Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government meets with South Lanarkshire Council on a regular basis to discuss housing matters. We last met on 19 April to discuss the Local Housing Strategy (LHS) which covers all housing issues across the Council area.

We will publish both the stakeholder roundtable notes and the consultation findings later this year, which will inform the potential content and scope of any policy proposals and our consideration of appropriate next steps for this work.

The content of future legislative programmes for the remainder of this Session is subject to Cabinet consideration and will be announced in Programme for Government in the normal way.

We will publish both the stakeholder roundtable notes and the consultation findings later this year.

We received around 3000 responses to the consultation on restricting alcohol advertising and promotion.

We remain determined to reduce alcohol-related harms and take a proportionate, whole population approach to address them. For example, we are reviewing our world-leading Minimum Unit Pricing as well as Alcohol Brief Intervention Programme.

We are also working collaboratively with Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) across Scotland to understand and help resolve local issues and support them in identifying ways to improve services, such as monitoring waiting times. Last year, £106.8 million was made available to ADPs, and nationally there is ongoing work, including the upcoming UK Alcohol Treatment Guidelines and development of alcohol treatment targets for April 2024.

£250 million has been put in place over five-year National Mission to tackle drug-related harm and a substantial part of it offers help to those impacted by alcohol. This includes £100 million investment in residential rehabilitation, where the majority of patients are being treated for issues related either solely to alcohol or a combination of alcohol and drugs.

It is crucial that we prevent and reduce alcohol-related harms, but that aim has to be balanced with careful consideration of the impact restrictions may have on business.

We will not work with the alcohol industry on the development of health policy but will continue to engage with them around potential impacts of, and implementation, of alcohol harm prevention policy.

The Scottish Government has worked collaboratively with partners, patients and third sector organisations in recent months to develop a ten year cancer strategy for Scotland.

Due to publish Spring 2023, the strategy will take a comprehensive approach to improving patient pathways, from prevention and diagnosis through to treatment and post-treatment care. It aims to improve cancer survival and provide excellent, equitably accessible, care across Scotland, including those affected by brain cancer.

A new earlier diagnosis vision will feature within the strategy and will include similar actions to those outlined in The Brain Tumour Charity’s report. This includes continuing to deliver our Detect Cancer Earlier Programme, working with primary care clinicians to ensure they have direct access to diagnostic tests and quality education sources; optimal cancer diagnostic pathways are designed and implemented across NHS Scotland; and public campaigns educate and empower those with possible symptoms to act early.

We continue to invest in our Detect Cancer Earlier (DCE) Programme, of which public education and empowerment is a key work-stream. We launched a new campaign – Be the Early Bird – in March 2023 to empower those with possible symptoms to act early.

We will continue to work with the Scottish Cancer Coalition, as well as the primary care community, to raise awareness of possible symptoms. Work is also underway to redesign DCE’s website (getcheckedearly.org) – this will reflect brain tumour content moving forward, including signposting to The Brain Tumour Charity.

Neither the Scottish Government nor Health Boards hold data on privately paid prescriptions provided by independent healthcare providers.

We are currently reflecting on the wide-ranging feedback we received from stakeholders during the recent stakeholder roundtables and are working with an independent contractor to analyse the public consultation responses to understand the views and perspectives of those that responded.

We will publish both the roundtable notes and the consultation findings later this year, which will inform the potential content and scope of any policy proposals and our consideration of appropriate next steps for this work.