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Meetings between Scottish Government and SEPA officials focusing on measures to minimise and mitigate water scarcity take place regularly.

Over the summer, the Scottish Government officials met weekly with SEPA, Scottish Water, and key stakeholders for 28 consecutive weeks to monitor and manage water availability.

SEPA has taken several key actions recently to minimise and mitigate impacts of water scarcity, including improving its website for accessibility, providing clearer guidance, strengthening communications with abstractors, and reviewing abstraction licences to support sustainable water use. Scotland’s National Water Scarcity Plan is available on the SEPA website. This sets out how water resources will be managed prior to, and during, periods of prolonged dry weather.

Officials most recently met SEPA officials in December 2025 to review SEPA’s Autumn Water Situation report, potential implications for 2026 as well as discuss water scarcity mitigation more broadly.

The Scottish Government have no plans to review the criteria for referral and treatment of varicose veins.

All NHS Boards are required to deliver at least 3% recurring savings against baseline funding each year to support long-term fiscal sustainability. It is for individual Boards to determine how best to deliver these efficiencies without impacting patient care.

The Scottish Government’s Finance Delivery Unit (FDU) carries out three-year financial planning with NHS Boards. Board financial plans are expected in March 2026 and will provide oversight of boards planned savings for 2026-27. Future year Boards’ savings plans will continue to develop and will be agreed on an annual basis.

The FDU provides Boards with the 15 Box Grid to identify priority areas for delivering savings and securing value for money across workforce, innovation, value-based healthcare and productivity.

The decision to reallocate ministerial responsibility for determining consents was taken on 18 December 2025 by the First Minister. The allocation of ministerial portfolios and responsibilities is a matter for the First Minister and does not follow set criteria.

We are making good progress on the National Performance Framework (NPF) reform project.

The most recent update to Parliament was 28 November 2025, in response to the Social Justice and Social Security committee’s request for evidence to stage 1 of the Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Bill. [Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill].

We are currently concluding phase two which will make proposals for change and improvement. In phase three we intend to work with partners and stakeholders, up to the pre-election period, to develop these proposals further and we will write to Parliament with further details soon.

We aim to launch the reformed framework in the new parliamentary session following the 2026 Scottish election.

While SEPA typically produces weekly water scarcity reports from May to September, it extends the weekly reporting period as conditions require. In 2025 weekly reporting started in April and continued into October due to conditions.

Weekly reports are designed for the period of highest hydrological risk, when frequent updates offer the greatest value to both abstractors and public bodies. Extending weekly reporting across the full year, rather than responding to when conditions require it, does not represent the best use of resources at this time.

When a Commissioner vacancy arises at the Scottish Law Commission, the skills and experience sought will be informed by the skills and experience needed to deliver their Programme of Law Reform. The Programme of Law Reform is the subject of extensive consultation by the Scottish Law Commission and is agreed by the Scottish Ministers and laid in the Scottish Parliament. The current Programme of Law Reform includes the law of homicide and a Report on Homicide was published at the end of 2025.

Commissioner appointments are regulated by the Ethical Standards Commissioner who ensures that appointments are made on merit and reflect the diversity of Scottish society.

The Scottish Government received a funding bid from the Scottish Museum of Empire, Slavery, Colonialism and Migration to enable them to continue developing revenue projects and capacities regarding recommendation 1 from the Empire Slavery and Scotland’s Museum Steering Group. The Scottish Government has allocated up to £600,000 to the Scottish Museum of Empire, Slavery, Colonialism and Migration in its draft budget for 2026-27.

In March 2025, NHS Orkney became the first Health Board to complete the installation of renewable heating in all of its buildings.

The top 20 emitting NHS sites produced more than 60% of NHS Scotland’s total building energy emissions in 2024-25. NHS efforts are focussed on these highest emitting sites which have the potential to act as catalysts for the development of district heat networks.

Health boards are developing site specific decarbonisation plans for the most energy intensive acute hospital campuses. This includes the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, the Edinburgh Bioquarter and the Foresterhill site in Aberdeen. These three sites alone account for 22% of NHS heat and power emissions.

A Prior Information Notice (PIN) was published for the provision of a low/zero carbon Heat Purchase Agreement for the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and surrounding NHS facilities on 18 December 2025 and is available on the Public Contracts Scotland website.

Decarbonising the heating of NHS hospitals is likely to result in an increase in electricity demand (due to the use of heat pumps). Reducing electricity usage is a key enabling action to prepare for renewable heating as it reduces the need for local electricity grid enforcement and limits overall energy bills, making renewable heating more affordable. NHS electricity consumption decreased by 6.2% between 2020/21 and 2024/25 (452,413,000 kWh to 424,163,000 kWh).

A dynamic purchasing system for Corporate Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) was launched by NHS National Procurement on 1 August 2025. PINs covering private wire PPAs have also been issued by NHS National Procurement to assess the market’s ability to supply renewable electricity directly to major NHS sites through private connections. Securing PPAs will result in increased supplies of renewable electricity and reduce the costs of electrified heat which can be a barrier to moving to renewable heating.

Further information is available in the NHS Scotland - climate emergency and sustainability: annual report 2025 - gov.scot.

It is not possible for the Scottish Government to answer this question, as the total NHS Scotland expenditure on IT infrastructure and innovation is a matter for NHS Boardsand is not held centrally. Given the variation in approaches and systems in use across individual NHS Boards this information would need to be requested directly from each Health Board.