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The Scottish Government’s role is to set the strategic policy direction for the NHS in Scotland. Operational matters, including local recruitment decisions, are the responsibility of each NHS Health Board as employers.

Whilst it is hoped that all graduates can join the NHS in their local area upon graduation, this is not always immediately possible. When a student is ready to graduate and cannot find employment with a local health board, universities will provide support and career guidance to assist the student in the consideration of all employment opportunities across health and social care.

As part of ongoing efforts to strengthen workforce planning across NHS Scotland, we have developed an internal panel (the Advisory Panel on Workforce Projections & Controlled Subject Intakes) to improve our healthcare student planning, ensuring we continue to fund the right number of healthcare training places across a range of disciplines.

In addition, we have tasked the NHS Scotland Centre for Workforce Supply to explore what further national support is required to promote employment opportunities in Scotland and we are working alongside the Scottish Executive Nurse Directors Group to identify what action can be taken to support newly qualified nurses to access employment in health and social care across the country.

Section 37 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 sets out that, when determining planning applications, planning authorities are to have regard to the provisions of the development plan, so far as material to the application, and to any other material considerations. The development plan consists of National Planning Framework 4 and the relevant local development plan.

It is for the relevant planning authority to identify, in each individual planning application, what material considerations apply and what weight to give to each material consideration in reaching their decision. This is a matter of planning judgement for the authority.

The Scottish Government met with the Non-Domestic Rates Consultative Group, which includes representatives of the hospitality sector, on 5 February to discuss potential additional measures for Scotland following the Chancellor’s announcement of further relief for pubs and music venues in England.

The Scottish Government continues to review relevant evidence and analysis as part of our ongoing consideration of a cruise ship levy. The formal analysis will be published in due course.

Management Information published on 4 February shows that 99% of payments issued (to 24 January) were made in December, consistent with Winter Fuel Payment timings. Work continues to complete final payments.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s forecasts of the non-domestic rates Contributable Amount (i.e. the amount that local authorities transfer to Scottish Government) are based on the draft 2026 valuation roll which was published on 30 November 2025. Forecasts in future years assume a level of buoyancy in the non-domestic tax base based on long-term trends.

The draft Scottish Budget 2026-27, announced on 13 January, ensures the estimated revenues raised from non-domestic rates in 2026-27 will be 6% lower in real terms measured by the Consumer Price Index than pre-COVID despite the number of properties on the valuation roll increasing in that time. It continues to support businesses and communities, with a strong non-domestic rates package, which decreases the Basic, Intermediate and Higher Property Rates in 2026-27, delivering the lowest Basic Property Rate since 2018, and supports a package of reliefs worth an estimated £864 million, in 2026-27. We estimate that 96% of retail, hospitality and leisure properties could benefit from some form of relief in 2026-27.

The Scottish Government does not centrally manage the use of Artificial Intelligence across our public services.

Scotland’s AI Strategy provides the overarching high-level principles that ensures a consistent approach to adhere to those principles of being transparent, ethical, and inclusive with the use of Artificial Intelligence across the public sector. The Scottish Government provides public sector wide AI guidance aligned with the Strategy and UK Government generative AI guidance. In addition, the Scottish AI Register, which is mandatory for Scottish Government and core agencies supports safe, transparent, and consistent AI development and deployment, while enabling public participation and sharing best practice across the public sector.

Internal Scottish Government estimates are that the non-domestic rates (NDR) revenue raised from properties liable for the Higher Property Rate (HPR) will be around £2.7 billion in 2026-27, of which around £648 million is expected to be raised from properties in the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure (RHL) sectors. These figures have been estimated using data from the Scottish Assessors Association’s draft NDR valuation roll for 2026-27 as at 11 December 2025 and councils’ billing system data as at 1 June 2025.

Table 1 provides a further breakdown of revenue raised from each of the RHL sectors respectively. The identification of properties in the RHL sectors are based on criteria used to identify eligible properties for the purpose of forecasting relief costs.

The breakdown of HPR revenue presented in Table 2 uses property class as business-sector classifications are not available. Property class is used by the Scottish Assessors to describe the type of a property and may not accurately reflect its use in all cases. For example, a property classified as a ‘shop’ may in fact be used to offer financial services.

Note that these estimates do not adjust NDR bills other than for estimates of relief that properties may benefit from in 2026-27. Any potential changes to NDR bills resulting from, for example, appeals or the application of backdated reliefs, are not accounted for in the figures provided in this answer.

Table 1: Estimate of revenue raised from HPR, RHL properties, 2026-27

Decisions on Budget are made in the context of the prevailing economic conditions and government priorities. We have had to consider how best to target support within limited finances.