As required by Section 103 of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, the next report to the Scottish Parliament on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) will be published in 2024. The Scottish Government intends to publish the next report in December 2024. Reporting occurs in a 6-year cycle. The last report was published in December 2018, and is available here: Marine Protected Area Network - 2018 Report to the Scottish Parliament - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

Public Health Scotland defines ‘start of treatment’ as “when a patient’s treatment starts noting that not all people who are referred go on to have treatment. Some people attend an assessment appointment, need no further treatment, and so are removed from the waiting list. Some people are offered treatment but decide not to go ahead.”

Most children and young people attend a first appointment for assessment and there are three main outcomes of that first appointment:

(i) The child or young person needs no further treatment from CAMHS but is provided with personalised and meaningful signposting. At this point the reported waiting time is stopped and they are removed from the waiting list;

(ii) Some children and young people are offered treatment but decide not to go ahead. At this point the reported waiting time is stopped and they are removed from the waiting list;

(iii) Treatment is offered and accepted; and either treatment begins at this appointment and the reported waiting time is stopped, or a treatment appointment is offered and the reported waiting time stops when that treatment appointment happens.

The waiting time to the start of treatment will depend on the complexity of each individual case, the specific intervention that has been recommended and the availability of professionals trained to provide that intervention. All children and young people offered treatment in CAMHS should meet the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) referral criteria and receive support in line with the CAMHS National Service Specification.

Engagement between Scottish Enterprise and Gibson's Engineering Ltd led to a Business Gateway referral in 2022. In addition, the Find Business Support website ( findbusinesssupport.gov.scot ) provides information on the advice and funding offered by Scottish Enterprise and Business Gateway and I would encourage Gibson’s Engineering to consider the full range of support available.

Specialist support is also available through the Rail Cluster, an initiative designed and funded by Scottish Enterprise and Transport Scotland which is being delivered by Scottish Engineering. The aim is to connect Scottish SMEs with the country’s top manufacturing innovators and supply chain partners to help deliver the decarbonisation of Scotland’s railways. I understand that Gibson’s Engineering has already engaged with the Rail Cluster.

Government does not fund North East Edinburgh Counselling Service directly from its mental health programme budget, therefore no objectives have been set.

Plans for decarbonisation of the Fife Circle are in development. It is expected this will be one of the next parts of the Scottish network to be decarbonised, after the current work to electrify the East Kilbride line. The scope of the work in Fife will be developed and appraised alongside consideration of new battery-electric trains.

The Scottish Government has not undertaken any targeted work to assess if the welfare of brachycephalic breeds has improved following the introduction of The Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 (the 2021 regulations), however this is something that we do intend to investigate further with local authorities and relevant stakeholders.

Meantime, the Scottish Government continues to engage regularly with local authorities on the enforcement of the 2021 regulations and work with key stakeholders to promote and encourage ethical and responsible breeding of dogs.

Please see below the funding that has been provided to Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS) in each financial year since 2020-21. Please note for 2023-24, we have provided the total committed spend for the current financial year, which may change by April 2024.

We cannot confirm the amount of funding which will be provided to RCS for the financial year 2024-25 at this time. However, we can confirm that RCS will receive funding through the Children, Young People and Families Intervention and Adult Learning and Empowering Communities fund, through ‘100 days’ funding and the Delivering Equally Safe fund amongst others in 2024-25.

Please note that, in addition to funds provided to Rape Crisis Scotland, we also provide funding to local Rape Crisis Centres through the Delivering Equally Safe fund. Additionally, some of the funds provided to Rape Crisis Scotland are distributed by them to local Rape Crisis Centres.

Financial Year 2020-21 - £3,342,646

Financial Year 2021-22 - £5,654,322

Financial Year 2022-23 - £4,587,738

Financial Year 2023-24 - £4,557,276* (committed spend for financial year)

A full breakdown of the total number and value of contracts awarded to Thermo Fisher Scientific for the last five fiscal years covering all Scottish public bodies is provided in the following table.

A final two year report of Scotland’s early adopter sites, was published by the University of Strathclyde on Thursday 29 th February highlighting its success, a summary of which is available at rapid-cancer-diagnostic-services-evaluation-summary-february-2024.pdf (nhscfsd.co.uk)

The report found that 3,616 RCDS referrals were received and 2,489 (~69%) accepted. The remainder of referrals were largely either redirected to site-specific cancer pathways (~15%) or did not progress onto the RCDS pathway as they didn’t meet referral criteria (~12%).

This data covers the time period from when RCDSs were activated up to October 2023. Work is continuing with PHS to establish a national data collection for RCDSs.

The Gender Equality Taskforce in Education & Learning developed a set of ambitions in order to help inform its work, including the development of an intersectional framework. Since then, discussion and work has been ongoing to refine the workplan, to ensure that it is able to enact the type of long term, complex, systemic change that is needed. I am committed to continuing and accelerating such work to ensure that girls and young women have a gender equal experience of education and learning.