Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-37942

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 10 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the five types of planned NHS operations are that have the highest current average waiting times, and what the current average waiting time is in each case, broken down by patient sex.

Information on the types of planned NHS operations that have the highest current average waiting times is not held by Scottish Government. Public Health Scotland (PHS) uses the national waiting times datamart to collect electronic patient records covering the waits that patients experience waiting for treatment as an inpatient or day-case under the Treatment Time Guarantee.

This data source can be used routinely to identify the specialty of treatment. However, although the records are designed to collect coded information on the procedure that is planned for the patient, this information is often either incomplete, lacking in essential detail and/or its accuracy cannot be assured. Consequently, PHS is not currently able to report accurately on waiting times to this level of detail.

The table below shows the number of ongoing waits along with the median (days) and 90th percentile (days) by sex for the top five specialties that have the largest median wait across NHSScotland for all specialties covered by the Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) at 31 March 2025.

The statistics provided include the median wait and not an average. The median is used to indicate that roughly half of patients waited less than the statistic and half of patients waited longer. The median is used because an average (mean) could potentially be skewed incorrectly by a small number of very long waits that may be recorded in error in the national data. The 90th percentile is also included; this is used to indicate that 9 out of 10 ongoing waits at month-end are waiting less than or equal to the number of days shown.

Table 1 – Total number of ongoing waits as an inpatient or day case for NHSScotland, at specialty level broken down by sex for the top five specialties (that have the highest median wait) across NHSScotland, at 31 March 2025

	Male2			Female2			Total
Specialty	Ongoing waits	Median (days)	90th percentile (days)	Ongoing waits	Median (days)	90th percentile (days)	Ongoing waits	Median (days)	90th percentile (days)
Community Dental Practice	967	249	558	799	258	533	1,766	252	545
Paediatric Surgery1	2,361	245	809	321	147	508	2,683	235	775
Gynaecology1	39	287	789	12,784	228	762	12,825	228	762
Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT) 1	8,082	213	649	7,720	216	678	15,806	215	662
Neurosurgery	690	209	880	788	203	802	1,478	206	848

1.There were 7 (1 paediatric surgery, 2 gynaecology and 4 ear, nose & throat (ENT)) ongoing waits where the sex was not recorded. This is due to patients that have opted out of sharing their personal information.

2.Please note that the sex of a patient is taken from the Community Health Index (CHI), which is a register of all patients in NHSScotland.

Question reference: S6W-37940

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 10 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on implementing a ban on surrogacy in Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-37943

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 10 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will consider a pilot of free swimming lessons for primary school children in the City of Edinburgh Council area, in order to obtain evidence to consider a policy of free swimming lessons for all primary school children across Scotland.

The Scottish Government believes that every child should be given the opportunity to learn to swim, it is a life skill that can save lives.

Scottish Swimming launched their National Primary School Swimming Framework in September 2024. During the development of the Framework, a number of pilots were undertaken across nine local authorities to establish the best mechanism to deliver school based swimming lessons. As a result, the Framework’s key principles and resources have been designed to be flexible and adaptable to meet the many different challenges and circumstances faced by local authorities and schools.

The Framework can be used by education authorities and schools to improve school swimming provision and enhance the existing school swimming experience.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with sportscotland, Scottish Swimming, and various local and national partners, including the City of Edinburgh Council, to consider the best approach for a continued roll out of a National Framework for school swimming in the near future.

Question reference: S6W-37941

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 10 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the current average waiting time is for a patient to have a planned NHS operation, broken down by sex.

The following table shows the number of ongoing waits along with the median (days) and 90th percentile (days) by sex for the patients covered by the Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) at 31 March 2025.

The statistics provided include the median wait and not an average.

The median is used to indicate that roughly half of patients waited less than the statistic and half of patients waited longer. The median is used because an average (mean) could potentially be skewed incorrectly by a small number of very long waits that may be recorded in error in the national data. The 90th percentile is also included; this is used to indicate that 9 out of 10 ongoing waits at month-end are waiting less than or equal to the number of days shown.

Table 1 – Total number of ongoing waits as an inpatient or day case for NHSScotland, at all specialty level broken down by sex, at 31 March 2025

Sex1,2	Ongoing waits1	Median (days) 1	90th percentile (days) 1
Male	74,243	161	576
Female	84,115	173	577

1.There were 78 ongoing waits where the sex was not recorded. This is due to patients that have opted out of sharing their personal information.

2.Please note that the sex of a patient is taken from the Community Health Index (CHI), which is a register of all patients in NHSScotland.

Question reference: S6W-37946

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Friday, 30 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 10 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, as part of any action to reduce any sex-related pay inequality, whether it will consider changes to tax policy to increase the pay thresholds for the intermediate and higher rate tax bands for women returning to work after maternity leave.

Our Income Tax policy supports our progressive approach to tax, which balances the need of supporting households through a challenging economic period, while raising revenue to sustain our investment in public services.

We continue to deliver on our commitment to protect lower income households, ensuring more than half of taxpayers pay less than they would elsewhere in the UK for the remainder of this Parliament.

As part of the Tax Strategy published alongside the Budget, we are providing a period of stability for Income Tax for the lifetime of this Parliament which includes committing to uprating the Starter and Basic rate bands by at least inflation.

Whilst Employment Legislation is reserved, the Scottish Government has continued to use the levers at our disposal to encourage employers to adopt Fair Work practices for all workers including flexible and inclusive and family friendly workplace practices that can help reduce barriers faced by women in the labour market. Scotland has a lower gender pay gap across full and part-time earners compared to the UK and has been so since 2003.

We continue to closely monitor the impacts of our tax policy decisions on taxpayers, businesses, and the economy using a range of evidence such as real time economic data, formal evaluations and engagement with stakeholders, including the business community.

Question reference: S6W-37944

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Friday, 30 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 10 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will consider progressing a Dundee Northern Relief Road to reduce conflict between strategic and local traffic in Dundee, and to improve the connectivity of Aberdeen to the Central Belt, including Edinburgh, and what it estimates the cost of such a project is.

The Scottish Government currently has no plans to take forward a Dundee Northern Bypass or Relief Road. The A90 is an important part of Scotland’s Trunk Road network and passes through suburban Dundee, thus serving both strategic need through traffic and the need for local accessibility.

An upgrade to the A90 Kingsway or a possible Dundee northern bypass was considered as part of the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2), published in 2022. After careful analysis and assessment of the evidence, the national level appraisal concluded that a bypass could provide accessibility benefits for Dundee’s northern communities and reduce journey times for through-traffic on the A90.

However, the scale of these benefits was relatively modest in comparison to the significant environmental and financial costs of a new road. Further, this option did not score well with Transport Scotland’s Sustainable Investment Hierarchy, where the rationale for investment in transport infrastructure projects is to maintain and make best use of our existing transport assets, over building new infrastructure. Taking the totality of the evidence, it was considered that the case for investment in a relief road for Dundee was therefore not sufficiently proven.

Further analysis also noted that major on-line changes to the A90 through Dundee were not considered feasible and reallocation of road space to other purposes was likely to have adverse consequences for traffic routeing. Therefore, the recommendation from STPR2 was that further, more detailed work was required, in the form of an Integrated Transport Plan, to develop a solution that delivered for local residents and strategic through-traffic alike.

A preliminary construction cost estimate for a potential bypass was developed for the STPR2 transport appraisal in 2021. However, given the intervening period and the resulting construction price inflation that has occurred since, these estimates are now out of date.

Question reference: S6W-37945

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Friday, 30 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 10 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what policy initiatives it plans to enact that are aimed at supporting female entrepreneurs.

As outlined in this year's Programme for Government, we are investing a record £6m to continue implementation of the recommendations of Ana Stewart and Mark Logan’s Pathways report on women in entrepreneurship.

This funding will build on the success of the South of Scotland Enterprise Pre-Start Regional Pilot and Pathways Fund and ensure that the opportunities of entrepreneurship are accessible to more women, closing the gender gaps in business participation and opening up the opportunities of entrepreneurship to under-represented and under-supported groups.

Question reference: S6W-37932

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 28 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 5 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it undertook that resulted in it determining that CalMac should be directly awarded the Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services contract without an open tender process, in light of it stating that directly awarding the contract for the Small Vessel Replacement Programme to Ferguson Marine would present a legal risk.

Direct award of public contracts is only possible in strictly limited circumstances under public procurement rules.

The CHFS3 decision was subject to a due diligence process which concluded there was no financial, operational or legal impediment to implementing a Teckal-compliant direct award.

Shipbuilding is a competitive global market and a designated sensitive sector under the UK Subsidy Control Act. For SVRP, it was assessed that a substantial subsidy would have been required to support direct award of the Phase 1 contract to Fergusons, which we did not consider would be capable of being justified. Given no clear path to subsidy control compliance and the risks of legal challenge, Ministers concluded that directly awarding the Phase 1 contract would have been likely to lead to the worst of both worlds - a delay in adding new ferries to the network and the yard ultimately not securing any work from the programme.

Question reference: S6O-04780

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 04 June 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 11 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of recent reports regarding the Barnett formula, and its ministers stating a preference for full fiscal autonomy, what discussions it has had with the UK Government in relation to replacing the Barnett formula.

Question reference: S6O-04707

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 28 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the Crown Estate in England, Wales and Northern Ireland being granted borrowing powers so that it can, for example, invest in energy infrastructure, what its position is on similar powers being granted to Crown Estate Scotland.

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