1. To ask the Scottish Government where the new acute general teaching hospitals will be built over the next 10 years. (S6O-02284)

In February 2021, the Scottish Government published its infrastructure investment plan, which outlined the Government’s priorities until 2026. The timetable for the following five-year period is still to be determined, but I would expect the next plan to be published in late 2025 or early 2026.

The cabinet secretary will be aware that support is growing hourly for my petition to replace Raigmore. Given that there is such an appetite in the Highlands for a brand-new hospital, will the cabinet secretary agree to meet the board of NHS Highland and me to discuss that?

As a Government, we are committed to investing £1 billion over the next 10 years in health capital projects. That will include looking at facilities such as Raigmore when it comes to considering plans for either refurbishment or replacement programmes. We are committed to making sure that we make the right investments, and I engage with NHS Highland—I have just come from a call that involved a discussion with the chief executive of NHS Highland—to look at what further investments are necessary.

Of course, the member will be aware that we have just opened the new national treatment centre in Highland at a cost of almost £50 million and that, over the past two years, two new community hospitals have been provided, one in Aviemore and the other in Skye, at a cost of £18 million and £20 million. We have also agreed to take forward work on the redesign of services in Lochaber, which will see the replacement of the Belford hospital.

I assure the member that we are very much committed to making sure that we continue to invest in healthcare in the Highlands, and we will continue to do that in a way that is planned with the local health board.

It is important that we learn lessons from recent national health service capital investment projects elsewhere in the United Kingdom. As we know, in England, 10 of the 40 new hospitals that were pledged by Boris Johnson have faced lengthy delays as a result of not having the full planning permission that they needed to go ahead. Can the cabinet secretary advise what steps can be taken to guard against similar delays being experienced here, and can he provide any further information about anticipated pressures facing capital investment in NHS hospitals, given the current difficult economic context?

The member is right. To avoid the type of scenarios and problems that have been impacting on the hospital capital investment programme in England, we created NHS Scotland Assure, which has a very specific purpose. It does a thorough analysis and challenges every part of our capital investment programme in health to make sure that there is appropriate governance and that we have the appropriate permissions and so on in place, including planning permission, before capital projects are able to start, specifically to avoid the types of problems that they have been having in England.

The member is also right to highlight that construction inflation has had a significant impact on capital expenditure. If we look at the spring budget that was announced by the UK Government, we anticipate that, by 2024-25, we will see a 16 per cent reduction in our capital budget here in Scotland as a result of the cuts that are being made by the UK Government in capital expenditure. That will, of course, have an impact on our ability to invest in new projects. More of that will be set out in the medium-term financial strategy, which will be published later today by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance.