Seòmar agus comataidhean

I last met with the Interim Chief Executive of NHS Grampian on 3 September 2025. I attended the Collaborative Response and Assurance Group on 2 June 2025 which the Chief Officer of Health and Social Care Moray attended.

The Scottish Government has commissioned NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to undertake work which maps the skills and competencies required at each level of practice for all disciplines within the healthcare science profession, including audiology as a clinical priority area, which will better enable planning of clear education pathways for audiology, and other disciplines, and support progression of staff between levels of practice. NES are continuing to work towards completing this, with a focus on audiology, over the course of 2025.

Alongside this, a Redefining our Workforce document is under development which sets out work on redefining of the scientific workforce in Scotland (including audiologists) and will support development of educational courses in the future. This is in its final stage of publication and will be published this Autumn.

A programme of work to address recommendations of the Independent Review of Audiology Services in Scotland has now concluded and each of the 55 recommendations updated.

A final report was produced outlining the rationale behind the actions taken and confirming the timelines for taking forward the remaining actions through other programmes of work. The final report is available and the all-ears.nhs.scot website.

National oversight of audiology services is via the Scottish Government’s Strategic Planning Board. Responsibility for ongoing monitoring of the implementation of the Independent Review of Audiology Services in Scotland report lies primarily with NHS Boards themselves via their Audiology Local Action Plans.

We recognise Dr Hermann Hauser’s long-standing role in shaping UK innovation policy and his warning about the risks of over-dependence on global technology giants. His comments underline the importance of ensuring that Scotland retains secure and reliable access to the technologies our economy and public services rely on, particularly in circumstances where those technologies were created as a result of Scottish innovation.

While decisions on mergers and acquisitions are reserved to the UK Government, our National Strategy for Economic Transformation sets out how Scotland is strengthening its own capacity — by investing in skills, high growth entrepreneurship, commercialisation of research, emerging industrial clusters and access to finance — so that innovative companies can grow and anchor here, reducing strategic dependency while remaining globally connected.

Within the Scottish Government, the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) is responsible for supporting Health and Care Research.

CSO runs a number of research project and capacity building fellowship schemes and this role is well known across the Health and Care Research community in Scotland

Grant Funding – Chief Scientist Office

Fellowship Funding – Chief Scientist Office

Applications on the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of Brain Tumours are welcomed. In common with all other applications, these would go through CSO's standard independent expert review process to enable funding decisions to be made.

Current CSO funded brain tumour research projects are listed below:

TCS/21/05 - Developing representative models of the blood-tumour barrier to enhance drug development for Glioblastoma

Prof. Anthony Chalmers Univ. Glasgow £296,864

TCS/23/18 - Assessment of brain tumours with dynamic T2 and Lactate MR under oxygen challenge to evaluate aerobic and anaerobic metabolic status of Gliomas

Prof. Natasha Fullerton NHS GGC £299,918

TCS/24/35 - Applying new MRI technology to improve outcomes from chemoradiotherapy treatment for adult patients with Glioblastoma

Prof. Anne Kiltie Univ. Aberdeen £349,033

In addition, through UK-wide funding arrangements, the majority of funding programmes administered by the National Institute for Health & Care Research (NIHR) are open to applications led by researchers based in Scotland

Scottish Researchers to be able to access further NIHR research funding – Chief Scientist Office.

A Business and Regulatory Impact Assessments (BRIA) will be published when the final SSI is laid in Parliament and will set out the estimated costs associated with the addition of the characteristic of sex to the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 (“the 2021 Act”). This will be informed by discussions with Police Scotland, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) and other justice sector bodies about the costs that may arise.

With regards to the timetable for implementation, the final SSI will include a date on which it takes effect. This commencement date will be agreed following consultation with Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal, Police Scotland, the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service and others with an interest, so as to ensure that there is sufficient time for them to carry out necessary training and changes to IT systems and guidance.

There is no power within the 2021 Act for the Scottish Ministers to publish statutory guidance on the Act.

Since 2021, Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) have worked with the Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest to identify landscapes where they can work co-operatively with other land managers to effectively control rhododendron at the landscape scale. FLS accounting systems do not differentiate rhododendron control from other environmental expenditure such as Invasive Non-Native Species control. Therefore, it is not possible to provide exact figures of expenditure on a) removal and b) control of Rhododendron ponticum in each year since 2020-21. However, between 2022-23 and 2024-25 £1.685 million was spent on INNS and rhododendron removal and follow-up control in priority rainforest areas. During the current financial year, £1.397 million has been made available for INNS and rhododendron control.

Scottish Forestry has agreed £1.793 million of grant support for the eradication of rhododendron since the 2020-21. The funding provided is to support works that secure the removal of rhododendron from the funding area.

In addition, a number of Nature Restoration Fund projects aimed at improving and restoring areas of Atlantic rainforest include rhododendron control and removal. NatureScot does not hold precise information on the elements of those project costs that are solely directed at rhododendron control, but the total of the awarded costs of these projects from 2020-21 to 2024-25 is £1.734 million. The total of the awarded costs for 2025-26 is £1.322 million.

The establishment of the National Social Work Agency is underway. It will be an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government and will be established by Spring 2026. Recruitment for the Chief Executive of the agency is underway to support the transition from the Scottish Government and is line with existing policies and procedures.

The Scottish Government’s hybrid working policy outlines that organisations outside of Scottish Government core, for example, executive agencies will set out their own local approaches. Once the Chief Executive is in post and with the supporting structures in place, the future policy on hybrid working within the National Social Work Agency will be a matter for the Chief Executive and the Board to lead, in consultation with staff and the unions.

Implementation of Sections 14 and 15 of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 enable ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of the legislation by ensuring systematic data collection and public reporting. If the draft SSI is approved by Parliament when it is laid following the current consultation period, these reporting requirements will enable a deepening of the understanding of the impact of implementing the sex characteristic legislation, while also supporting meaningful engagement with communities to assess how commencement will affect them.

Further, we will continue to monitor our wider activity to tackle hate crime as set out in the terms of reference for the Hate Crime Strategic Partnership Group which is chaired by the Minister for Victims and Community Safety.

The fiscal regime for offshore oil and gas, as well as the regulatory regimes for licensing and consenting, are all matters that are currently reserved to the UK Government.

We continue to call on the UK Government to listen carefully to concerns being expressed by businesses and trade bodies around the impacts of its Energy Profits Levy.

We are now awaiting the UK Government’s response to its recent consultation, which must clearly set out how a stable and long-term fiscal regime will be used to deliver business and investor certainty for the North Sea. The Energy Profits Levy was always supposed to be a temporary measure and we must see the earliest possible end date, as it is now affecting investment and jobs in the North East.