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The Forestry Grant Scheme has committed £69.8 million of support, in the period 2021-22 to 2024-25, for native woodland creation and native woodland management. £64.6 million of this funding has been provided to create new native woodland, with £5.2 million provided for the management of native woodland. The annual breakdown of this funding is show in the following table.

The Scottish Statutory Instrument for the commencement for the removal of the requirement for local authorities to gain Ministerial consent before transferring funds to HRA came into force 12 January 2026.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2025/408/made

It will be for individual councils to set their policy on the transfer and use of contributions from the General Fund to the Housing Revenue Account.

The Chief Finance Officer, as the proper (section 95) officer with responsibility for managing the financial affairs of the authority, must be satisfied that the transfer and use of contributions from the General Fund to the Housing Revenue Account is prudent, affordable and sustainable.

The Palliative Care Matters for All Strategy, which was published on 10 September 2025, provides a strategic framework to help improve the delivery of palliative care support to communities across Scotland.

The Strategy is underpinned by an initial 3-year delivery plan (2025-28) which is focused on developing tools that will support frontline delivery across Scotland and the sharing of best practice.

However, it is for Integration Joint Boards to govern, plan and resource adult palliative care, including equipment provision, in their areas using the delegated budgets under their control.

Phase Two of the Women’s Health Plan was published on 20 January 2026.

Its implementation will be supported by a ‘Women’s Health Plan Ministerial Oversight Group’, chaired by myself. This Group will provide strategic oversight and governance for Phase Two and support partners across Scotland in delivering the Plan.

Additional governance and working groups to support the delivery of Phase Two are currently being determined and will be in place by Spring 2026.

The Forestry Grant Scheme has committed the following sums, in each complete financial year since 2021-22, for the natural regeneration of native woodlands and invasive species control.

Phase Two of the Women’s Health Plan was published on 20 January 2026.

As part of the next steps for the delivery of Phase Two, a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework is being developed. Part of the work of the Framework will be to set out timelines for the delivery of the 40 actions within Phase Two of the Plan including the national survey on women and girls’ health.

The Scottish Bracken Working Group (BWG) last met on the 19 of January, and I plan to write to the Rural Affairs and Islands committee with an update on both the bracken mapping work and other outputs of the BWG and its member organisations during February 2026.

Eradicating child poverty in Scotland is a national mission and this Government’s top priority. That is why we have put tackling child poverty at the heart of the Scottish Budget for 2026-27, which outlines our plans to reinvest money previously committed to our Two Child Limit Payment.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission have forecast that, of the £141 million which would have been allocated to the Two Child Limit Payment in 2026-27, £14 million will be invested to meet the additional demand on devolved benefits as a result of the Two Child Limit being removed. This includes increased spending on Benefit Cap mitigation and for the Scottish Government’s Five Family Payments.

Of the £126 million made available in 2026-27 after meeting these costs, the Scottish Government will invest:

• £50 million in a package of Whole Family support that will wrap around families and help break the cycle of poverty. This will further enhance existing support and will include support with skills and direct assistance via trusted third sector organisations.
• £61.5 million in our Tackling Child Poverty Fund to supercharge action on child poverty across the life of the next Parliament, with details of investment set out in our forthcoming Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan.
• a further £21 million to meet the cost of increased expenditure on the Scottish Child Payment in 2026-27. This includes uprating the payment to £28.20 per child per week from April.

Through the Scottish Spending Review, we have also committed to developing the systems and legislation needed to increase the value of our Scottish Child Payment to £40 per week for all children under the age of 1 commencing in 2027-28. Investment in this enhanced support will be met from the reallocation of Two Child Limit Payment funding.

These measures, alongside others announced in the Scottish Budget and Spending Review, will help to support the delivery of the Third Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan to be published by the end of March 2026, setting our ambitious path towards the 2030 statutory Child Poverty Targets.

As set out in the Scottish Spending Review 2026, the majority of these efficiency and reform savings will come from the 3% target NHS Board recurring savings.

The NHS Scotland Finance Delivery Unit (FDU) is hosted by Scottish Government and aims to work with all NHS Boards to drive sustainable improvement, deliver insight and provide hands on capacity, for example, through the use of the ‘15 Box Grid’. Since the FDU was established in 2023, savings delivery in NHS Scotland has increased significantly, and recurring savings across NHS Scotland have doubled.

The FDU supports NHS Boards to achieve the 3% target by providing benchmarking and sharing best practice across NHS Boards. It also assesses local, regional and national opportunities, and sets the medium to long term financial forecast assumptions for NHS Scotland linking closely to the evolving work on reform.

On other operational efficiency and productivity savings, The Fiscal Sustainability Delivery Plan sets out measures and actions to deliver efficiencies including deprioritising lower impact spending and better targeting of existing resources. For example, we have established an Investment and Value Board to improve the evidence base for the impact of existing spending and new spending proposals, to drive evidence-based investment/disinvestment decisions.

Health efficiency and service renewal is also being taken forward through the NHS Scotland Operational Improvement Plan, the Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework, and Population Health Framework.

Our approach to health and social care reform and efficiency is multi-facetted, including service redesign, prevention and investment in technology. Our work on reform and change will be developed in partnership with trade union colleagues. It is not possible to provide the cumulative impact of all our actions on the number of jobs impacted each year.

No unauthorised amendments have been made to the draft 2026-27 Scottish Budget. Some narrative elements within the supplementary level 4 information within the Constitution, External Affairs & Culture Portfolio was edited, however, this was restored to the originally published version on 15 January 2026.