Chamber and committees

As part of our commitment to acknowledge the role of local leadership in addressing challenges linked to depopulation, the Scottish Government has committed to establishing an Addressing Depopulation Fund to enable local authorities to trial pathfinder interventions in support of population attraction and retention. The Fund will initially make available £180,000 to be split between a prospective three local authorities across financial years 2024-25 and 2025-26.

The first iteration of Scotland’s Migration Service launched on 27 March 2024. The previous working title of ‘Talent Attraction and Migration Service’ was updated following testing with users.

The service is hosted on Scotland.org and provides information and advice to people who have recently moved to Scotland, international students, employers and inward investors, who are able to book one-to-one advice appointments with our expert suppliers – Citizens Advice Scotland and the law firm Seraphus. The scope of the full service will widen in Autumn 2024 to service the needs of individuals located outside Scotland with an interest in moving to Scotland.

Delivery of the first phase of the service is being promoted to employers across Scotland and all other users through a stakeholder advocacy approach. This involves targeted promotional activities through existing relationships and networks of stakeholders. Partnership communications toolkits have been shared with stakeholders containing materials to promote and encourage their own service users to use Scotland's Migration Service. The launch was also promoted via a news release from Scottish Government and social media post.

Further promotional activities will be conducted in Autumn to accompany the launch of the full service.

The Population Programme Board was established in 2019 to support the Ministerial Population Taskforce, which is responsible for delivering Scotland’s national Population Strategy, published in 2021. Aligned to the Ministerial Taskforce, the Programme Board meets quarterly, with the next meeting due to take place in June 2024.

The Expert Advisory Group on Migration and Population was established in October 2018, in order to provide independent expert advice and analysis to Scottish Ministers on matters relating to migration and population. The Group meets around 4 times per year, with the next meeting due to take place in April 2024.

The jointly chaired Scottish Government/COSLA Population Roundtable meets quarterly to discuss a range of population challenges, with representation from all of Scotland’s thirty-two local authorities. It has met three times since it was recently reconvened in April 2023. A date for the next meeting has not yet been confirmed.

For all NHS Boards including NHS Borders, tailored support is provided giving access to professional specialist advice, making sure that they have robust plans place and are continually monitoring their implementation. Regular and structured engagement with NHS Borders at official level also takes place regularly.

In addition all Boards have been asked to submit trajectories setting out a timeline for clearing any long waits. These will be updated annually and used to inform further targeted improvement work to ensure all Boards meet CAMHS waiting times standards.

The information requested is not centrally available.

We are developing a new Palliative and End of Life Care Strategy which has an overarching aim that everyone in Scotland receives well-coordinated, timely and high-quality palliative care, care around death and bereavement support based on their needs and preferences, including support for families and carers. The strategy will cover children and adults, and care provided in all settings including in the community.

We have established a number of working groups to support the development of the strategy including a Children and Young People’s Palliative Care Working Group and we have completed a mapping survey of paediatric and neonatal palliative care provision to inform the development and delivery of the strategy.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on how many children and young people have been placed in adult mental health facilities, due to spaces being unavailable in facilities for children and young people, in each NHS board in each year since 1999.

For more information on children and young people being treated outwith NHS specialist CAMHS facilities, please refer to the answer to previous question S6W-26182 on 28 March 2024.

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 .

The Scottish Government has not held any discussions with South Lanarkshire Council regarding potential firework control zones within the local authority area. Firework control zones are a discretionary power for local authorities, however, and the Scottish Government is not required to be consulted regarding utilisation of these powers by a local authority. At present, the Scottish Government is aware of a potential 11 firework control zones being scoped out across Scottish local authorities. We remain committed to providing funding to local authorities who wish to consult on, and thereafter designate, a firework control zone (or zones) within their area.

Neither the Scottish Government nor Public Health Scotland (PHS) hold this information centrally. The majority of data held by PHS on Olaparib (Lynparza®) is on the quantity issued within hospital settings rather than on the number of prescriptions, only a very small number of prescriptions for Olaparib (Lynparza®) are held within their primary care prescribing dataset.