Questions and answers

Question reference: S6O-04733

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 29 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what research has been undertaken into any impact of the Scottish Child Payment on food poverty.

Question reference: S6O-04715

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 28 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support regional NHS boards to tackle any backlogs of complaints.

Question reference: S6O-04734

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 29 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what actions it is taking to end the housing emergency.

Question reference: S6O-04712

Asked by: Pam Gosal, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 28 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what action it is taking to improve waiting times for audiology appointments.

Question reference: S6W-37523

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 09 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 21 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding it has provided to the Scottish National Investment Bank in the current parliamentary session to date, and how much it estimates it will have provided by the end of the current parliamentary session.

Audit Scotland published a report on the Scottish National Investment Bank’s performance on Thursday 15 May (Scottish National Investment Bank | Audit Scotland). Page 16 details the Capital and Resource allocations by year since the Bank was launched in November 2020:

Financial Year	Scottish Government capital allocation (£m)	Scottish Government resource allocation (£m)
2020-21	£75	£7.1
2021-22	£200	£5
2022-23	£206	£9
2023-24	£263	£5.8
2024-25	£174	£2.8
2025-26 (budget)	£200	£0
Total	£1,118	£29.7

Question reference: S6W-37524

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 09 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has spent on infrastructure in the current parliamentary session to date, and how much it estimates it will have spent by the end of the current parliamentary session.

Over the current parliamentary term, we estimate that the total spend through the capital budget will be £31.1 billion. This is based on the latest figures available. The following table sets this out in detail.

Table 1: Total capital spending between 2021-22 and 2025-26, £ millions

Outturn 21-22

£ m

Outturn 22-23

£ m

Outturn 23-24

£ m

Budget Allocated at SBR

24-25

£ m

Budget Allocated at Scottish Budget 25-26

£ m

Total 21-22 to 25-26

£ m

Capital

5,402

6,296

5,953

6,266

7,199

31,116

Question reference: S6W-37531

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 12 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 21 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has spent on rural entrepreneur funds in the current parliamentary session to date; how much it plans to spend by the end of the current parliamentary session, and whether it is its policy to create a £20 million rural entrepreneur fund.

This Government is committed to building a vibrant, sustainable, and inclusive rural economy.

We are widening participation in entrepreneurship, giving more people the opportunity to start, grow and scale their business. To date we have supported a range of programmes, including the South of Scotland Enterprise regional Pathways Pre-Start programme and the Pathways Funds. We are investing a record £6 million to support further Pathways implementation in the current financial year, transforming the number of women who start and scale businesses and widening participation in entrepreneurship.

Alongside this, we are supporting rural entrepreneurs through our Ecosystem Fund, which has invested a total of £2.6 million across 75 innovative projects since 2021, through our Techscaler network, through our wider support for our enterprise agencies, and through delivery of our National Innovation Strategy.

The Rural Entrepreneur Fund was a 2021-22 Programme for Government commitment to invest £20 million over the lifetime of the current parliament. However, in light of the challenging financial environment, the Scottish Resource Spending Review prioritised investment plans to ensure that they were deliverable, impactful and affordable. Consequently, there has been no money invested in the Rural Entrepreneur Fund to date.

Question reference: S6W-37438

Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 09 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 21 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many people were interviewed as part of the Pain Management Panel report, which was published in November 2022, broken down by NHS board area; what its position is on whether publishing the views of 16 people in the report presents a fair representation of the 800,000 people in Scotland who experience chronic pain; for what reason (a) the reported screening questionnaire used to produce the report did not directly ask participants about whether their condition had been diagnosed by a health professional and (b) respondents were reportedly paid £200 each to participate in the survey; whether known pain patient volunteers were asked to take part in the survey, and whether it sought guidance from NICE or any other body on the suitability of a "no impact" categorisation being used in the survey.

The Pain Management Panel consisted of 16 people with lived experience of chronic pain. A sampling framework was developed by The Lines Between to ensure diversity within the panel across participants’ experiences, circumstances, and characteristics. The sampling framework was designed to recruit 15 participants to the pain management panel with the intention to interview a group of 22-25 people to mitigate potential attrition during the project.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on how many people were interviewed.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on which NHS board area the volunteers lived in. More information on the demographics of the panel can be found in the report.

The Scottish Government does not hold any special category data, such as details of a medical diagnosis, for the participants of the pain management panel.

The Pain Management Panel is just one of the ways we engage with people with lived experience. The report was primarily intended to provide detailed qualitative information and illustrative examples of participants’ experience living with chronic pain, rather than being an exact representation of the prevalence of chronic pain in Scotland’s wider population.

Participants in the panel were reimbursed for their time in line with the Scottish Government’s guidelines.

This term ‘no impact’ was proposed by the Scottish Government as a contraction of ‘did not experience any limitation on life or work activities over the past three months’. This was designed to align with the questions in the Scottish Health Survey which showed that 22% of the more than 4000 adults surveyed did not experience any impact on their work or life activities.

Question reference: S6W-37448

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Friday, 09 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 21 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-36651 by Kate Forbes on 30 April 2025, whether it will provide further details and updated information on how it evaluates whether its grant conditions are successful in achieving diversification away from arms manufacturing.

Question reference: S6W-37532

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 12 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 21 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much it (a) spent in Session 5, (b) has spent in the current parliamentary session to date and (c) estimates it will spend in total in Session 6 on private sector-led research and development projects.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes an annual report on Research and Development (R&D) expenditure by government departments. The latest report was published on 9 April 2025 and can be found at: Research and development expenditure by the UK government - Office for National Statistics. Please see Table 14 for data on Scottish Government purchased R&D (or funding provided for R&D) by receiving organisation for the 2023 financial year.

Comparable data for the 2022 financial year and the 2021 financial year are available at the following links. Earlier years data are not strictly comparable due to the reclassification of a research performing organisation.

2022 data:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/researchanddevelopmentexpenditure/datasets/scienceengineeringandtechnologystatisticsreferencetables/current/previous/v11/goverd2022.xlsx

2021 data:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/researchanddevelopmentexpenditure/datasets/scienceengineeringandtechnologystatisticsreferencetables/current/previous/v10/rftgoverd2021.xlsx

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