Scottish companies already have a wide range of options when it comes to participating in international trade missions. They can apply to participate in missions hosted by Scottish Development International and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce which are guided by the priorities set out in A Trading Nation, our export plan. Companies can also join trade missions run by the Department of Business and Trade.

Given the wide range of options already available to companies we currently have no plans to participate in joint trade missions with Scotland Office.

NHSScotland supports and encourages an environment where those working in our health service feel confident to raise any concerns they may have, in the knowledge that these will be treated seriously, and where appropriate, fully investigated. This includes concerns about staffing levels and any compromise to patient safety. Boards are expected to investigate concerns in line with the NHSScotland Whistleblowing Policy.

The Independent National Whistleblowing Officer (INWO) was set up to provide a mechanism for external review where there are concerns of how a Health Board, primary care or independent provider has handled a Whistleblowing case.

Additionally, the Scottish Government seek assurance of the whistleblowing support in place for staff, as well as the process in Boards through regular contact with Board Executives, the Board Whistleblowing Champions, and via the annual Staff Governance Monitoring exercise.

We have regular dialogue with our colleagues in the UK Government, particularly the Department for Business and Trade regarding promoting Scotland’s overseas trade links. However, we were not made aware of the Secretary of State for Scotland’s visit to Vietnam.

The Scottish Government remains committed to developing plans to deliver free breakfasts to all primary and special school children.

The First Minister announced in this year’s Programme for Government that the Scottish Government remains focused on tackling child poverty in Scotland. We know that food provision is an important part of the mission to tackle child poverty, and that is why there is a range of support already in place for families.

The current Action Plan ends in December 2023. Future plans will be informed by the review mentioned in my answer to question S6W-22193 on 26 October 2023. 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

The Draft Scottish Biodiversity Strategy includes commitments to continue effective species recovery, reintroduction and reinforcement programmes and to introduce an agricultural future support framework which delivers for nature restoration and biodiversity.

The Scottish Government is clear in its expectation of producers to drive mortality to the lowest possible levels. Our Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture articulates our expectation of improvements to fish health and welfare, and we will continue to work with regulators, producers, innovation centres and fish vets to better understand the reasons for mortality and to encourage adaptation to challenges. Increases in sea water production mortality should be considered in the context of the trend seen since 2002, which indicates stable average mortality levels with peaks and troughs in different years.

The Scottish Government and NatureScot have agreed to undertake a review of the Sea Eagle Management Scheme and White-tailed Eagle Action Plan. Terms of reference for this work have been drafted and will be shared with the Sea Eagle National Stakeholder Panel shortly.

The review will assess progress on delivering the aims of the Sea Eagle Management Scheme to support farmers and crofters to manage their livestock alongside a growing sea eagle population.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has a number of options in its enforcement toolkit, ranging from informal advice and guidance to the use of formal enforcement measures including final warning letters, statutory notices, monetary penalties, and reports to the Procurator Fiscal recommending prosecution.

SEPA’s licences set out actions operators are required to take and SEPA’s enforcement action is designed to secure compliance using the most appropriate and effective method. Scottish Water has received one fine in the last five years for a sewage spill.

Improving Scotland’s health data capabilities remains a key objective in improving outcomes for patients. We are continuing to progress work to implement changes to how we improve data collection on medicine use and outcomes. Changes to existing systems or any new systems take time to develop and implement and we continue to work with Scottish Government colleagues, industry, NHS Scotland and academia to evolve our approach to medicines data.

In relation to the first action, capturing medicines use for patients in all clinical settings, there are several relevant work programmes underway. Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (HEPMA) has been rolled out in eleven Health Boards and work is underway to rollout HEPMA in the remaining Health Boards. The medicines data from all Health Boards who have HEPMA deployed have been used throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to inform clinical practice and drive improvements. The Digital Prescribing and Dispensing Pathways programme is on track to replace the current paper prescription in Scotland with an entirely digital approach to capturing prescribed and dispensed medicines by the end of this parliamentary term.? There is also progress with the development of a national Homecare (medicines prescribed via hospital specialists and delivered direct to patients at home) medicines dataset whereby third-party suppliers are providing regular data (monthly) to Public Health Scotland (PHS). These data have also been used to support COVID activities and work is progressing to enhance the quality and completeness of data flows.

Action two, including medicine indication in all prescribing systems , is more complex, requires in most of the cases retrospective addition of indication data and is reliant on IT system changes. We are seeking to progress this as part of our wider work programme.

Action three , to create a national laboratory data resource , this is also reliant on work being progressed further in response to the other actions from the report, and we will consider further in due course.

In relation to action four, to improve recording of patient outcomes of medicines , we have funded the Cancer Medicines Outcomes Programme (CMOP) which has developed a robust and reliable process to understand the effectiveness and safety of cancer medicines in routine care in Scotland. We are also funding PHS to establish a National Medicines in Pregnancy surveillance asset. This asset will support monitoring and reporting to progress improvements in the safe use of sodium valproate and other teratogenic medicines in Scotland by identifying and linking medicines exposure with outcomes data sets.

In response to action five, to create a Scottish Medicines Intelligence Unit , the Scottish Government funded CMOP programme has enabled capability building and intelligence in the use of our national SACT (cancer medicines) dataset and this is generating evidence to support the evaluation of the use of and clinical outcomes from all new medicines approved through the Scottish Medicines Consortium Health Technology Assessment process.