Chamber and committees

We expect to provide hybrid closed loop systems to at least 2500 people in the financial year 2025-2026. This builds on the more than 2100 people who received a hybrid closed loop system in 2024-2025.

The approach of this programme allows boards to manage their own financial allocation, but we expect children and young people to be prioritised, including those newly diagnosed across the year. This means it is not possible to provide an exact breakdown between adults and children but reporting across the year will allow us to track this nationally.

However, any child or young person living with Type 1 diabetes in Scotland should now have had, at minimum, a referral to receive a closed loop system.

While the percentage of school leavers in S4 remains unchanged in 2023-24 from the previous year at 14.4%, we acknowledge the importance of understanding the factors influencing early school leaving.

After a rise last year, the Scottish Government have been exploring with partners factors influencing young people deciding to leave school at S4. These include the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost of living crisis, and also an increase in availability of entry-level jobs.

We are continuing to work with our partners to find ways to support young people to stay in learning.

Scotland continues to demonstrate strong participation in education among 15–19-year-olds, as recognised by the OECD, with over half of pupils (57.1%) leaving school at S6.

Work is at an early stage on this Programme for Government commitment and is currently focused on identifying best practice that can be used to inform the pilots. The opportunity to engage in this work will be available to all Local Authorities.

The aim is to build on existing good practice and tailor support to local needs. We are mindful that whilst the majority who leave school before the end of S5 progress to positive destinations, the rates are lower than for older pupils, so we have a particular interest in these groups. The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring every young person leaves school with the skills and confidence to succeed in whatever path they choose – regardless of background or location.

The Scottish Government recognises the heightened risk of social isolation in rural areas. To support the delivery of our Social Isolation and Loneliness Delivery Plan, we are providing £3.8m over three years to 53 community projects across Scotland through the Social Isolation and Loneliness Fund that is providing opportunities for people to connect. At end of year one projects reached 11,293 individuals with a focus on priority groups most at risk of social isolation and loneliness. We continue to support the National Rural Mental Health Forum to build the confidence of rural organisations to deliver mental health support to their members and networks. We also provide funding to Befriending Networks, who support befriending services across Scotland, and currently have 118 Scottish members; of which approximately 1 in 4 members are independent community organisations operating in rural areas.

The regulations for the licensing, safety and efficacy of medicines are reserved to the UK Government and are the responsibility of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). For a medicine to be routinely prescribed in the UK, it firstly needs to receive a marketing authorisation. This process ensures the safety, quality and efficacy of medicines placed on the market in the UK. It is the responsibility of individual pharmaceutical companies to apply to the MHRA for a marketing authorisation.

The Heat in Buildings Programme was subject of an Audit Scotland review in 2023, with the findings of this review published in February 2024. This publication can be found at https://audit.scot/publications/decarbonising-heat-in-homes.

Additionally, all Scottish Government expenditure is subject to audit through the sampling of annual accounts.

The provision of patient record systems remains the operational responsibility of Health Boards, but at a national level I can confirm it is our intention to launch the first version of a personalised digital health and social care service from December 2025. This was set out in the answer to question S6W-30875 on 11 November 2024.

The Scottish Government emphasises that this provides citizens with access to their own health and care data and accordingly will address the desire across Scotland for individuals to have access to a single shared patient record.

It is important to recognise that implementation of the service for our workforce, will build on our current Clinical Portal system, which currently enables many Health Boards across Scotland to have access to health information as part of the integrated record. This commitment is also set out in our recently published Programme for Government 2025-26 -https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2025/05/programme-government-2025-26/documents/programme-government-2025-26/programme-government-2025-26/govscot%3Adocument/programme-government-2025-26.pdf.

We highly recognise the importance of ensuring staff have access to the correct patient information where required, and we continue to improve this through development of our National Digital Platform, which enables the storage and integration of data for digital services that are public facing. We have also applied our learning collated from the use of the Clinical Portals, and we will continue to collate and apply intelligence gathered to our ongoing development of Integrated Records.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

In Scotland, it is for Integration Joint Boards to govern, plan and resource adult palliative care in their areas, including independent hospice care, using the delegated budgets under their control. As such, this information is not centrally available.

As outlined in the response to S6W-32069 on 6 January 2025, the Scottish Government expects all NHS Boards to provide maternity services that are delivered as close to home as practicable, balanced with ensuring the safety of mother and baby. Within the policies we set, it is for NHS Boards to determine the model of service delivery best suited to meet the needs of their local areas and population.

All decisions about care throughout pregnancy, including around place of birth, should be made by women in discussion with their clinical team. These decisions will take account of their individual needs and circumstances. To support this, in February 2025 we published the new Pathway for Maternity Care. This sets out the core care that women and their babies should receive under a whole-person, individualised care approach which takes account of their specific circumstances. We also published the new Birthplace Decision leaflet to provide women with the up-to-date information they need to make informed decisions about where they would like to give birth.

Women will be given advice when they contact maternity triage services in labour to help them make decisions about when to travel to hospital, and on pain relief options available to them.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Although widespread across all ages and demographics, data tells us that disabled people, young people (16-24), people over 75 and those on low incomes are now the most at risk of social isolation and loneliness. To support the delivery of our Social Isolation and Loneliness Delivery Plan, we are providing £3.8m over three years to 53 community projects across Scotland through the Social Isolation and Loneliness Fund that is providing opportunities for people to connect. At the end of year one projects reached 11,293 individuals with a focus on priority groups most at risk of social isolation and loneliness. We also provide funding to Befriending Networks, who support befriending services across Scotland, and currently have 118 Scottish members.