Questions and answers

Question reference: S6O-05073

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 October 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 29 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government when it last met with Scottish Borders Council, and whether issues regarding the future of local facilities, including the potential closure of up to 30 sport and leisure facilities, were discussed.

Question reference: S6W-41447

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 October 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 19 November 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the publication by the UK Government on 17 October 2025 of its summary of the responses to the call for evidence regarding the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023, and what implications these might have on responding to rural crime in Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-41380

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 October 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 18 November 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how the £901,000 veterans budget is being spent in 2025-26.

Question reference: S6W-40966

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 21 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the average and longest waiting times are for cataract surgery, when calculated from initial referral to completion of treatment, in the most recent year for which data is available and broken down by NHS board.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Public Health Scotland (PHS), as Scotland’s national public health body for the purpose of intelligence and analysis, is responsible for sourcing waiting times data from hospital administrative systems.

PHS publish regular statistics relating to the length of time patients wait to be seen as a new outpatient or admitted for treatment as an inpatient or day case. This data can be used to identify the volume of long waits and the median waiting time by the specialty of treatment, including ophthalmology. The latest publication can be found here: Stage of treatment waiting times - Inpatients, day cases and new outpatients quarter ending 30 June 2025 - NHS waiting times - stage of treatment - Publications - Public Health Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-40988

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 21 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to support responsible adventure tourism events, such as the ITERA Adventure Race, in light of the international visitors and reported economic benefits they bring to rural Scotland, while taking environmental protection into account.

The Scottish Government, along with our tourism agency VisitScotland, acknowledges the significance of adventure tourism. VisitScotland has teams strategically located throughout rural Scotland that are instrumental in collaborating with regional stakeholders to identify local needs and opportunities.

Scotland has an enviable global reputation as a major events powerhouse. Across the country our iconic venues and picture-perfect backdrops play host to world-leading cultural, business and sporting events all year round.

Question reference: S6W-40965

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 17 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether the Treatment Time Guarantee can be meaningfully enforced in cases where NHS boards are unable to measure full patient pathways, and what assessment it has made of compliance under such circumstances.

I refer the member to the answers for questions S6W-40963 and S6W-40964 on 17 October 2025.

The Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011 legislates that an eligible patient is to start to receive agreed inpatient or day case treatment within a 12-week Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG). This guarantee is based on completed waits where a patient is removed from the list after being admitted for treatment and does not include periods of waiting pre-decision to treat. Health Boards must take all reasonable steps to ensure they comply with this standard.

To support the above guarantee, 95% of new outpatients should wait no longer than 12 weeks from referral to being seen at a consultant-led clinic. This includes all referral sources.

We have seen progress in inpatient and day-case admissions, with 57% taking place within 12 weeks, up from the previous quarter, while a third of those still waiting had done so for less than 12 weeks. We expect NHS Boards to focus on these individual targets for each part of the patient journey, and we have routinely performance managed Boards on this basis since the implementation of the Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011.

In addition, the Scottish Government’s NHS Scotland Waiting Times Guidance was updated in November 2023 to provide guidance for Health Boards to assist them in the delivery of the national waiting times standards. This guidance replaces the previous 2012 publication and continues to ensure that patients who are waiting for an appointment, diagnostic test or treatment are managed fairly and consistently across NHS Scotland. The changes made align to our commitment to deliver sustained improvements and reductions to waiting times through service redesign, as well as enhanced regional and national working across NHS Scotland.

Finally, our Budget is providing more than £110 million to Health Boards this year to support reductions to the longest waits for appointments and procedures.

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.

Question reference: S6W-40963

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 17 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government which NHS boards are currently unable to link outpatient and inpatient data in order to provide a complete record of patient pathways from referral to treatment.

The Scottish Government is not aware of any NHS Scotland Health Board that is unable to link outpatient and inpatient data in order to provide a complete record of patient pathways from referral to treatment.

As stated in my response to question S6W-40967 on 14 October 2025, Public Health Scotland’s decision to pause the 18 weeks referral-to-treatment standard publication reflects the need to release capacity to focus on new priorities. This has not changed the expectation of Health Boards to continue to collect these data at a local level to support performance monitoring.

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.

Question reference: S6W-40964

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 17 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that all NHS boards can accurately measure total patient waiting times for treatment and what the timeline is for implementing systems that allow full patient data linkage.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-40963 on 17 October 2025.

The Scottish Government is not aware of any NHS Scotland Health Board that cannot accurately measure total patient waiting times for treatment.

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.

Question reference: S6W-40953

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 17 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an an update on its public consultation on the role of Permitted Development Rights in delivering more high-quality homes.

The Scottish Government launched a public consultation on Permitted development rights to support the provision of new homes on 3 September 2025. The consultation closes on 27 October 2025. The consultation sets out a range of options to simplify planning processes and encourage the provision of new homes in rural areas and town and city centres.

The consultation responses will inform the formation and refinement of any proposals for new or amended permitted development rights. A statutory instrument containing any changes stemming from the consultation would likely be laid in the Scottish Parliament in early 2026.

A summary of the consultation responses will be published in due course. Individual responses will be published where consent has been given.

Question reference: S6W-41384

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 October 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 13 November 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide information on the number of veterans it has helped secure accommodation since November 2018, broken down by financial year.

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