Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government fully recognises the role that alcohol plays as a cause or risk factor for a number of illnesses and health conditions.

• The Scottish Government has taken action to reduce the harms caused by alcohol including the recent increase to the minimum unit price of alcohol from 30 September 2024. The Public Health Scotland (PHS) evaluation of that policy estimated that it had saved hundreds of lives during the period the evaluation reviewed.
• The Scottish Government has maintained a record £112m to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) for a wide range of measures, including alcohol treatment services, to ensure that local services meet the needs of people who experience alcohol and drugs harms.
• The Scottish Government continues to support the online ‘Count 14’ tool which raises awareness of the UK CMO Guidance on alcohol consumption, in addition to providing an online unit calculator. Count 14 materials continue to be used by a range of partners to support public health messaging on alcohol.
• The Scottish Government provides funding for the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) Hub which provides support, training and advice to families, carers and professionals supporting children affected by FASD, the first of its kind in the UK.
• The Scottish Government is also supporting innovation in early detection of liver disease, working in partnership with Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) and local Health Boards, building on learning taken from the innovative intelligent Liver Function Testing (iLFT) pilot pioneered by NHS Tayside.

The Scottish Government supports and works closely with Food Standards Scotland, who have previously run national campaigns over winter months to raise awareness of vitamin D and encourage people to take a daily vitamin D supplement to maintain bone and muscle health.

The campaign primarily focuses on online advertising and social media posts. A campaign toolkit has also been developed and shared with a wide range of stakeholders to help support efforts to raise awareness of vitamin D, with graphics, web text, and social media posts available in nine languages (https://www.foodstandards.gov.scot/publications-and-research/publications/vitamin-d-campaign-toolkit).

Information on vitamin D is also available and promoted through a range of resources. Dedicated public advice on vitamin D is available on NHS Inform, including a general information leaflet highlighting the importance of vitamin D, which is available in a range of formats and languages (https://www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/food-and-nutrition/eating-well/vitamin-d).

Additional information can be accessed through our Parent Club (https://www.parentclub.scot/articles/eating-well-at-home) and Ready, Steady Baby! (https://www.nhsinform.scot/ready-steady-baby) resources, Food Standards Scotland

(https://www.foodstandards.gov.scot/consumers/healthy-eating/nutrition/vitamins-minerals/vitamin-d) website and

Eat Well, Your Way (https://www.eatwellyourway.scot/what-is-a-healthy-balanced-diet/vitamin-d/).

The Scottish Government supports and works closely with Food Standards Scotland, who have previously run national campaigns over winter months to raise awareness of vitamin D and encourage people to take a daily vitamin D supplement to maintain bone and muscle health.

Since April 2017, Scottish Government has provided free Healthy Start vitamins for women for the whole of their pregnancy. These were developed to meet their nutritional needs, and include vitamins C, D and Folic Acid. Since Jan 2021, Health Boards have provided free vitamin D to all breastfeeding mothers and children under three years.

Cervical self-sampling is not yet recommended by the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), the independent expert advisory group which advises all four UK nations on screening policy, and therefore is not currently offered within the cervical screening programme. However, the UK NSC are currently consulting on whether cervical self-sampling should be offered to under-screened people eligible for cervical screening.

In preparation for a positive UK NSC recommendation, Screening Oversight and Assurance Scotland are re-establishing the self-sampling working group, whose remit will include assessing implementation options in light of new evidence on the effectiveness of different approaches, and ensuring that communications around a potential roll-out are inclusive and supportive.

In the meantime, the Scottish Government and its partners continue to explore alternative interventions that seek to encourage increased uptake of cervical screening, particularly among under- and never-screened populations. We published the Equity in Screening Strategy in July 2023 that outlines a strategic approach to identifying, addressing and removing barriers to participants across the screening pathway, and ensuring that professionals working within screening are knowledgeable of and use effective interventions to reduce these inequalities. To support this, the Equity in Screening Network was also launched in July 2023, allowing individuals that work across screening to share evidence, best practice and learning around screening inequalities.

