Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government are fully aware that the budgetary pressures on the Health and Social Care system in 2026-27 have never been greater. After the disappointing UK Government Spending Review in June, we called on the UK Chancellor to increase funding, but they failed to deliver anything like the scale of change required.

Nevertheless, the draft Budget 2026-27 will provide almost £22.5 billion investment in health and social care services exceeding consequentials and providing a real terms uplift to enable more sustainable and resilient services. This includes investment of over £2.3 billion for social care, delivering our commitment to increase funding by 25%, and exceeding this by over £0.5 billion.

The Scottish Budget also provides a real terms increase to the Local Government Settlement, bringing it to almost £15.7 billion and while I recognise COSLA’s view that further funding is needed, there has never been greater pressures on public finances and simply increasing resource without wider reform risks leaving us in the same unsustainable position next year.

The Scottish Government maintains its ongoing commitment to funding perinatal and infant mental health support through the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health (PIMH) Fund, administered by Inspiring Scotland.

Funding previously allocated directly to NHS Boards to improve specialist perinatal and infant mental health services as part of the Enhanced Mental Health Outcomes Framework has now been baselined directly into core NHS Board budgets. This provides greater long term funding stability and allows for better planning and continuity when making local spend decisions and providing local services and support.

All of our funding arrangements with partners are regularly reviewed to ensure they support a balanced range of provision and align with the aims and principles of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

We regularly engage with stakeholders to monitor impact of funding, to ensure that service design and future funding decisions are informed by local need.

We have deployed Scotwind revenues to boost the funding available across the Spending Review period, achieve smoother funding profiles, and support investment that provides longer term benefits for Scotland.

In 2026-27 £50 million is targeted at improving public services, and addressing the cost-of-living pressures faced by households. This funding is supporting public sector reform (£30m) and The Summer of Sport initiative (£20m). In 2027-28 £236 million has been deployed to resource, reflecting the challenging funding position in this year with the resource block grant growing just 0.3% in real terms, this funding hasn’t been allocated to specific projects yet.

As with all the deployment of Scotwind to support the resource position, the intention is to reverse this deployment if the funding position improves as has been achieved in previous years.

A cross-government exercise to seek information on any meetings with the 158 businesses listed identified a small number of meetings at official level with representatives of Airbnb and Booking.com. These meetings were focussed on matters of domestic policy, including the development of guidance, licence requirements and the Visitor Levy.

No ministerial meetings were identified as part of this exercise.

The draft Budget 2026-27 sets out a further £160 million investment to enable the payment of the Real Living Wage to adult social care workers in commissioned services in the next financial year. This will take the total Scottish Government investment in adult social care pay to over £1.1 billion annually.

It is the legal obligation of all employers to pay the National Living Wage. The additional £160 million will fund the gap between the National Living Wage and the Real Living Wage, enabling Local Authorities to offer pay rates for adult social care workers in commissioned services of more than 5% above the National Living Wage rate. Therefore, there will be no funding gap.

The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting the vital manufacturing workforce of Alexander Dennis. The terms of the furlough support scheme awarded to Alexander Dennis in September 2025 require the company to evidence key conditions before financial support can be claimed and these conditions are monitored by Scottish Government officials.

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) carries out workforce assessments for key sectors across Scotland. These assessments are available on the SDS website here: Sectoral Skills Assessments - Skills Development Scotland.

As such, the Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Alongside the assessments from SDS, the Scottish Government has committed in its recent Programme for Government to introducing a new Scottish Government-led approach to national skills planning, and strengthening regional skills planning, to ensure that post school provision becomes more responsive to Scotland’s strategic skills needs and priorities. This work is progressing and we will update parliament in due course.

The Scottish Procurement Policy Handbook is aimed at public bodies across Scotland, while the Scottish Procurement Policy Manual relates specifically to Scottish Government procurement activity. Both are intended to be live documents which flag key policy considerations, and signpost readers to sources of more detailed guidance, such as that contained in Scottish Procurement Policy Notes.

It is the long-standing view of the Scottish Government that the exploitation of assets in illegally occupied territory is likely to constitute grave professional misconduct for the purposes of procurement law. Scottish Procurement Policy Note 3/2026 was published on 5 February 2026 and sets out the options available to public sector buyers in relation to bidders which are engaged in grave professional misconduct, including human rights violations. It can be found on the Scottish Government website, at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/public-procurement-human-rights-and-grave-professional-misconduct-sppn-3-2026/

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that children and young people in Scotland are safe and supported in their online lives. We recognise both the benefits and the risks posed by engaging with social media and the importance of robust regulation to protect children from harm.

We are aware that countries such as Australia have implemented a ban and will seek to gather evidence on the effectiveness and impacts of this approach. We will also consult closely with parents, experts, and most importantly children and young people in Scotland, to clarify how we can enable children with access to the benefits of social media while protecting them from the harms.

There is absolutely a need for greater controls to reduce harms to children from social media. Regulation of the internet is reserved, and so any ban on social media would be for the UK Government to consider. To that end, we have engaged with UK Ministers and Ofcom to strengthen online protections for children in the Online Safety Act 2023 and will continue to keep the effectiveness of these measures under review. All of this will help to inform the position we take on whether or not to advocate for a social media ban for children.

It is the long-standing view of the Scottish Government that the exploitation of assets in illegally occupied territory is likely to constitute grave professional misconduct for the purposes of procurement law.

Scottish Procurement Policy Note 3/2026 was published on 5 February 2026 and sets out the options available to public sector buyers in relation to bidders which are engaged in grave professional misconduct, including human rights violations. It can be found on the Scottish Government website, at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/public-procurement-human-rights-and-grave-professional-misconduct-sppn-3-2026/.

That notwithstanding, it is for each autonomous public body to ensure that it complies with its own procurement policies, and associated legal obligations.