Chamber and committees

It is up to individual owners to consider how they manage their pets whilst evacuating their home with consideration given on how to keep them safe and secure. We would encourage pet owners to consider what to do with their pets as part of a home escape plan. However, escape should not be delayed in order to locate or evacuate distressed animals. The last known location of your pet can be given to the fire service on arrival who will consider this in their plan.

SFRS provide information on fire safety in the home on their website: Fire Safety in the Home | Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. They also provide information and guidance regarding wildfires: Wildfires | Scottish Fire and Rescue Service as well as advice on making an escape plan: Escape plan | Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

The Scottish Government has been working closely with Health Boards to ensure a wide range of actions are in place to reduce waiting lists for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). This includes increasing funding over recent years to expand service capacity and provide over 320 additional staff, and enabling the system to manage over 10,000 additional cases. We are also continuing to support NHS Boards to redesign their services to improve efficiency and access.

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of CAMHS teams across Scotland, national performance against the 18-week CAMHS standard has been sustained for over a year, with 91% of children and young people starting treatment within 18 weeks of referral and one in two children and young people referred to CAMHS start treatment within 6 weeks. Most Health Boards have now eliminated waits of over a year, and the total number of children and young people waiting more than 52 weeks is at its lowest level since June 2015 and now account for only 0.5% of all children and young people waiting.

We do, however, recognise there is more to do. Some young people and families are still waiting too long. We continue to work closely with all Boards, providing enhanced support where performance needs to improve, ensuring Boards have robust improvement plans in place to deliver results.

The Scottish Government is also investing in early intervention and community-based supports, such as school counselling and third-sector services, to support children and young people and their families to address mental health issues earlier in order to reduce demand for specialist CAMHS.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of understanding the factors that can affect men's health and wellbeing, including depression, separation from family and substance use. These issues can be complex and interconnected, and we continue to support research and evidence-gathering activity through collaboration with Public Health Scotland, academic institutions and other partners to improve understanding of their causes and impacts.

The Scottish Government invests in a range of services that support mental health, recovery from substance use, and people experiencing adverse life circumstances and trauma. This includes working with partners across the public and third sectors to improve outcomes for men.

Through the Delivering Equally Safe Fund, we are supporting the Men’s Advice Line, which provides practical advice and emotional support to men experiencing domestic abuse. More broadly, community-based organisations across Scotland provide targeted mental health and wellbeing support for men, including peer-support and suicide-prevention services. This includes funding the Changing Room: Extra Time programme, which uses football as a hook to help men learn about and understand their mental health and wellbeing together with their peers.

The data collected in March 2025 by SPICe is taken from a request to health boards on estimates of children and young people seeking an assessment. The Scottish Government does not hold data on the number of children and young people on waiting lists.

However, we do know that in recent years there has been an increase in people seeking a neurodevelopmental diagnosis, resulting in pressure across a variety of services.

The Scottish Government approach prioritises providing timely access to support that meets children and young people’s neurodevelopmental support needs rather than diagnosis.

The National Neurodevelopmental Specification, which was published in 2021, aims to ensure that children and young people receive the support and access to services that meet their needs at the earliest opportunity. It is clear that support should not be dependent on a formal diagnostic assessment.

Last year, in partnership with COSLA, we undertook a Review of implementation of the Specification. This helped us understand what is working well and where further action is needed – it highlighted the significant pressures facing services and the need for clearer national direction and practical support to deliver timely, neuro-affirming care across Scotland.

Following the Review, we committed to delivering a programme of work to support health boards and local authorities to deliver the aims of the Specification. Delivery is being supported by a cross-sector Children and Young People’s Neurodevelopment Taskforce, bringing together expertise from health, education, local government and the third sector to ensure a collaborative, whole-systems approach is being taken.

Within the Scottish Government, policy responsibility for Health and Care Research sits with the Chief Scientist Office (CSO).