Finally, as part of the Scottish Government’s work to eliminate cervical cancer, an expert group on cervical screening is exploring the effectiveness of a range of strategies to increase cervical screening uptake, and are currently considering how different media interventions could remove stigma and fear for all participants.

Addressing inequalities in HPV vaccine uptake and optimising opportunities for young people to receive the vaccine is a priority for the Scottish Government.

Human papillomaviruses (HPV) not only cause cervical cancer but can also cause other diseases including anogenital and head and neck cancers. These are less common but are equally significant for those affected. To increase everyone’s protection against these cancers, the HPV vaccination offer was extended to all young people in 2019, although recent statistics show that boys are still less likely than girls to take up the offer.

Completion of consent forms is required to participate in school vaccination programmes. We therefore welcomed the return of the recent Public Health Scotland (PHS) marketing campaign, “chat.sign.protect”, to raise awareness of vaccines offered in secondary school and encourage an increase in the numbers of parents and young people consenting to vaccination. Coinciding with the distribution of informed consent materials to young people, the campaign aims to increase understanding of why these vaccines are important, the seriousness of the diseases they protect against and encourage parents and carers to take action and sign consent forms to ensure our young people receive the protection offered by immunisation.

The Scottish Government has established an Expert Working Group to recommend how Scotland can eliminate cervical cancer. Actions that come out of this work are likely to support increased uptake of the HPV vaccine by males.

We are working with PHS and territorial Health Boards to consider what further actions can be taken to increase vaccination uptake in boys, support those eligible for vaccination, and to address any inequalities in accessing immunisation services.

The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The regulations for the Emergency Early Release process conducted in June-July 2024 included an exclusion for any individual serving a sentence for a conviction for domestic abuse (or aggravation), or where a previous unspent conviction for such an offence had led to a custodial sentence.

Prison Governors also had the power to veto the emergency early release of an otherwise eligible prisoner, where their early release would have presented a risk to a specific person, or group. The Scottish Prison Service consulted with Police Scotland and Justice and Children and Families Social Work, to request any risk relevant information regarding each individual, to inform any veto decision.

The Scottish Government intends to lay the regulations for alkaline hydrolysis in Parliament this year. A working group is currently being established.

The Scottish Government has no powers over the smart-meter network or the Radio Teleswitch Service (RTS). Telecommunications is also a reserved issue.

However, the Scottish Government is addressing poor signal coverage through digital infrastructure programmes such as Reaching 100% and the Scottish 4G Infill (S4GI) programme. This is an example of Scottish Government using its own resources to ensure that Scotland’s homes and businesses are not left behind and can access the benefits of smart metering as soon as possible.

We have delivered 55 mobile masts in rural and island areas, all of which are available on an open access basis and could potentially be used to site smart meter radio infrastructure. The Shared Rural Network, a joint venture between the mobile industry and the UK Government, will also further increase geographic mobile coverage by building new infrastructure with the aim of reaching 91% of Scottish geography by 2027. It is therefore imperative that the UK Government and Ofgem update the regulations to allow the Data Communications Company (DCC) to use mobile technology to provide a signal to homes in Scotland and ensure that all meters can be appropriately upgraded.

It is unacceptable that there are currently no penalties for failure on the part of the DCC to deliver smart meter coverage across every part of the country. The Scottish Government continues to call on the UK Government to rectify this by including RTS related obligations in Ofgem licence conditions.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. The Scottish Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme (TERS) offers a one-off payment of £20,000 to GP trainees who commit to undertaking their training in selected areas and programmes. NHS Education for Scotland (NES) are responsible for issuing the bursaries, which are paid directly to the GP trainees.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. The Scottish Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme (TERS) offers a one-off payment of £20,000 to GP trainees who commit to undertaking their training in selected areas and programmes. NHS Education for Scotland (NES) are responsible for issuing the bursaries, which are paid directly to the GP trainees.

Work is ongoing to determine how the additional £4.5 million announced in the draft 2025-26 budget to deliver new specialist support across the country for Long Covid, ME, Chronic Fatigue, and other similar conditions will be allocated.