The Eating Disorder Network is supporting the Scottish Government on how best to implement Recommendation 15 of the National Review, which asked the Scottish Government to consider funding eating disorders research through NHS Research Scotland.

The Network has hosted a series of research into practice seminars including the National Eating Disorders Specification – Implementation and Challenges hosted in partnership with eating disorder charity Beat.

400 clinicians, carers and people with lived experience from across Scotland signed up for the webinar, focused on steps that services can take to implement the National Specification. The sessions included guidance on routine outcome monitoring using the core dataset from the ED Clinical Research Network, how to engage meaningfully with those with lived experience, and examples and learning from successful all age services with self-referral pathways.

The National Specification for the Care and Treatment of Eating Disorders in Scotland aims to reduce variability in services while acknowledging the diverse population needs of Scotland and the need for responsive implementation aligned with local models of delivery and partnership working.

The Scottish Government continues to support NHS Boards in implementing the Specification, and the recent self-assessment tools that were completed by Boards have highlighted areas where Scottish Government support is needed.

The Scottish Government also provides funding to Beat to deliver the Eating Disorder Lived Experience Panel, a key recommendation from the National Review of Eating Disorder Services.

The panel brings together individuals of different ages and experiences of eating disorders. Members provide advice and evidence from the perspective of lived experience in order to inform the ongoing delivery of the recommendations of the Review and support the work of the National Eating Disorder Network.

The Scottish Government has been working with NHS Education Scotland (NES) to develop new Eating Disorder content on Turas. The updated platform will act as a multi-agency resource, structured by age, context and practice type. This will link to guidance, training and evidence-based resources. Accessibility and intellectual property requirements are being built in, and navigation will be more user-friendly than the current structure.

As a result of the priority that the Scottish Government has placed on investing in funded ELC, families across Scotland have benefitted from the provision of 1140 hours of high quality funded ELC since 2021.

Our interim evaluation published in 2024 showed that uptake of the expanded hours is high, and there are promising signs that the expansion is delivering improvements in flexibility, accessibility and affordability of provision.

We expect to publish our overall evaluation on the outcomes of the expansion to 1140 hours for children, parents and families over the 2018 to 2025 period in February.

Scottish salmon provides a high quality source of protein which is valued across the globe and its production is of significant economic importance to the Scottish economy and to the local rural communities employed in salmon production and processing.

The provenance and quality of Scottish salmon is valued around the world, making a significant contribution to the Scottish economy and to communities involved in salmon production and processing.

The Scottish Government fully expects employers to maintain workplaces that are safe for workers in line with relevant health and safety requirements. The Scottish Government promotes strong, constructive relationships between employers and trade unions, particularly where they are recognised, or where it is clear workers are seeking this collective representation.

Since declaring a national Housing Emergency in May 2024, I am proud that:

• This year the Affordable Housing Supply Programme will invest £808 million - an increase of more than £251 million on last year’s budget;
• Approvals for affordable housing between July-September are up by 61% compared to last year;
• £120 million targeted through our acquisitions fund is supporting the acquisition of at least 1,200 homes – helping to reduce homeless households in temporary accommodation;
• In 2026-27 we are investing at least £1.3 million towards the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership, ensuring that empty homes are brought back into use - building on our record investment of £5.7 million since 2010;
• We have helped an estimated 2,261 households with children into affordable housing in the year to end June 2025;
• Our action to keep rents lower than market rents benefits approximately 140,000 children in poverty each year and we have introduced provisions for a national system of evidence based rent control;
• Our draft budget for 2026/7 commits the single largest funding allocation to affordable housing since our records began in 1989 and our Spending Review, for the first time, offers multi-annual certainty for the coming four years;
• The draft Budget also commits an additional £4 million for action to prevent homelessness. This is in addition to £11.5 million for activities such as rapid rehousing and the Fund to Leave - as well as a further £23.5 million already baselined for Local Government; and
• We have worked to create the optimum conditions for investment including by setting an all-tenure target, developing clear exemptions from rent control for Mid-Market Rent and Build to Rent developments and by seeking an emergency-led approach from Local Authority Heads of Planning.

