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The draft Scottish Budget 2026-27 delivers a significant uplift in funding to sport. This allows us to deliver on our key ambition of ensuring every child has the opportunity to learn basic swimming skills, building confidence and safety in and around water.

We will work with Scottish Swimming and sportscotland to design a phased national roll-out of the National School Swimming Framework, ensuring the funding is targeted into addressing inequalities in access to swimming lessons across all local authority areas. That work is due to commence imminently.

The Scottish Government’s Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES), continues to play a central role in supporting communities to engage with, participate in, and benefit from Scotland’s transition to net zero emissions.

In 2024-25, CARES Recovery funding delivered or supported 154 projects across all of its funding calls.

In 2025-26 to date, CARES Recovery funding has so far delivered or supported an estimated 264 projects through its funding calls. The Community Energy Generation Growth Fund and the Community Solar Fund were both supported by a combination of Scottish Government and Great British Energy funding. As this financial year is ongoing, the final number of projects delivered is subject to change.

Consent from Scottish Ministers is required under the Electricity Act 1989 for electricity generating stations over 50MW. Developments below this threshold are determined under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 and are handled by the relevant planning authority.

There are currently 32 onshore energy generation project applications that are at the decision stage and are being processed by the Energy Consents Unit for determination by the Scottish Ministers.

Planning for Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) funding for 2026-27 is currently ongoing.

We are committed to working with partners to continue to grow the community energy sector, including by investing in CARES. We want to ensure that the delivery of renewable energy comes with benefits for people in Scotland, as well as supporting progress towards net zero.

We have secured £15.9m capital and £1m resource for the JTF in the 2026-27 budget. We will announce plans for managing this spend imminently, including the publication of full criteria and guidance for applicants.

The commissioned independent research Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray: final evaluation report, evaluated the impact of the first two years of the Just Transition Fund. We used the opportunity of the FY 2025-26 funding round to develop our processes. We engage with each project team regularly and ask for progress updates including monitoring against project specific milestones and indicators.

We remain committed to making improvements in how the Fund is managed, to help ensure that it supports the net-zero transition, helps to diversify the regional economy away from carbon-intensive sectors, creates jobs and prosperity, and delivers measurable benefits for workers, businesses, and communities.

The Scottish Government completely understands concerns around women travelling to England to access abortion services and has been working urgently to establish an abortion service to the legal limit in Scotland. A task and finish group produced a Target Operating Model to inform the process, and work to implement the service is now being led by National Services Scotland.

The current stage of the process is focused on identifying and putting in place requirements for service delivery. This will involve recruitment of relevant staffing, including nursing and theatre workforce; the development of training pathways; establishment of governance arrangements and clinical protocols; and identification of the most appropriate host Board(s). It will also consider funding and service planning.

The Scottish Government will continue to offer any support we can to ensure a full service is delivered as quickly as possible. The Scottish Government is pleased to have provided funding to additional clinicians, helping them to access training to deliver these services.

The Draft Scottish Budget 2026-27 confirmed that, having supported the delivery of 141,000 affordable homes since 2007, we will invest £926 million next year, to maintain progress towards our target of delivering 110,000 by 2032 - with at least 70% for social rent and 10% in rural and island areas. The Scottish Spending Review 2026 also set out our plans to invest up to £4.9 billion over the next four years – including a record £4.1 billion of public sector funding – to support delivery of 36,000 affordable homes and help meet our wider all-tenure housing ambitions.

Our plan to deliver 36,000 homes over the next four years did not specifically assume a cost per unit for a new build home. The Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) comprise homes for social rent, for mid-market rent and for low cost home ownership. These homes take various forms including; new build homes, rehabilitation projects, conversions and off-the-shelf purchases of both new and second hand homes.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of continued access to specialist services to support Scotland’s deaf community. I am due to meet with members of the Cross Party Group on Deafness next month to learn directly from stakeholders and those with lived experience on access to audiology and wider services.

In addition to meeting with stakeholders, Scottish Government has published a number of plans which underline its commitment to providing support to those who are deaf in Scotland, including the British Sign Language (BSL) National Plan (2023-29) which has ten priority areas to address barriers to transport, justice and democratic participation which BSL users have highlighted.

Police Scotland have confirmed that there are no active criminal investigations in Scotland relating to any files released by the United States of America authorities relating to Jeffrey Epstein. Neither Police Scotland or the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service are dealing with any reports of criminality in Scotland arising from those files to date.

A list of national support organisations for people with hearing loss and deafness can be found online at www.all-ears.nhs.scot/. Details of localised support services can be obtained from local authorities and health and social care partnerships.