Chamber and committees

Our 10-year Cancer Strategy is committed to ensuring excellent, equitably accessible, care for all people facing cancer across Scotland. The strategy continues to focus on those cancer types that have poorer survival, including pancreatic cancer, and improving their outcomes. The strategy has a specific tackling inequalities ambition aimed at reducing inequality in cancer incidence, access to services, experience, and outcomes.

Further to this, the Centre for Sustainable Delivery meet with NHS Boards’ Cancer Management Teams monthly to identify challenges, explore solutions and share best practice. These meetings have recently been reviewed and now incorporate wider planned care and diagnostic teams, as necessary, to ensure collaborative improvement plans are made.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting those living with cancer, including those with secondary breast cancer, to deal with the financial, emotional, and physical health effects of their diagnosis.

We are currently working in partnership with Macmillan to improve the service we offer patients with cancer through the Transforming Cancer Care Programme (TCC). This joint partnership with Macmillan is worth £27 million and is the first of its kind in the UK. The programme ensures that people affected by cancer in Scotland, which includes those living with secondary breast cancer, have access to a specialist key support worker, who can provide emotional, financial, and practical support.

Further, the Single Point of Contact (SPoC) approach ensures that people recently diagnosed with cancer have person-centred support and can discuss their specific circumstances. This will help ease any anxieties related to their care and treatment plans and relay the support available to them and their families. We continue to invest in SPoC pilots and are actively considering how best to scale up the approach to benefit all patients with cancer in Scotland.

Scotland’s abundant renewable energy generating capacity presents an opportunity for the country to become a leader in green data centres. In 2023, 70% of electricity generated in Scotland was from renewable sources – a marked increase compared to 32% in 2013 - and, as of June 2025, there is an estimated capacity of 76.5 GW of renewable energy projects, including storage, in the planning pipeline in Scotland.

Where new development proposals come forward, all planning applications must be determined in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicated otherwise. In Scotland the development plan consists of National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) and the relevant Local Development Plan. National development status does not grant planning permission for the development and all relevant consents are required. Designation establishes the need for such infrastructure and means that the principle of the development does not need to be agreed in later consenting processes, providing more certainty for communities, business and investors.

While the Infrastructure Investment Plan 2021-22 to 2025-26 Progress Report for 2024-2025 refers to the AI Growth Zones initiative, it is led by the UK Government.

Many restoration projects around Scotland are already working with universities and researchers to pioneer new methods and develop best practice in data collection and monitoring. We are currently consulting on a draft marine and coastal restoration plan which sets out key objectives to help us understand restoration opportunities and priorities. The draft plan also proposes actions to stimulate innovation, standardise monitoring, and encourage knowledge exchange. The draft plan was developed with advice from NatureScot and Marine Directorate scientists, as well as input from a range of stakeholders including research institutions. Best practice guidance for restoration activities is already available on the websites of NatureScot and the Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund, among others.

The Scottish Government has not engaged with the Ramsar Secretariat on the planning application at Coul Links. NatureScot serves as a statutory advisor to the Scottish Government on developments that may affect Ramsar sites, offering expert ecological guidance to assess environmental impacts. The Ramsar Secretariat, based in Switzerland, is responsible for the day-to day co-ordination of convention activities. Whilst the Secretariat provides guidance, technical advice, and support to member countries to help ensure Ramsar sites are protected within their national planning processes, the Secretariat does not have a direct role in specific planning applications.

We recognise the distress and pain that migraines cause and we take the issue of migraine seriously.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery launched the national headache pathway in October 2023, to improve care for migraines and headache across Scotland. The pathway is being implemented to aid with the diagnosis and management of headache disorders including migraine, offer guidance on management, and support health boards to aid their future planning.

The Scottish Government funded £221,176 to the Migraine Trust across 2022-2024 to work upskilling community, primary and secondary care pharmacists across NHS Grampian to help people with migraine manage their condition more effectively. This included funding to partner other health boards to extend the reach of this model and increase care and support for people living with migraine.

An eLearning programme for NHS Education for Scotland’s (NES) platform TURAS was developed through the project, comprising a suite of training materials available for all pharmacists and pharmacy teams in Scotland to access.

Additionally, NES Pharmacy hosted a webinar in September 2024 to provide guidance to pharmacy staff on the assessment, support and management of people living with migraine in line with the Scottish National Headache Pathway.

Following publication of the Pathway, Scottish Government has liaised with NHS24 and clinicians to produce public-facing accessible information on migraine, available at Migraine | NHS inform.

Following a review of services and in order to prioritise access to specialist sexual health services for those in greatest need, NHS Lanarkshire have made a decision to centralise non-Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) prescription appointments to Coathill Hospital. Patients are still able to access non-LARC contraception (such as the pill) at Coathill Hospital or through their GP, which may be more convenient for them. Appointments for LARC continue to be available throughout the wider sexual health service in Lanarkshire.

All homes and businesses in Scotland should now be able to access a minimum of a superfast broadband connection, thanks to the three strands of activity that make up the Reaching 100% (R100) programme - the R100 contracts, our Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme and ongoing commercial coverage. According to Ofcom figures, gigabit coverage in Scotland stands at 78% - up from just 59% in 2022. Ofcom figures also show North and South Lanarkshire as amongst the best served areas in Scotland for access to gigabit capable broadband – with 92% and 87% gigabit coverage respectively.

Digital infrastructure is essential for building a fairer, greener, and stronger economy, which is why over the last decade the Scottish Government has delivered over one million faster, more reliable broadband connections across the country - backed by over £1 billion of publicly driven investment. This is despite telecoms being wholly reserved to Westminster.

There is, however, more to be done. This is why we are playing a crucial role in the delivery of Project Gigabit in Scotland, having awarded new local and regional contracts earlier this year with further regional contracts in procurement, as well as managing delivery of the nationwide contract which was awarded by the UK Government to Openreach last year.

There will, however, remain premises which are beyond the reach of Project Gigabit procurements and are considered very hard to reach by the UK Government. Despite promises that an approach to connecting such premises would be forthcoming in 2022 and then again in 2023, we continue to await a clear proposal. We stand ready to work with the UK Government to develop a solution to connect those premises, ensuring that no one is left behind.