We will continue to expand NHS Pharmacy First Scotland so that a wider range of health conditions are covered. This will further transfer the care of common clinical conditions to community pharmacy, removing the need for visits to GPs, Out of Hours services or Emergency Departments for everyday self-limiting conditions. In doing so, we will consult NHS24 and health boards to identify the priority conditions the service could cover in all community pharmacies in Scotland.

Through the Pharmacy First Plus element of the service, pharmacists who are qualified independent prescribers (IPs) can already go a step further than standard Pharmacy First, going beyond the approved list of products and the Patient Group Directions (PGDs) in place, to prescribe a wider range of products in response to patients' symptoms and conditions.

The Scottish Government works in partnership across Health and Social Care organisations to ensure a consistent strategic approach to improving the vital digital and data skills for continuing staff development and service transformation. The provision of specific training for managing and accessing digital medical records in accordance with the Health & Social Care Records Management Code Of Practice that can be found at https://www.gov.scot/publications/records-management-code-practice-health-social-care/is the responsibility for NHS Boards as employers.

Requests for staff training are approved by senior management based on business need and value for money. Whilst total expenditure on staff training is recorded, we do not have a breakdown of spend only related to staff involved with social media management.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on satisfaction rates on the provision of palliative care services across Scotland.

However, to inform the development of the draft strategy on palliative care, we carried out surveys mapping palliative care delivery across Scotland. These indicated that ways of working and reporting on general palliative care and specialist palliative care services varied by NHS Board areas.

Further to this, we also looked at research studies exploring lived experiences of palliative care, and we commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to gather views from people in Scotland with experience of palliative care or caring for someone who has received palliative care. This included gathering views from people in rural and island communities.

The outcomes of all of these pieces of work are available at www.gov.scot/publications/palliative-care-strategy-palliative-care-matters/

The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 set out requirements for the marketing and labelling of whisky alongside the Food Labelling (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 1989 and The Spirit Drinks Regulations 2008. This is enforced by the relevant food authority in the UK or port health authority. The protection Scotch Whisky has under the GI scheme and associated legislation is certified and enforced by HMRC. The Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 also sets out additional regulations on the display and promotion of alcohol, which are enforced by the relevant local authority.

Furthermore, retained EU Regulation 110/2008, amended by the Agricultural Products, Food and Drink (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 as well as Regulation 2019/787, amended by the Agricultural Products, Food and Drink (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 (SI 2020/1637) and the Agricultural Products, Food and Drink (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 continue to apply to the definition, description, presentation, labelling and the protection of GIs for spirit drinks.

Scotland’s DRS was due to launch in March 2024 and we would have been enjoying the benefits of a DRS now if the previous UK Government had agreed a full Internal Market Act exclusion to our scheme.

The Scottish Government continues to engage with businesses regarding Scotland’s Circular Economy and the implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility schemes, including the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS).

In 2023, following a significant amount of engagement with businesses, including small-scale drinks producers, we amended DRS Regulations so that any product with fewer than 5,000 units on the market may be registered as a low volume product. As part of the development of the 3 nations scheme our officials shared the experience of developing the Scottish Scheme and due to this low volume products will be exempt from most of the requirements of the deposit return schemes across the UK.

Draft regulations recently notified to the WTO confirmed that glass will no longer be included in Scotland’s scheme. Because spirits are normally packaged in glass bottles, this means that the majority of distillers and small-scale spirits producers will be out of scope of DRS when it launches in October 2027.

This information is provided in Glasgow Prestwick Airport’s annual accounts.

Glasgow Prestwick Airport has published annual accounts for each year since the shareholding was acquired by Scottish Ministers. It is a statutory requirement that these are laid in Parliament.

Community organisations in rural areas and elsewhere are uniquely placed to identify and address the issues that keep individuals in their local communities healthy.

A place-based approach is the foundation of Community-Led Local Development (CLLD). Communities are empowered and supported to design and implement the solutions to the challenges and opportunities they identify in their local area, which can include community led health and social care provision.

Through the Communities workstream within the wider Place and Wellbeing programme we are also working with the community and voluntary sector to enhance the capacity of community organisations (in rural areas and elsewhere) to complement the actions of the public sector in keeping people well. As part of the Communities Workstream we are exploring how we can increase the influence of local community organisations in the decisions that impact on the health and wellbeing of their communities.

We have also introduced participation requests as part of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, which provide a mechanism for communities to seek dialogue with public service providers including NHS Health Boards on their own terms and become meaningfully involved in local service delivery.

Scottish Government implements a number of measures to support rural NHS Boards’ digital infrastructure. These include:

• The Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN)
• A Strategic Digital Fund -For a number of years the Scottish Government has provided additional non-recurring funding to support local strategic digital developments, with a particular emphasis on ensuring continued funding for Highlands and Islands Boards to protect rural services
• Access to the Scottish Government/COSLA Digital Maturity Assessment platform - a standardised management tool for digital transformation. This platform enables NHS Boards to document progress, analyse results, identify priorities, and align with local and national digital and data strategies.
• Recent analysis of data from the Scottish Government/COSLA Digital Maturity Assessment shows both progress in electronic records management and areas for development at organisational and system wide level.
• The Scottish Government and COSLA have also developed a range of resources to increase the digital capabilities of the leadership and workforce thereby improving the ability to identify digital transformation opportunities and implementation.
• A Records Management Code of Practice was published in August 2024.

There is a wide range of education and training programmes for those delivering palliative care suitable to their role. These training programmes encourage those delivering palliative care to be aware of cultural factors and how these can impact on individuals and their families.

Our draft palliative care strategy aims to build on this work and includes a number of recommended actions for the provision of palliative care education and training to support all healthcare professionals delivering palliative care services.