Chamber and committees

We continue to take forward work to protect, promote and improve gender equality in Scotland, working with the First Minister’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls (NACWG). The Scottish Government accepted the NACWG’s 21 recommendations for systemic change and has begun implementing them, including publishing the first annual statement on gender policy coherence.

Intersectional gender equality considerations will continue to be recognised in the Scottish Government’s policy and practice, including our forthcoming high-level action plan in response to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Right’s recent Concluding Observations. This plan will serve as an important milestone in our work to strengthen transparency and accountability around the implementation of human rights and we intend to publish our response later this year.

Beyond this, our draft mainstreaming strategy will intend to set out an ambitious and progressive agenda to further embed equality and human rights in all we do.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-38163 on 17 June 2025, on the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights report as regards to the provision of maternity services in rural areas.

The Scottish Government expects all NHS Boards to provide maternity services that are delivered as close to home as practicable, balanced with ensuring the safety of mother and baby. Within the policies we set, it is for NHS Boards to determine the model of service delivery best suited to meet the needs of their local areas and population.

Maternity services continue to be provided for women in Wigtownshire, including local antenatal and postnatal care, scanning and the option of midwife-supported home birth for women who choose to birth locally. Women who require more complex maternity care continue to be supported by the full clinical team at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. Responsibility for the design and delivery of local services lies with NHS Boards and Integration Joint Boards in line with their duties to deliver safe, effective and sustainable care. NHS Dumfries and Galloway has reaffirmed its commitment to the delivery of safe, high-quality maternity care for all families in Wigtownshire.

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.

There are studies that show a developing evidence base for the use of mifepristone in breast cancer prevention as outlined in the opinion piece in The Lancet.

The regulation for the licensing, safety and efficacy of medicines is currently reserved to the UK Government and is the responsibility of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The MHRA is also responsible for enabling innovation, research and development that is beneficial to public health, including overseeing clinical trials which underpin evidence based practice. Clinical trials are an important part of the pathway by which a new medicinal product or a new use of an existing medicine can be marketed for use as a new treatment.

Before a medicine can be marketed, a pharmaceutical company must be able to demonstrate its safety, quality and efficacy. A marketing authorisation (sometimes called a licence) is granted to market a medicine for a specific indication (condition) and not to the medicine itself. The decision to apply for a marketing authorisation for a new medicine or new indication is for a pharmaceutical company to make. In doing so they must include data from clinical trials and other studies demonstrating the quality, safety and efficacy of the medicine. After detailed assessment and providing the data is satisfactory, a marketing authorisation may be granted.

All cancers, including breast, remain a national priority, within the Scottish Government and across NHS Scotland. That is why we published our Cancer strategy 2023 to 2033 - gov.scot along with an initial three year Cancer action plan 2023 to 2026 - gov.scot on 15 June 2023.

The strategy and plan take a comprehensive approach to improving patient pathways from prevention and diagnosis through to treatment and post-treatment care.

We know that the earlier cancer is diagnosed the easier it is to treat and even cure which is why we continue to invest in our Detect Cancer Earlier (DCE) Programme, initially launched in 2012.

The Programme takes a whole-systems approach to early detection and encompasses primary care, diagnostics, public education, data, innovation and screening.

A Detect Cancer Earlier campaign – Be The Early Bird - launched on March 2023 aiming to reduce fear of cancer and empower those with possible symptoms to act early. This campaign ran for a second time in March 2025 and is due to run again in the coming months.

Scottish Government has also commissioned the Scottish Cancer Network to collaboratively develop national clinical management pathways. One of the first, addressing breast cancer, was published in 2023.

Clinical management pathways are developed through consensus and outline the patient journey from diagnosis through to follow-up or end of life care. The pathways describe the treatment options at the various points in each pathway to support shared decision making. The use of these pathways throughout NHS Scotland supports clinicians in their decision making enabling them to improve outcomes for patients with breast cancer.

Further to this, Scottish Government is continuing to take action to improve waiting times with £14.23 million of the £110 million in additional planned care funding for 2025-26 to Cancer Waiting Times, with a focus on colorectal, urological and breast as our most challenged pathways.

Within the Scottish Government, the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) is responsible for supporting Health and Care research.

CSO runs a number of project and fellowship funding schemes for Scottish-led research and this role is well known across the Health and Care research community here.

Grant Funding – Chief Scientist Office

Fellowship Funding – Chief Scientist Office

Applications on the potential use of Mifepristone to prevent women at high risk of breast cancer from developing the disease are welcomed. In common with all applications, these would go through CSO's standard independent expert review process to enable funding decisions to be made.

In addition, through UK-wide funding arrangements, the majority of funding programmes administered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) are open to applications led by researchers based in Scotland.

Scottish Researchers to be able to access further NIHR research funding – Chief Scientist Office

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring equitable coordinated access to mental health provision for women, infants and their families throughout pregnancy and during the postnatal period. Between October 2024 and March 2025 the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health (PIMH) fund has provided peer support, counselling and befriending services to over 5200 parents, expected parents and infants. Nurture The Borders has received £79,253 as part of the latest round of the PIMH fund.

We expect all NHS Boards to provide high quality prenatal and antenatal education for all pregnant women and their families and to continue to promote and improve early access to antenatal education, tailored to their local populations. Recommendation 9 of The Best Start provided that antenatal education must be available to all and that NHS Boards should promote and improve early access. The focus on quality antenatal education is now embedded in ‘business as usual’ delivery for all NHS Boards in Scotland, as described in the Scottish Government’s Best Start 2017-2024 Report, published in May 2025.

At a national level, the Scottish Government commissions access to the Solihull Approach online antenatal education. This has been available under license through NHS Education for Scotland since May 2020 and the current license period runs to 31 May 2028. The programme is made freely available to all maternity service users across Scotland through their routine midwifery care.

Scotland’s approach to supporting the integration of refugees and people seeking asylum within our communities is set out in the New Scots refugee integration strategy. The strategy is led jointly by the Scottish Government, COSLA (representing Scottish local authorities) and Scottish Refugee Council.

In 2025-2026 the Scottish Government is providing £3.4m funding to local authorities from the Refugees, Resettlement and Asylum Division budget. This funding is intended to support the integration of people displaced from Ukraine and the full closure of welcome accommodation except to new arrivals in 2025-26.

In addition to this direct funding, wider support is provided to local authorities across Scotland through various routes, including:

• Funding to support COSLA as a joint partner in delivering the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy, and progressing New Scots Delivery Plan actions.
• Funding for the Refugee Support Service (RSS), delivered by Scottish Refugee Council. The RSS supports refugees and people seeking asylum to settle into communities across Scotland through providing advice, information and resources, improving access to support services and facilitating social connections.
• Funding for British Red Cross to deliver a project aimed at increasing the support available to people who arrive in Scotland under Family Reunion visas. This project includes capacity building work to support local authorities to understand family reunion processes and empower them to support people who have recently arrived under family reunion routes.

The Scottish Government meets with the Scottish Ambulance Service regularly in the form of Operational Meetings, Mid Year and Annual Reviews where performance is discussed. The Scottish Government also receives weekly performance reports which are analysed and if performance is a concern, it is escalated to the Scottish Ambulance Service executive team.