CSO runs a number of research project and fellowship funding programmes. These are open to applications for research across the clinical spectrum, including mesothelioma. These funding opportunities are well known among the health research community in Scotland. All applications go through a rigorous independent expert review process to enable funding decisions to be made.

Response Mode Funding Schemes – Chief Scientist Office

Fellowship Funding – Chief Scientist Office

There are no current projects or fellowships in Mesothelioma.

In 2018, CSO provided approximately £28K in funding support for a Postdoctoral Clinical Lectureship entitled "Manipulating the immune microenvironment in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma" - Dr Claire Rooney University of Glasgow.

In addition to directly funding research projects and fellowships, CSO provides research support infrastructure funding to support the delivery of clinical studies in the NHS in Scotland. The NHS Research Scotland Cancer Network is funded by CSO to increase, support and sustain clinical trial activity in cancer care across Scotland. Cancer | NHS Research Scotland | NHS Research Scotland.

The NRS Cancer Network is supporting the delivery of a number of Clinical Trials in Mesothelioma including PREDICT-Meso which is led by Professor Kevin Blyth from the University of Glasgow.

The aim of PREDICT- Meso to understand how mesothelioma develops and to develop new therapies and tools for new human trials. PREDICT-Meso is funded by CRUK (£5M) and currently involves 230 investigators from 130 institutions in 17 countries https://www.predictmeso.com/.

CAMHS is a specialist service for children and young people with acute mental health needs, and referrals are based on clinical judgement.

Our CAMHS Service specification, published in 2020, highlights that all children and young people should receive support that is appropriate to their individual needs. For many children and young people, such support is likely to be community based, and should be easily and quickly accessible.

Sustained improvements in CAMHS performance mean that the national 18-week standard has been met for over a year. 91% of children and young people start treatment within 18 weeks of referral, with one in two beginning treatment within six weeks.

We are working with Health Boards to ensure that there is compliance with the specification and that they are delivering timely access to appropriate support for children, young people and their families.

Within the Scottish Government, policy responsibility for Health and Care Research sits with the Chief Scientist Office (CSO).

CSO runs a number of research project and fellowship funding programmes. These are open to applications for research across the clinical spectrum, including mesothelioma. These funding opportunities are well known among the health research community in Scotland.

Response Mode Funding Schemes – Chief Scientist Office

Fellowship Funding – Chief Scientist Office

CSO research project and fellowship funding is awarded following a rigorous independent expert review process. Applications on the diagnosis, treatment and management of mesothelioma from the University of Glasgow and Queen Elizabeth University Hospital are welcomed. Any such applications would go through CSO's standard evaluation process to enable funding decisions to be made.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of robust evidence in understanding any relationship between domestic abuse against men, substance use and recovery. However, limitations in the available data mean it is difficult to draw firm conclusions regarding potential correlations or causative relationships between these factors.

Existing data sources that provide some insight into these issues include:

• National Drug Related Death Database – records, by sex, whether individuals who have died a drug death were victims of domestic violence prior to death. It also records details of social circumstances including who they were living with and whether individuals were a parent/parent figure. The database also records whether the individual had a psychiatric condition (including depression).
• Drug and alcohol information system (DAISy) – collects data on those presenting for specialist treatment for drugs/alcohol in Scotland. The data set includes some (limited) information on living situation, dependents, and existing medical conditions.

While these data sources can provide information on the circumstances of people affected by substance use, they do not currently provide a comprehensive picture of the relationship between men’s experience of domestic abuse, substance use and recovery outcomes. The Scottish Government will continue to work with partners across the health, justice and research sectors to strengthen the evidence base where appropriate and make the best use of available data to inform policy development and service delivery.

The Scottish Government's Population Strategy focuses on four key building blocks: a family friendly nation; a healthy living society; an attractive and welcoming country; and a more balanced population.

The use of stop and search is an operational matter for Police Scotland. Officers do an outstanding job to keep communities safe, as shown by the decrease in recorded crime of almost half since 1991 and by the significant progress that has been made in reducing violent crime over the long term.