Chamber and committees

Scottish Government International Climate Change Officials are attending the 60th Sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Scottish Ministers are not in attendance.

Although Scotland is not a UN member state, the Scottish Government is resolute in our commitment to utilise our convening and influencing powers wherever possible in order to drive forward climate action internationally.

Data on Fracture Liaison Services across Scotland are not centrally held by the Scottish Government.

In setting out the four key priorities for the Scottish Government, the First Minister has been clear in emphasising the need to focus on action and delivery rather than additional strategies.

The National Strategy for Economic Transformation was published in 2022 and is a 10-year strategy. The strategy set out our long-term vision to build a fairer, wealthier and greener economy based on the principles of prosperity, equality, sustainability and resilience.

The strategy’s Fairer and More Equal Society programme aims to reorient our economy towards wellbeing and fair work, to deliver higher rates of employment and wage growth. The Skilled Workforce programme seeks to ensure that people have the skills they need at every stage of life to have rewarding careers and meet the demands of an ever-changing economy and society, and that employers invest in the skilled employees they need to grow their businesses.

Engagement with business, enterprise and industry stakeholders was a critical part of developing the strategy. We continue to work with partners to deliver the labour market interventions that will have the greatest impact on achieving our ambition of growing an economy that is fair and green and we will be setting out the next phase of our approach in the forthcoming Programme for Government.

Toxics use reduction as a concept is already well embedded in the regulatory system on chemicals safety in Great Britain. This system includes UK REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of Chemicals) regulation, part of the post-brexit chemicals regulatory framework we inherited from the EU. It includes specific provisions to prevent the use of harmful substances, ensure mitigations are in place to reduce exposure from such chemicals where their use is essential, and reduce risks associated with chemical use more generally.

The Marine Fund Scotland (MFS) has paid £11.63m to applicants who were awarded total funding of £14m in 2023-24. Individual awards are published here - https://www.gov.scot/publications/marine-fund-scotland-grants-awarded/ . The Scottish Government publishes all payments over £25k here - https://www.gov.scot/collections/government-spend-over-gbp25000-monthly-reports/ .

The remaining £2.37m funding supported data collection on stocks in the North Sea and the West of Scotland. This information is combined with data from other European nations who fish in these waters and is then considered by the International Council for Exploration of the Seas (ICES).

The GP Sustainability loan scheme was paused in March 2024 due to a greater than anticipated number of loans having completed this year with the result that our budget for loans was oversubscribed.

The Scottish Government’s position on GP premises remains that set out in The 2018 General Medical Services in Scotland document: we recognise and support a long-term shift that gradually moves towards a model which does not presume GPs own their practice premises.

We intend to resume Tranche 1 of the Sustainability Loan Scheme in 2024-25 once we have completed the disbursement of funds for those loans already completed and confirmed a budget. This will likely not be until midway through the financial year.

Our preference remains to continue the loan scheme into Tranche 2 and beyond – however, this will depend on whether the UK Government resumes the allocation of Financial Transaction Capital to the Scottish Government.

In the meantime we have carried out no assessment of the potential impact of the suspension of the GP sustainability loan scheme on health inequalities as we intend to resume the scheme as soon as possible.

In 2023 Scottish Government committed to carrying out a scoping exercise across Health Boards to consider the FLS audit through Scottish National Audit Programme (SNAP) with Public Health Scotland (PHS).

Scottish Government committed to funding up to £150,000 for this scoping exercise and a potential audit in year 1. This has now been completed and PHS have put forwards a Business Case to Scottish Government which is currently being considered.

The Scottish Government recognises the impact of these global medicine shortages on people living with cystic fibrosis. The supply of medicines and associated legislation are a reserved matter for the UK Government, and we continue to engage with them on this supply issue and other medicine shortages. The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer (CPO) for Scotland is a member of a UK-wide Medicines Shortage Response Group (MSRG), set up to identify and co-ordinate responses to medicines shortages across the UK and provide advice to prescribers on alternative therapeutic options.

In May, the Scottish Government issued a Medicine Supply Alert Notice (MSAN) and a National Patient Safety Alert (NatPSA) which outline actions to be taken by prescribers, who are best-placed to determine the impact of this shortage on each individual person, and offer an alternative treatment, where appropriate. We also issued a Serious Shortage Protocol (SSP) for Creon ® 25000 gastro-resistant capsules which allows community pharmacists to restrict the total quantity of Creon ® supplied to one month’s supply to help conserve stocks of Creon ® .

The Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022 requires relevant authorities to publish a Good Food Nation Plan within 12 months of the date that Section 10 of the Act comes into force. It is the Scottish Government’s intention to commence this part of the legislation at around the same time as the final version of the national Good Food Nation Plan is published in 2025. Relevant authorities will therefore be required to publish their own Plans in 2026.

The Scottish Government regularly monitors for hazardous substances in the Scottish marine environment. Hazardous substances highlighted to be of particular concern and routinely monitored include heavy metals (cadmium, mercury and lead), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These contaminants are measured in biota (mussels and fish) collected as part of the UK Clean Seas Environment Monitoring Programme for four biogeographic regions: Irish Sea (Clyde and Solway), Minches and Western Scotland, Scottish Continental Shelf and Northern North Sea.

More information related to the testing for contaminants in marine animals in Scottish waters can be found in the Scotland's Marine Assessment 2020 | Scotland's Marine Assessment 2020 .