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The Scottish Government recognises the importance of Mingyang’s potential investment to the growth and success of the offshore wind sector. The Memorandum of Understanding between the UK Government and Mingyang is a matter of public record.

The UK Government is responsible for national security, the regulation of international trade, elements of critical national infrastructure including energy, and the application of the National Security and Investment Act. The proposed Mingyang investment is subject to a national security decision by the UK Government and we await the outcome of that process.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission will publish its latest economic and fiscal forecasts alongside the Scottish Budget on 13 January 2026.

We are providing a package of support that ensures the people of Scotland will receive more help with heating costs this winter, than anywhere else in the UK. Based on the SFC’s forecasts from summer 2025, we are investing around £227 million in winter heating benefits in 2025-26, providing vital assistance to those who need it most during the coldest months of the year, with more than 837,000 payments already made to help households with heating costs this winter.

The expectation is that the mothers in threatened extreme preterm labour, or those whose babies are identified antenatally as requiring specialist care (for example neonatal surgery), will be transferred antenatally and will birth in the maternity unit alongside the NICU. The Perinatal Network has been leading some work, and recently published guidance on identification and obstetric transfer in these circumstances.

Where babies have to be moved our specialist neonatal transport service ScotSTAR has 20+ years of experience of moving babies in specialised ambulances with incubators and neonatal staff.

ScotSTAR and the wider Scottish Ambulance Service are working to ensure that capacity is aligned to the future demands related to the new model of neonatal care and will be feeding into the Task and Finish group around the resources required to do so.

In addition, the Scottish Government contracted healthcare planning support from RSM UK to undertake the detailed modelling and capacity planning work, to inform local implementation plans. The approach to this work has included data collection and modelling alongside engagement with both operational and strategic stakeholders, to validate data, generate and test planning assumptions.

Activity and capacity data was collected from each of the eight units included within the model scope, as well as Public Health Scotland (PHS) and, Scottish Specialist Transport and Retrieval (ScotSTAR) / Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS). The report was published in May 2024.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-38434 on 17 June 2025. 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.

The Scottish Government is proud of its strong housing and homelessness rights. We want to ensure everyone in Scotland has access to a safe, warm and affordable home, whether they are homeowners or tenants in the private or social rented sectors.

People relocate for diverse reasons, including moving closer to relatives, seeking job opportunities and/or escaping difficult situations. Our official statistics capture whether homelessness applications come from households who live in the local area; have a local connection with another area of Scotland; or have no known connection to any authority in Scotland. Of the 34,067 households that were assessed as homeless in 2024-25, the overwhelming majority (94 per cent) already had a connection to the local area or to Scotland.

Modelling maternity capacity is essential to the development of the new model of neonatal care. The RSM report has outlined the maternity modelling in relation to data captured.

The principles underpinning the changes to neonatal intensive care are supported by Scottish Executive Nurse Directors (SEND) and the Midwifery Directors of Scotland (MiDS).

To mitigate any concerns raised about the implications of the change for maternity services, SEND, in support of the MiDS, recommended that the Scottish Government undertake a national-level data collection to better understand the impact of the neonatal care remodelling on maternity services.

This data collection report has now been completed and the additional data and evidence gathered required for maternity services will inform maternity capacity implementation planning.

People relocate for multiple reasons and the Scottish Government does not conduct modelling which distils the complexity to exclusive categories, such as differing housing policies.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility for assessing current and future housing requirements, which includes consideration of demographic trends including migration.

The RSM report, published on 29 May 2024, New Model of Neonatal Care – RSM UK Consulting - Report, included data collection and modelling alongside engagement with both operational and strategic stakeholders, to validate data, generate and test planning assumptions.

Activity and capacity data was collected from each of the eight units included within the model scope, as well as Public Health Scotland (PHS) and, Scottish Specialist Transport and Retrieval (ScotSTAR) / Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS). The report has undergone a detailed review by the Perinatal Sub Group (PSG) and has benefited from discussion with the three elected Regional Planners and Chief Executives.

The report to date has been well received and supports the findings of the options appraisal report.

A full EQIA was carried out covering the implementation of The Best Start as a whole thematically, as some of the individual recommendations are more complex and multi-faceted than others. In this way, implementation of each of the 76 recommendations is considered in a proportionate manner.

• Continuity of carer.
• Person-centred maternity and neonatal care.
• Multi-professional working.
• Safe, high quality and accessible care.
• Re-designing neonatal care and services.
• Supporting the changes.
• Wider implications.

For the implementation of recommendations which were led locally, it is expected that Health Boards will undertake their own Impact Assessments to satisfy their local requirements. This EQIA therefore takes national implementation as its primary focus. The EQIA was commenced in 2020 and remains a live document as implementation of the Best Start continues.

The recommendations for the new neonatal model of care are underpinned by strong clinical evidence that population outcomes for the most premature and sickest babies are improved by delivery and care in units looking after a “critical mass” of these babies.

In February 2019, at the request of the then Cabinet Secretary for Health, in order to enable a better understanding of the processes required to implement the new model of care, it was rolled out first in two sites in Scotland to enable testing of the entire model ahead of wider implementation.

The test sites were announced as University Hospital Crosshouse and Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in the west, and the Victoria Hospital and Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in the east.

The Boards were asked to roll out a range of aspects of the new model of neonatal care, including the new model of neonatal intensive care, to enable better understanding of the implications for patient flow associated with other aspects of the new model.

Outcomes of the testing process can be found within the published Options Appraisal.