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Tackling health inequalities is a key part of the preventative care role for school nurses, general practice nurses and health visitors and is aligned to public health priorities to improve health and wellbeing outcomes, particularly for women and children. District nurses have a role in disease management in populations affected by health inequalities, delivered in community settings, and support people to stay healthy at home.

The Scottish Government are committed to delivering a digital health and care record and can confirm that legislation is not required to create such a record. However, Part 2 of the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill, if passed, will create the enabling conditions for success of a digital health and care record by improving information sharing and usage between individuals and organisations within the health and social care system. The Scottish Government is listening to the views of MSPs presented at Stage 2 of the parliamentary process and considering what amendments may be useful in delivering a record that improves outcomes for people in Scotland.

The Scottish government publish official workforce statistics on a quarterly basis.

The latest available data, which is for December 2024 and includes a times series back to March 2012 is available here Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot.

The following tables provide a breakdown of FTE staff by directorate for December 2024 and March 2016.

I can advise Parliament that the Scottish Government’s £30 million Electric Vehicle (EV) Infrastructure Fund has now been fully allocated to local authorities to enable them to work in partnership with the private sector to attract matched investment and deliver approximately 6,000 additional public charge points across Scotland by 2030.

Scotland currently has over 6,800 public charge points and is on track to meet its commitment of enabling approximately 24,000 additional public EV charge points by 2030, the majority of which will be funded and delivered by the private sector.

This fund prioritises the delivery of new public EV charging infrastructure in those parts of Scotland less likely to benefit from stand-alone private sector investment in public charging infrastructure.

I can further advise that through the fund, the Scottish Government has provided the North of Scotland partnership, consisting of Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Highland and Moray councils, with over £7 million to transform charging infrastructure across the North of Scotland.

Our investment has enabled this partnership to leverage over £4.9 million of additional matched private sector investment over the next three years to ensure that drivers of electric vehicles in the North of Scotland experience the availability, accessibility and reliability of public EV charging they need and deserve.

Local authorities are public bodies and can only place certain people on their allocation schemes or waiting lists for housing, this is set out in legislation, and immigration status is a consideration. There is however no legislation requiring Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) to consider immigration status when allocating social housing. RSLs are independent organisations regulated by the Scottish Housing Regulator who must make their decisions to allocate housing within the law and according to their own policies. However a RSL would discuss rent, affordability, income and benefit entitlement with any prospective tenant, before making an offer.

The Scottish Government recognise that workforce and pay costs driven by a period of prolonged high inflation are now contributing to significant budget pressures across health and social care, the wider Scottish Government budget and the whole of the public sector. This Government has been clear that the extent of these challenges will not be addressed in a single year and we will continue to make the tough choices necessary to support sustainable public finances, whilst also seeking to minimise the impact on frontline services as far as possible.

The funding committed to date in respect of the circa £100 million extra investment to address long waits is shown in Table 1 broken down by health board and in Table 2 broken down by specialty; this is over and above other funding to improve waiting times.

Table 1.

The Agenda for Change pay deal focuses on rewarding staff such as nurses, midwives, paramedics, porters and others for the dedication and effort they provide to NHS Scotland. Delivering a renewed and stronger NHS is a key commitment for the Scottish Government and at the heart of that are our hard-working healthcare staff who we want to ensure feel valued and rewarded.

The cost of the Scottish Governments Directly employed workforce rose from £239M in 2015-16 to £623M in 2023-24 - An increase of 161%.

I wrote to the Economy and Fair Work Committee on 25 June 2024 to confirm that a market testing exercise for Glasgow Prestwick Airport was underway. Scottish Ministers’ longstanding position is that the airport should be returned to the private sector at the appropriate time and opportunity. This must be to an organisation with the commitment and capability to operate businesses directly relevant to GPA.

Any decision to sell GPA must represent value for money for taxpayers and be informed by what is right for the long-term success of the business and its contribution to the local and Scottish economy.

This process is continuing and I will update Parliament when a significant development has been made.