I met with the UN Special Rapporteur earlier this year and we welcome publication of the Report’s findings.

Our Strategic Approach to challenge and deter demand for prostitution and improve support for those with experience was published in February 2024. It recognises that prostitution cannot be considered in isolation, and sets out the Scottish Government’s collective approach, working with stakeholders across the wider public and third sector.

In common with the Nordic Model, the Strategy seeks to enable women to safely, and sustainably, exit from prostitution.

While we continue work with partners to develop a wider improved support pathway, we are now in a position to make progress with an initial phase of this work. Collaborating with Police Scotland, we will look to challenge demand and improve support for women with experience of commercial sexual exploitation.

I met with key stakeholders earlier this month to outline this collaboration, which includes:

• A secondment from the Scottish Government’s Violence against Women and Girls team to ensure that strategic connections to wider relevant Scottish Government initiatives are made.
• Supporting the further development of Operation Begonia (already operational in Aberdeen) to lead to a national and consistent policing approach.
• Funding Police Scotland to gather intelligence to understand the full extent of demand for commercial sexual exploitation across Scotland, helping to better reach victims and strengthen the response to tackling perpetrators

This is a key stage in implementing our Strategic Approach, ensuring that we increase the opportunities for women to access support whilst at the same time ever limiting the opportunities for those carrying out exploitation.

The Scottish Government has been working with NHS boards to carefully scale up the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme across Scotland, ensuring implementation models are sustainable and delivered with quality.

Under this phased rollout of the programme (a) FNP is not yet offered in Island Boards and (b) we are still in the process of scaling up across NHS Highland areas, noting we began delivering the programme in Argyll and Bute earlier this year.

We want to ensure every eligible mother can access this support, that is why we are testing a number of options to support delivery in remote and rural contexts. The learning will be used to build a sustainable model that could expand the FNP programme to these areas in the future.

We know that people affected by substance use and their families face ongoing issues relating to out of hours support. The Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) operate a services directory which has details of drug and alcohol support services across Scotland.

As well as local contacts, we support national phone lines that are available for anyone to call. Know the Score operate a phoneline which is open until 9pm during the week and then open 10am until 4pm on weekends. This provides free, confidential support for people experiencing issues with drugs, alcohol or mental health.

Scottish Recovery Consortium publish information on recovery communities and local groups which operate during the Christmas period and this is available on their website ahead of Christmas.

Local authorities are independent bodies, and it is for them to consider whether to use the powers under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 to deliver local reliefs. The Scottish Government includes information on these powers in its Local government finance circular 5/2024: non-domestic rates relief guidance - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) issued to local authorities annually.

The business rates incentivisation scheme (BRIS) was suspended in 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23 due to the disruptive impact of COVID on NDR revenues, as confirmed in Local government finance circular 8/2021: business rates incentivisation scheme 2019-2022 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)there was therefore no revenue retained by any council in 2022-23, retentions generally affecting the following year’s non-domestic rates income.

Non-domestic rates incentivisation scheme (NDRIS, formerly BRIS) retention amounts relating to 2023-24 will be made available at the earliest opportunity, these amounts will be reported in councils provisional NDR outturn returns following the end of the current financial year.

Local government finance circular 1/2024: Non Domestic Rates Incentivisation Scheme 2023 to 2026 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) details final NDRIS targets for 2023-24 and provisional targets for 2024-25 and 2025-26.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) does not hold the information requested. NHS Boards submit patient level records to the national waiting times datamart but the information provided on the clinical priority of a referral is not available for reporting as it isn’t quality assured. This is due to there being no agreed national definition on what constitutes an urgent or routine referral.

Statistics relating to the waits patients experience for a new outpatient appointment at a consultant-led clinic are published up to 30th June 2024 and can be found using the link https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/29135/newop_aug24.xlsx. The median and 90th percentile waits for cardiology in NHS Dumfries and Galloway, as well as a breakdown of the length of waits, can be found using the dropdowns in the 1.6 Table tab:

Please note, PHS does not publish the longest wait because this statistic can often reflect the wait of one of a very small number of patient records where there are inaccuracies in the information recorded at the time the data were extracted, and consequently the wait that can be derived is erroneously long.

To minimise this risk, PHS publishes the 90th percentile statistic (the length of time within which 9 out of 10 patients are seen) to provide a more reliable indication of the longest waits that are occurring, as this statistic is not susceptible to these outliers.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-30449 on 22 October 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.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-30449 on 22 October 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 is keen to ensure that local areas provide support at all times and that they assess the needs of people in their areas and work with them to design and deliver services in a way that meets the needs of people impacted by drugs and alcohol.

Through our National Mission we are providing around £250 million of investment to support local areas to assess and meet their local needs.

The Scottish Police Authority budget for 2024-25 provides record funding of £1.55bn for policing, an increase of £92.7m despite difficult financial circumstances due to UKG austerity.

The allocation of this budget to policing priorities, is for the Chief Constable and Scottish Police Authority, including the allocation of resources to tackle cybercrime and fraud.