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Since its inception, excluding staff costs, 2.1% of the Techscaler budget spent to date has been invested in international activity, spotlighting Scotland’s growing reputation as a leading tech hub. This is helping our startups secure investment and compete in the international marketplace. Multiple export contracts have been secured, six participants have secured £5.4m of investment and several other firms are in dialogue with investors.

The Scottish Government continues to develop policy and legislation to reduce marine litter pollution and grow our circular economy by reducing waste which can become litter.

We know that a lot of our marine litter comes from single-use products and we are building on previous legislation to tackle more of these items in the future. We are working across the four nations towards legislation that will ban businesses from supplying and selling wet wipes containing plastic, with exceptions for medical or industrial use. We remain committed to the delivery of a successful deposit return scheme for single-use drinks containers, working closely with industry and the rest of the UK to launch this in October 2027. In addition, we have also consulted on proposals to introduce a minimum 25 pence charge on single-use drinks cups, with the aim of incentivising the use of reusable alternatives.

To reduce packaging waste an Extended Producer Responsibility scheme is being implemented in 2025 across the UK. It will move the full cost of dealing with packaging waste from households to the producers. It will also incentivise businesses to reduce excess packaging and to design packaging that is more easily recycled.

To ensure transparency and accountability, the Scottish Government commissioned an independent evaluation of the Techscaler programme following my committee appearance in 2024. EKOS were formally appointed in December 2024 to carry out this evaluation. The findings will be published in full and made publicly available by early 2026.

The information requested is not held centrally.

We remain committed to implementing a high quality and clinically safe thrombectomy service that is available across Scotland whenever people need it and Scottish Government officials and NHS planners are working at pace on developing a plan for the next steps for service expansion.

We have provided funding for thrombectomy nurse posts in spoke sites with high rates of ischaemic stroke and this will support maximising access to thrombectomy across Scotland.

We are also funding the procurement of an artificial intelligence imaging tool to help delivery of the service by improving detection of patients with strokes suitable for thrombectomy by supporting stroke clinicians and radiologists to detect patients with large vessel occlusion.

The numbers of entrants to first degree pre-clinical medicine courses, by university and domicile, have been provided in the following table.

The table only covers those entering pre-clinical medicine and do not include other students entering medical schools on clinical medicine or students on continuing years of study.

First degree entrants to pre-clinical medicine at Scottish Universities, by domicile, 2020-21 to 2023-24

The latest available estimates from the Scottish Household Survey 2023 (available here: Households in Scotland by housing tenure: Scottish Household Survey, 2023 - gov.scot show that between 90,000-110,000 households are on housing lists and 7,000-14,000 of these households had applied for social housing using a choice based letting system or similar within the last year. These estimates include some households already living in social rented housing, looking to transfer to a different home. Estimates from the 2024 Scottish Household Survey are scheduled for publication at the end of 2025.

We are aware of our duties under Section 5 of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, and the National Marine Plan 2 is being constructed using a robust and transparent evidence base. The assessment of condition is being informed by existing evidence and date, including but not limited to Scotland’s Marine Assessment 2020 (SMA2020) and data which informed our 2024 review of the NMP.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-40140 on 24 September 2025. The assessment of condition is being prepared in line with our duties, and will include the impact of human activity and pressures on the marine area. 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.

The Scottish Government currently employs four civil servants in its AI Policy Team, with plans to increase this number in the coming weeks. However, this Team does not represent the full range of staff who currently work on, or have an interest in AI. This complement extends across the Scottish Government and its agencies to other publicly funded organisations and beyond. That is why the Scottish Government has committed to launching AI Scotland, a new national transformation programme founded on a partnership of business, academia, agencies and government, to operate as a focus for our collective effort to harness the full potential of AI to drive sustainable economic growth.