

The Scottish Government does not collect information on maintenance costs for imaging equipment held by NHS Boards. As holding bodies, NHS Boards are responsible for the management of their infrastructure assets and for identifying maintenance requirements. Maintenance costs are usually met from Boards’ delegated budgets.

The Scottish Government does not collect information on the age profile of scanning equipment held by NHS Boards. As holding bodies, NHS Boards are responsible for the management of their infrastructure assets and for identifying maintenance and replacement requirements.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. This would need to be requested from the NHS Boards directly. It is for NHS Boards to ensure best use of available resources to support service delivery whilst prioritising patient safety and care.

NHS Board Executive staff are required to set objectives annually which are aligned to the Board strategy and priorities. Executives must have objectives which demonstrate the contributions made to national and regional working, the delivery of the Health and Care strategy and the delivery of specific Board and local objectives. The performance of individual Executive staff is measured against these agreed objectives, with annual pay progression dependant on performance against these objectives.

There is a national governance and accountability process each year overseen by the National Performance Management Committee (NPMC) which provides scrutiny of performance management arrangements for NHS Scotland’s Executive staff. The NPMC requests and reviews evidence from NHS Boards to ensure that performance markings above fully acceptable are robust. Only after this process is complete can Executive staff then receive pay progression.