Together with our partners, so much has been achieved.

However our efforts to tackle the emergency have tested and exposed the limitations of the current housing delivery arrangement in Scotland. Ultimately, we must deliver more high quality, affordable homes, more quickly. We must simplify the landscape to achieve economy of scale savings; increase land and infrastructure support; and enable closer working with the private sector. The root and branch action demanded by this challenge requires us to think, and to act, in a radical way.

The First Minister will today announce the intention of the Scottish Government to create a new agency focused squarely and simply on accelerating housing delivery in Scotland. While extending its reach to all tenures, it will maintain an emphasis on affordable housing.

The agency will bring together housing, land, planning support and delivery expertise to simplify, scale and speed up the delivery of homes. Working with local authorities and Ministers through a joined-up model we will improve capacity, support regeneration and rural housing, and reduce duplication across government.

This tangible Government action in response to the Housing Emergency will take a Scotland wide all-tenure approach and focus on four pillars: affordable housing delivery, rural and island housing, land and development, and investment. It will also ensure we continue to deliver on the objectives set out in the Housing Emergency Action Plan and our Housing to 2040 strategy.

This new agency will help to drive forward the core government priorities of eradicating child poverty and growing our economy. It will also help to support first time buyers by increasing supply.

I will be working with experts across the housing sector, supported by COSLA and the Scottish National Investment Bank, to lead an initial design phase over the next two months to refine the operating model. This will allow us to carefully consider how this new agency optimises delivery while ensuring maximum value for money.

I intend to update Parliament in March, upon conclusion of the design phase but I am pleased to confirm the intention to announce, for simplicity, scale and speed: More Homes Scotland.

We continue to see sustained progress on waiting times for CAMHS. The 18-week CAMHS standard has been met throughout the last year, with 91.5% of children and young people starting treatment within 18 weeks of referral, reflecting the commitment and hard work of the CAMHS workforce.

But we know there is more to do. Some young people and families are still waiting too long. We continue to work closely with all Boards, providing enhanced support where performance needs to improve, ensuring Boards have robust improvement plans in place to deliver results.

Our CAMHS Service specification, published in 2020, highlights that all children and young people should receive support that is appropriate to their individual needs. For many children and young people, such support is likely to be community based, and should be easily and quickly accessible.

That is why we continue to invest in community based mental health supports and services, including providing baselined funding of £15m per year in 2025-26. These services focus on prevention, early intervention, and promoting positive mental health, and offers an alternative to CAMHS where appropriate.

The Scottish Government welcomes Audit Scotland’s report and has asked the Collaborative Response and Assurance group, which is co-chaired by the Scottish Government and CoSLA to come together to consider these recommendations as a whole and develop a partnership approach to addressing them.

We do not have plans to review the legislation or statutory guidance for the current offer of funded ELC.

We provide statutory guidance for local authorities on their duties and powers in relation to funded ELC: Introduction - Early learning and childcare: statutory guidance - July 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). Local authorities also have a discretionary power to provide access to funded ELC to any child residing in their area, as they see fit.

The 2024 Programme for Government (PFG) set out a commitment to work with local authorities to maximise uptake of our existing offer for eligible two year olds, with a focus on families most at risk of poverty and on areas with some of the lowest take up rates.

Through our National Improvement Project, we are working with local authorities and the Improvement Service on focused action in five local authorities as well as promoting good practice to increase uptake for eligible two-year-olds across all local authority areas.

Local authorities are responsible for setting sustainable rates that reflect the costs of delivering funded early learning and childcare (ELC), in line with guidance published annually by the Scottish Government and COSLA. Guidance for 2026-27 will be published by the end of March. We will also publish findings from an independent national survey of funded ELC providers’ costs undertaken by the Diffley Partnership, intended to improve the evidence base available to inform rate-setting processes.

In addition, the draft 2026-27 Budget confirmed that we will provide a further £11 million each year to support local authorities to set sustainable rates that enable staff delivering ELC in private and third sector services to continue to be paid at least the real Living Wage.