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Up to £4.9 billion will be invested in housing through a mixture of public and privately leveraged investment. The upcoming Scottish Government Budget and Scottish Spending Review will set out further detail.

The Scottish Government has consistently proactively published information on costs for independence papers, once all costs have been incurred.

Costs associated with the publication of the Your Right To Decide paper will be available in due course.

The new £1 million national fund to leave will be distributed on the basis of population of each local authority area in Scotland. This was the method used in the fund to leave pilot.

The evaluation of the pilot fund to leave by Scottish Women’s Aid showed that 511 women received support and the average amount received was £825.

We will work with Scottish Women’s Aid to ensure the fund to leave is open to women across Scotland who are in need of financial support to leave an abusive partner.

Scottish Government is aware that research is essential if we are to continue to develop new and effective approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of brain tumours.

There are no plans for the Scottish Government to provide direct funding support to the Scottish Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence, however, Individual researchers or groups of researchers based at the Scottish Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence and who are employed by a Scottish University or NHS Board can apply for CSO research grant funding.

We look forward to working with the Centre co-leads and funders to facilitate awareness of and engagement with the NHS Research Scotland support infrastructure.

From 2014 data on Audiology waits formed part of the 18 weeks referral to treatment waiting time data Public Health Scotland (PHS) publication. In March this year, PHS communicated that as part of their ongoing work to ensure their suite of statistical publications meets user needs, they decided to pause the 18 weeks RTT national data collection, analysis and publication. The 18th March 2025 publication was the last planned publication. It is important to note that PHS will continue to publish comprehensive statistics on waiting times which will help demonstrate the impact of the additional funding to reduce waiting times. By pausing the 18 week RTT statistics, PHS will be able to shift resources towards developing statistics on the number of 8 key diagnostic tests carried out per quarter. This change in focus is needed for the public to understand how we are progressing with our commitment for 150,000 extra appointments, diagnostics and treatment in 2025-26.

Given the importance of audiology, as part of the Scottish Government’s implementation of the Service Renewal Framework consideration is being given as to how to strengthen visibility and accountability on audiology waiting times to ensure planning of services reflects actual need and supports equitable access. This has been prioritised as part of the first year work programme of SRF implementation.

Please see the Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) interim update provided to the NZET Committee on 1 September 2025 on the delivery progress of MV Isle of Islay and the other vessels currently under construction in Türkiye. The letter has been published and can be found at the attached link - Interim Update on New Vessels for Islay & Little Minch

Since the launch of the RMT People’s CalMac Campaign in 2022 we have been engaging with Trade unions on their aspiration for a CHFS3 of Direct Award to CalMac Ferries. The Scottish Government agrees that a Direct Award is the best and most appropriate way forward. The detailed Contract specification will be published on the Transport Scotland website and reflects the very nature of the contract which is to enable continuous improvements and adjustment in the changed focus of public service delivery, rather than simply meeting contractual requirements, and we would expect ongoing trades unions engagement on this. Trades unions have been active in the formal consultation and in the Roundtable hosted by me as the Cabinet Secretary for that purpose and I have regular meetings with Ferry Trades unions. We will continue to engage productively with Trade unions throughout the term of the new contract to support the hard-working staff providing these services across the CHFS network.

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.

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.

This sits hand in hand with activity which will enable us to be able to map our scientific workforce in NHS Scotland more accurately, strengthening capacity, training and recruitment pipelines for audiologists, and supporting better workforce planning for the future.

From 2014 data on Audiology service waits was included as part of the 18 weeks referral to treatment waiting time data Public Health Scotland (PHS) publication. In March this year, PHS communicated that as part of their ongoing work to ensure their suite of statistical publications meets user needs, they decided to pause the 18 weeks RTT national data collection, analysis and publication. The 18th March 2025 publication was the last planned publication.

It is important to note that PHS will continue to publish comprehensive statistics on waiting times which will help demonstrate the impact of the additional funding to reduce waiting times. By pausing the 18 week RTT statistics, PHS will be able to shift resources towards developing statistics on the number of 8 key diagnostic tests carried out per quarter. This change in focus is needed for the public to understand how we are progressing with our commitment for 150,000 extra appointments, diagnostics and treatment in 2025-26.

Given the importance of audiology, as part of the Scottish Government’s implementation of the Service Renewal Framework consideration is being given as to how to strengthen visibility and accountability on audiology waiting times to ensure planning of services reflects actual need and supports equitable access. This has been prioritised as part of the first year work programme of SRF implementation.