The grid-level costs of specific variable or baseload generation will depend on various factors including (but not limited to) grid capacity, demand flexibility and the geographical location of installation.

The Scottish Government has not made an assessment of this. The responsibility for the balancing of grid lies with the National Grid Electricity System Operator and wider system integration costs are set by the regulator, Ofgem. This data is not held by the Scottish Government.

As set out in our draft budget the capital funding position is extremely challenging, with a UK Government cut of some 10% in our capital budget over the next five years. That has inevitably led to some difficult decisions on what capital projects will be progressed.

The Scottish Government will bring forward a revised pipeline of infrastructure investment in the spring, alongside the medium-term financial strategy, at which point we would hope that the fiscal outlook will be clearer.

The Scottish Government has been working in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support to improve the support offered to those affected by cancer through the Transforming Cancer Care Programme (TCC) since 2016. This partnership - the first of its kind in the UK - has seen £18 million invested to date. Both the Scottish Government and Macmillan Cancer Support have committed to a further £4.5 million investment each over the next 3 years.

This will ensure that every patient with cancer in Scotland has access to a specialist key support worker, who can provide emotional, financial and practical support.

Cancer is classified as a disability under the Equality Act 2010. Although the Act is a reserved matter, we would expect employers to adopt the Scottish Government’s Fair Work approach, including flexible working practices, to support employees affected by cancer.

The latest statistics show that 75.6% of child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) patients started treatment within 18 weeks of their referral. At Board level, 13 out of 14 CAMHS services have effectively eliminated their long waiting lists where 3% or fewer of all waits are over a year.

We regularly engage with Boards at official level, continually monitoring CAMHS waiting times performance and backlogs and directing tailored support to those Boards with the longest waits, including NHS Ayrshire and Arran. We provide access to professional advice, ensuring they have robust improvement plans in place and monitor their implementation.

We have commissioned all Boards to submit performance trajectories up to March 2024, including a timeline for clearing long waits. These will be updated annually and used to inform further targeted improvement work to ensure all Boards consistently meet the CAMHS waiting times standard.

Employment of Anaesthesia Associates (AAs) and Physician Associates (PAs) is the responsibility of individual NHS Scotland Boards who receive funding from the Scottish Government. In the case of AAs, it is open to Boards to employ and support these individuals for the duration of their training as a way of building clinical capacity. There have been no nationally funded programmes to grow the AA and PA workforce over the last five financial years.

We will work with NHS Education for Scotland and continue to review the merits associated with a subsidised educational offer for trainee AAs and PAs in Scotland, building on models adopted elsewhere in the UK, as we progress with an evidence-based approach to the expansion of Medical Associate Profession roles across NHS Scotland.

We are working to ensure lessons identified from our policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic are put in place and that policy across government is better able to respond to the next pandemic. This includes clear responsibilities for preparedness and response; to include NHS resilience, Scottish Resilience (through SGORR), and cross-Scottish Government policy consideration of our existing plans, drawing on learnings including the UK Chief Medical Officers Technical report on the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK and Public Health Scotland’s National Incident Management Team reporting.

We are working with the UK Government and other administrations to strengthen the capabilities and countermeasures required to address future pandemics, including retaining stockpiles of PPE and the purchase of vaccines and medicines. We have established a Standing Committee on Pandemic Preparedness which provided interim recommendations on future pandemic preparedness in August 2022. We anticipate that the Standing Committee on Pandemic Preparedness will provide its final report in the summer 2024 for consideration.

We are committed to responding to both the UK and Scottish Covid-19 inquiries, as learning lessons from the pandemic is vital to prepare for the future.

Waiting times for planned care services is one of many metrics that contributes to the monitoring of performance and effectiveness across NHSScotland.

There have been several changes to waiting time targets and standards over the last 30 years. The Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011 established a 12 week Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) written into legislation for eligible patients who are due to receive planned inpatient or day case treatment from 1 October 2012. The Act states that eligible patients must start to receive that treatment within 12 weeks (84 days) of the treatment being agreed. This guarantee is based on completed waits where a patient is removed from the list after being admitted for treatment.

To support the above guarantee, from 31 March 2010 no patient should wait longer than 12 weeks for a new outpatient appointment at a consultant-led clinic. More information on this can be found on the Public Health Scotland website section on waiting times .

More recently, in July 2022 new targets were set out for NHSScotland to address the impact of the pandemic on long waiting times for planned care. Public Health Scotland publish progress against these targets quarterly: Stage of treatment waiting times - Inpatients, day cases and new outpatients quarter ending 30 September 2023 - NHS waiting times - stage of treatment - Publications - Public Health Scotland

The Scottish Ambulance Service is currently in the planning stages to reprofile their smartphones to enable staff to utilise the video consulting service “NEAR ME”, where appropriate and in the best interests of patient care.

The Scottish Government recognises that maximizing the use of recoverable or waste heat, which at present goes unused, remains a priority.

For heat network developers, there are clear incentives to connect to this heat as it can be an economical source of heat, where buildings or the processes operating in them can provide surplus heat to our homes and buildings, potentially lowering the cost of heat for heat network customers and providing an income for heat source providers.

We are seeking evidence in our Heat in Buildings Bill consultation about whether requirements should be placed on owners of unused heat. Following the closure of the consultation we will analyse responses to questions on recoverable or waste heat and use this to guide our development of recoverable and waste heat policy.

The Heat in Buildings Bill consultation proposes that local authorities and the Scottish Ministers may be provided with powers to require buildings within a Heat Network Zone to end their use of polluting heating systems (by a certain date and with a minimum notice period).

We do not specify any sub-sets of buildings which may be affected by these proposals, in order to gain thorough feedback in response to our consultation. Thereafter we will analyse responses to help determine whether to take these proposals forward, including whether they may be restricted to particular types of buildings.

In March 2022 we published The Heat Networks Delivery Plan, which sets out a building hierarchy table for connection to a heat network and can also support our policy development in this area. It sets out that within a heat network zone it will be important to encourage and prioritise the connection of key anchor buildings, which can enable the efficient operation of a heat network, helping to reduce customer costs and enabling the extension of the network over time to other nearby buildings.

District heat network development: Building Connection Hierarchy*