There are no imminent plans to expand emergency department opt-out blood borne virus testing to other areas. It is important that decisions about any further expansion are based on the best available evidence. The Scottish Government will use evaluation data from the current pilot projects, combined with other evidence, to determine whether further roll out would be acceptable, deliverable and cost-effective in Scotland.

Local evaluation will be conducted by the team at NHS Grampian and will be followed by an overarching review of the three emergency department opt-out testing projects announced by myself last November.

Public Health Scotland estimates that approximately 500 individuals, equivalent to 7% of the cohort living with HIV in Scotland, are undiagnosed.

A range of testing initiatives are being implemented to encourage people to access HIV testing. The Scottish Government’s Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Action Plan, published in November 2023, has a focus on improving access to sexually transmitted infection and blood borne virus testing across Scotland. To support this, we have funded a range of projects to expand access and promote uptake of testing, including the development of a national online postal self-sampling service, HIV self-testing and community-based services delivered by the Terrence Higgins Trust, and piloting emergency department opt-out testing in NHS Grampian, NHS Lothian and NHS Highland.

Our HIV Transmission Elimination Delivery Plan sets out further actions to encourage people to access testing and to identify optimal approaches to finding people living with undiagnosed HIV.

The Scottish Government takes the findings of the report very seriously. The mental health and wellbeing of children and young people is an absolute priority for the Scottish Government.

We continue to support our local authority partners with £16 million in funding to ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services. All school pupils aged 10 and above have access to school counselling services.

The Scottish Government has also provided guidance and professional learning for school staff to support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people in schools.

Finally, we are also providing local authorities with £15 million per annum to provide community-based mental health and wellbeing supports and services for children and young people, with many of these delivered through primary and secondary schools.

Thanks to an additional £80 million of funding from the Scottish Government in 2023-24, Police Scotland have invested in their workforce - recruiting almost 600 officers in 2023 alone and around 1,480 new officers since the beginning of 2022.

Police Scotland will be welcoming an additional 200 officers in March with further intakes planned throughout the year.

Police Scotland statistics indicate that 355 officers were in the Dumfries and Galloway Divisional area on 31 December 2023 an increase of seven officers on the same point in 2022.

The recruitment and deployment of resources is a matter for the Chief Constable, who is accountable to the Scottish Police Authority, and it is for Police Scotland to determine recruitment and retention approaches both locally and nationally. I am pleased that the Chief Constable has confirmed that the 2024-25 budget will enable Police Scotland to retain numbers in the region of 16,500 to 16,600 officers.

Specific evaluations of the Childsmile programme are undertaken by the University of Glasgow. Publications can be viewed online at https://www.gla.ac.uk/ .

More broadly, the National Dental Inspection Programme (NDIP) monitors the general oral health of children in Scotland. The latest NDIP statistics published in October 2023 showed that 82% of P7 children have no obvious decay, compared with 53% in 2005. In addition, the difference in the percentage of children with no obvious decay in the most and least deprived areas decreased from 26.3 percentage points in 2009 to 16.1 percentage points in 2023.

This shows the success of our flagship Childsmile Programme. Fluoride varnish is a key element of Childsmile and there are no plans to remove this aspect of the programme.

Spending data on additional support for learning (ASL) is provided below. This data is collected from local authorities via the 2022-23 Local Financial Returns (LFR). These figures show that spending on ASL by local authorities reached its highest level on record, £926m in 2022-23.

Local authorities are asked to provide this data in line with guidance to ensure returns are completed on a consistent basis to allow for a reasonable degree of comparability. However, these figures may be affected by variations in local accounting practices and education strategies. It is important to bear this in mind when making comparisons between local authorities and years.

Local authorities are asked to record all centrally funded ASL expenditure under Special Education, irrespective of where it is delivered. Decisions about prioritisation and budgets, including those for the provision of services for pupils with additional support needs, are a matter for individual councils. We recognise the challenges facing authorities in balancing their need to meet a wide range of statutory duties, local priorities and local circumstances.

Table 1 shows gross revenue expenditure on (ASL) education for 2022-23, split by Pre-Primary, Primary, Secondary and Special Education.

Table 1 – 2022-23 ASL expenditure by Local Authority (£000)

The Scottish Government has no plans to designate lisdexamfetamine (Elvanse ® ) as a specialist medicine or to explore options for commissioning the direct procurement of this medicine through National Services Scotland’s NHS National Procurement.

Manufacturing issues and increased global demand are the main reasons for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medicine supply issues and as such it is unlikely that a central procurement of lisdexamfetamine (Elvanse ® ) or of any other ADHD medicine would offer an effective solution. This is anticipated to be a short term problem.

The regulatory powers on the supply of medicines, are reserved to the UK Government and the Department of Health and Social Care’s Medicines Supply Team are co-ordinating the shortage of ADHD medicines at a UK level. Advice has been issued to healthcare professionals including on the availability of unlicensed imports. In addition, the UK Government has added lisdexamfetamine (Elvanse ® ) to the restricted medicines lists – which means it cannot be exported out of the UK.

The Scottish Government recognises the impact of these global shortages on people living with ADHD and their families. Scottish Government officials continue to engage with the UK Government on this supply issue and other shortages. NHS Scotland has robust systems in place to manage medicine shortages when they arise. Anyone affected by this issue should speak to their clinical team.

The Scottish Government have commissioned RSM UK to provide analysis of the capacity requirements associated with the new model of neonatal care.

The scope of this work is to model the current and future demand and requirements for neonatal intensive care cot capacity, in order to inform regional implementation planning.

The work has involved engagement with operational and strategic stakeholders to collect feedback on implementation considerations, of which accommodation requirements has been documented.

Detailed analysis and quantification of accommodation capacity requirements is not in the scope of this work. However, this is a key part of the model of neonatal care described in Best Start and we expect all Boards to provide emergency overnight accommodation on the unit for parents who need it, with other accommodation for neonatal parents nearby. Boards are expected to include provision for this in their planning.

We also provide support to all families with babies in neonatal care to cover the costs of food, travel and accommodation as part of our Young Patients Family Fund.

The report is due to be finalised by the end of March 2024.

In order to receive a grant under the Scottish Dental Access Initiative, prospective applicants must set out their intention to i) establish a new practice or ii) extend an existing practice within designated geographical areas. Designated areas are defined by Scottish Government with reference to overall availability of General Dental Services. Once granted, SDAI funding is monitored to ensure ongoing compliance with a number of conditions which the grantee agrees to when signing the grant offer letter. These include.