Chamber and committees

So far £23,094,147 has been spent on trunk road improvement schemes in the North East of Scotland during the 2024-25 financial year. This figure includes capital expenditure on Minor Improvement works, Structural Maintenance, Strategic Road Safety and Structures improvement schemes. This figure includes Construction, Design and Investigation costs.

An additional £993,181.21 has been spent on Major Project schemes in the North East of Scotland for financial year 2024-25. This figure provided includes spend for taking the various projects through design and statutory process stages, acquisition of land compensation payments, preparatory works, as well as costs associated with construction.

The Scottish Government does not recommend active dieting and weight loss interventions in pregnancy.

There is strong evidence that breastfeeding is one of the most important things that a mother can do to give her baby the best nutritional start in life and can also be a means of preventing obesity among infants and young children.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting women to breastfeeding and have demonstrated this by providing additional investment of more than £10m for breastfeeding support services over the past six years, in addition to our core funding to Boards to improve maternal and infant nutrition.

Health Boards deliver weight management services in line with Public Health Scotland Standards Weight Management Standards. These standards were introduced in 2019 and aim to ensure a fair and equal approach to the treatment of overweight and obesity for children, young people and adults across weight management services in Scotland.

Health boards delivering weight management interventions work to ensure that programmes are tailored to the specific needs of their local populations by conducting robust needs assessments, consulting with local communities and frontline staff, and addressing barriers related to equality, diversity, and inclusion. This includes conducting Equality Impact Assessment to continuously improve service accessibility and effectiveness.

The Scottish Government supports NHS Scotland‘s Health Boards implement a standardised approach to weight management services.

Health Boards deliver weight management services in line with Public Health Scotland Standards Weight Management Standards. These standards were introduced in 2019 and aim to ensure a fair and equal approach to the treatment of overweight and obesity for children, young people and adults across weight management services in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is working with Boards to reduce any unnecessary variation, this includes working to develop once for Scotland approaches to weight management and adoption of evidence-based weight management interventions such as Counterweight Plus Type 2 Diabetes Remission.

Public Health Scotland are undertaking an evaluation of the implementation and impact of the Standards for weight management services with recommendations to inform local action and national policy direction.

According to the 2022 Scottish Health Survey, 23% of children who live in most deprived areas are at risk of obesity, compared with 15% in the least deprived. Addressing the risk of obesity and its associated health conditions is therefore a key priority for the Scottish Government in reducing health inequalities for those on lower incomes.

We have provided core funding of £8.25 million to health boards to continue to deliver adult, children and young people’s weight management services in 2024-25.

Our aim to halve childhood obesity by 2030 and significantly reduce diet related health inequalities is deliberately ambitious. A Whole Systems Approach to childhood obesity remains the strongest evidence-based route to improving levels of healthy weight in children.

However, dealing only with the consequences of poor diet and higher weight is not enough. We also need to address the underlying causes. This includes ending poverty, supporting fair wages, and improving our physical and social environments. Since 2022-23, we continue to allocate around £3bn a year to policies which tackle poverty and protect people as far as possible during the ongoing cost of living crisis.

With particular reference to child poverty, our Scottish Child Payment provides £26.70 per eligible child per week – support that is only available in Scotland.

The Scottish Government currently has no plans to make any code of practice (COP) for children’s food menus mandatory.

The COP is one of 11 key principles set out in the Eating Out, Eating Well (publichealthscotland.scot), currently being developed by Public Health Scotland (PHS) and Food Standards Scotland. The development of the Framework meets a key commitment set out in the Scottish Government’s 2021. Diet and healthy weight: out of home action plan - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The COP currently contains 7 actions detailed in published pilot guidance Code of practice for children’s menus: principles, actions, and top tips (publichealthscotland.scot) .Taken together with the rest of the Framework, these are designed to guide and support food businesses in providing healthier options for families with young children when eating out.

PHS has just concluded a pilot of the new Framework, including the COP, so its details are still subject to change. We are expecting it to be published in 2025.

This government is committed to ensuring everyone in Scotland has reliable access to safe, nutritious, affordable, sustainable, and age and culturally appropriate food.

The Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022 provided the framework for our future food strategy, to build an environment where people from every walk of life take pride and pleasure in, and benefit from, the food they produce, buy, cook, serve, and eat each day. It places duties on Scottish Ministers, local authorities and health boards to produce plans of their policies in relation to food and set out what they will do to make those plans real.

The Ministerial Working Group on Food will provide cross-Government leadership to co-ordinate action on food relevant to achieving a Good Food Nation. Members will work collectively to drive progress across portfolios by providing strategic direction, tackling complex issues and sharing best practice.

To help create a food environment which better supports healthier choices, we are committed to legislation to restrict promotions of food high in fat, sugar or salt at the point of purchase. This is when people make their decisions about what and how much to buy and to consume, for themselves as well as for their families.

Over the last seven years we have invested in the Healthy Living Programme (HLP) and the Reformulation for Health Programme. The HLP helps convenience stores offer healthier choices. More than two-thirds of the 2,300 strong HLP membership serves the most deprived areas of the country and ensures access to affordable, healthier food and drink in those communities.

The Reformulation Programme helps smaller businesses reformulate common products to make them healthier. This is playing an important role in improving dietary health by removing hundreds of millions of calories from Scottish food and drink products sold across the country, including deprived areas.

The public consultation on the detail of proposed regulations to restrict promotions of food and drink high in fat, sugar or salt closed on 21 May 2024. The consultation paper sought views on proposals for the implementation and enforcement of regulations.

Independent analysis of the consultation responses is underway. The feedback received will be used as part of the policy decision-making process, alongside a range of other available information and evidence to help ensure the regulations are proportionate and effective.

Legislation to restrict promotions is part of a wide range of action, set out in our Diet and Healthy Weight Delivery Plan, to improve diet and help create a food environment which better supports healthier choices.

This includes, amongst other things, ongoing support for the Healthy Living and Reformulation for Health Programmes, both of which are helping to increase the availability of healthier options. We are also working with Public Health Scotland and Food Standard Scotland to implement our Out of Home Action Plan.

The Scottish Government supports NHS Scotland‘s Health Boards implement a standardised approach to Child Healthy Weight programmes through funding for Tier 2 and Tier 3 pathways as part of the delivery of Scotland’s Diet and Healthy Weight Plan

Health Boards deliver weight management services in line with Public Health Scotland Standards Weight Management Standards. These standards were introduced in 2019 and aim to ensure a fair and equal approach to the treatment of overweight and obesity for children, young people and adults across weight management services in Scotland.

Health boards delivering weight management interventions work to ensure that programmes are tailored to the specific needs of their local populations by conducting robust needs assessments, consulting with local communities and frontline staff, and addressing barriers related to equality, diversity, and inclusion. This includes conducting Equality Impact Assessment to continuously improve service accessibility and effectiveness.

All Health Boards provide data via Public Health Scotland on their weight management service’s performance and outcomes. This data is published regularly.

Public Health Scotland are undertaking an evaluation of the implementation and impact of the Standards for weight management services with recommendations to inform local action and national policy direction.

Our aim to halve childhood obesity by 2030 and significantly reduce diet related health inequalities is deliberately ambitious.

A recent study completed by Nesta Counting the cost of obesity in Scotland | Nesta calculated that, on average across all children living with obesity within the 2-to-15-year age range, a sustained reduction of 65 kcal per day – the equivalent of one digestive biscuit – would achieve the desired reduction in obesity from 16.4% (2019 Scottish Health Survey figure) to 7% by 2030.

This represents a reduction of 3.0% in the daily calorie consumption of the average child living with obesity in Scotland.

However, it is important to note that 65 kcal per day is the weighted average of a range of estimates that vary by children’s age and sex, from 19 kcal per day to 142 kcal per day. In practice, a 65 kcal-per-day reduction in excess calories would be excessive for a two-year-old child, but insufficient for a 15-year-old living with obesity.

This suggests the ambition is feasible, even if challenging and we remain committed to achieving this aim.

Scottish Government have long advocated for restrictions on the broadcast advertising of less healthy food and drink before 9pm. We welcome the announcement that the UK Government intend to introduce these restrictions next year. We continue to work with the UK Government to further understand the implications of this policy and its implementation for Scotland.

As set out in our 2018 Diet and Healthy Weight Delivery plan, we remain committed to developing proposals to strengthen outdoor advertising restrictions for food that is high in fat, salt or sugar.