Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government recently published the Tax Strategy for Scotland, which along with Scottish Budget 2025-26 and the Medium-Term Financial Strategy, sets out the next steps in our approach to tax, identifying priorities to support economic growth and Government objectives of eradicating child poverty, tackling the climate emergency and improving public services.

The commitment to deliver 40,000 additional operations and diagnostic tests was set out in the NHS Recovery Plan published in 2021. Progress reports have been published annually, the most recent being in December 2024: NHS Recovery Plan 2021-2026: annual progress update report 2024 - gov.scot.

In his speech on NHS reform and renewal in January this year, the First Minister announced that in 2025-26 the NHS will deliver of 150,000 extra appointments and procedures as part of the Operational Improvement Plan (OIP). This will be done through recruitment, extended working and regional and national working, including in the National Treatment Centres.

This additional activity will be backed by an additional investment of over £100 million this year. Activity will be targeted at long waits, ensuring that by March 2026 no one is waiting longer than a year for their new outpatient appointment or inpatient/day-case procedure.

As noted within the OIP, SG will report against progress publicly and to Parliament within 2025-26, using published statistics.

Scottish Enterprise continues to work at pace to triage enquiries and identify a route forward for viable proposals at Grangemouth, with a focus on how the public sector might be able to support the deployment of near term propositions. Ministers are receiving regular updates on the most viable proposals that have emerged from the triaging process, and ways in which they could be deployed, via the Grangemouth Investor Taskforce.

Public inquiries are independent of the Scottish Government. Publication of information on costs is a matter for each individual inquiry and its Chair, and is typically done via their website. For inquiries established under the Inquiries Act 2005 there is a statutory duty on the Chair to "act with regard to the need to avoid any unnecessary cost" (s. 17(3)).

The Finance and Public Affairs Committee is currently undertaking a review of the cost effectiveness of Scottish public inquiries. As part of that review, the Scottish Parliament Information Centre produced a document detailing the cost of Scottish Inquiries, which is published on the Committee's web page Cost-effectiveness of Scottish public inquiries - updated costs of 29 May 2025 (parliament.scot) The Committee also wrote to all current or ongoing inquiries asking for details of their costs. Responses were provided by the individual inquiries and have been published on the Committee's web page.

The decision to approve the donation of the surplus NHS Scotland medical supplies to Ukraine was made jointly by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and myself. The submission, dated 18 September 2024, was released under FOI/202500451642. The transport of the medical equipment was provided as Official Development Assistance which, according to The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD, cannot be spent on military aid and this is a rule that the UK as a whole, including Scotland, adheres to.

Social Security Scotland is successfully delivering 16 benefits - seven of them only available in Scotland. Since it was established in 2018 it has provided essential support to help more than one million people heat their homes, feed their families and meet the additional costs of disability.

The importance of value for money is clearly stated in the unanimously agreed Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 and was reiterated by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance in her Medium Term Financial Strategy statement on 25 June where she set out Social Security Scotland’s “focus on how to process and deliver benefits with dignity, fairness and respect, while driving important efficiency savings and ensuring that people access the support they are entitled to.”

The shipbuilding sector plays a vital role in supporting jobs and driving economic growth across Scotland. We are committed to promoting manufacturing and innovation, and Ministers continue to engage with businesses in the sector as part of that commitment.

We are investing up to £2 million to develop engineering skills in the Glasgow City Region. This initiative has been designed by the Clyde Maritime Cluster in partnership with Skills Development Scotland.

In addition, Scottish Enterprise has recently provided a £7.4 million Research and Development grant and a £1.8 million Training Aid grant to BAE Systems to help them maximise skills development and support the establishment of a collegiate training facility which will provide access to the broader industry through the Applied Shipbuilding Academy, which is overseen by BAE Systems as custodians of the Glasgow shipyards.

The development of the National Treatment Centre programme is currently paused, therefore there are no revised costs for the five projects. As part of our Scottish Spending Review, the Scottish Government are undertaking a full review of our capital spending to prioritise the available funding towards projects that drive progress against our priorities.

We will provide clarity over which projects and programmes will receive funding in the medium term when we publish our new Infrastructure Pipeline, alongside the 2026-27 Budget and Scottish Spending Review.

In 2023-24 the vast majority (95.8%) of young people who left school at S4 achieved qualifications or units under the All SCQF measure. Less than 43.0% of S4 leavers left school without obtaining at least one qualification at SCQF Level 5 or above. However, many of these young people did leave with qualifications. Of the 3,476 S4 school leavers in 2023-24 without an SCQF Level 5 or above, 2,828 left with a qualification at SCQF Level 3 or 4 (81.4%), 48 left with other qualifications or units, 262 left with units only and 338 left with no qualifications or units (9.7%).

It is important to recognise that many of these young people will have gone on to apprenticeships, to study at college or otherwise remain in education or training, reflecting the strengths of our approach, in creating and supporting a range of pathways and qualifications for young people in Scotland. This is reflected in the statistical evidence which shows consistently high initial and follow-up positive destinations for young people leaving school. For example, the Follow-up Destination Statistics published on the 17th June show that 93.1% of school leavers were in a positive destination. This is the second highest figure since 2009/10.

Ensuring accountability and value for money is a key priority for the Scottish Government and Scottish Development International (SDI).

To support this, several oversight mechanisms are in place for export and investment support policies, with all programmes designed to support the Scottish Government’s growth strategies, i.e. our Inward Investment Plan and A Trading Nation. These include:

1.Regular Performance Reporting: Mutually agreed bimonthly and quarterly reporting tracking both quantitative and qualitative metrics e.g. number of businesses supported, markets accessed, and the forecasted return on investment of these. As part of this there are project management reviews and programme boards at both operational and strategic levels.

2.Independent Evaluation: Partner and delivery agencies, including SDI’s performance were assessed through external independent evaluations of both Trade and Inward Investment, which was published in 2023.

3.Transparent Reporting: Annual results, research and insight reports, including case studies, are published on Scottish Enterprises website.

The Scottish Government will continue to actively evaluate its trade and investment support programmes through structured internal assessments and independent evaluations to ensure that our package of support remains effective, impactful, meets business need and provides value for money. Updated evaluations have already been commissioned for both inward and export support/promotion and are expected to be completed this financial year.