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The first meeting of the Expert Group took place on 25 April 2024 and its lifespan was initially expected to be around one year, although there was scope to extend this, and it’s now likely to continue beyond this time.

The group aims to share an update on its progress, and timeline for potential recommendations, to the Scottish Government for consideration in late April.

The Scottish Government recognises the impact that child poverty has on families with a baby, and that some of these families may use food or baby banks.

Scotland is the first nation in the UK to publish a Cash-First Plan, grounded in human rights, that works towards ending the need for food banks in Scotland through promoting cash-first responses, including to meet the needs of infants. Scotland was also the first country in the UK to develop an Infant Food Insecurity Toolkit for local partners, based on the Unicef advice.

Where direct provision of infant formula is needed our Toolkit sets out how emergency local pathways could provide this safely, responsively and sustainably through health professionals and other local provision. This includes recommendations that food banks, where possible, provide cash-equivalent vouchers or purchase infant formula to meet need, avoiding the unpredictability of donated formula.

Anyone supporting a family in a crisis should refer them to their local authority or a health professional, such as a health visitor, family nurse, or midwife, in order to ensure they are getting the holistic support they need. This includes financial advice, and a referral to cash-first crisis supports such as the Scottish Welfare Fund.

The core elements of Anne’s Law have already been delivered by using our existing powers to strengthen Health and social care standards on visiting in care homes and in updates to guidance. As a result people living in care homes can now expect to see family members or friends during outbreaks and are able to name people who can directly participate in meeting their care needs.

The Scottish Government is absolutely committed to enshrining Anne’s Law in primary legislation, and will deliver it within the National Care Service Bill. The timing of this will be dependent on the Bill successfully completing its Parliamentary passage.

The Scottish Government has made £2,877,287.97 of funding available to local authorities to enable them to cancel school meal debts within their respective local areas. This sum represents the entire amounts bid for by each local authority.

29 local authorities submitted applications to receive funding from the School Meal Debt Fund and, to date, 16 of those local authorities have returned their completed grant acceptance forms to us and we have now taken steps to issue those payments to all 16 local authorities. The combined amount issued to all 16 of those local authorities totals £2,164,575.52.

Information about those local authorities whom have received funding so far, plus the amounts issued so far, is contained within the following table:

In line with the Tobacco and Vaping Framework, work is underway to improve the technical infrastructure of the existing register of Tobacco and Nicotine Vapour Product retailers.

Officials are working with Scottish IT developers ePass, selected by the Scottish Government through CivTech Challenge 9, to create and deliver an up-to-date web-based register product. It is expected that this new product will make enforcement easier, will support improvements in data quality, as well as support engagement with retailers and increase the value of registration for retailers. It is expected to launch in Spring this year.

The National Entitlement Card allows the holder to access rail concession schemes, where such schemes exist. It is a feature of these Local Authority sponsored schemes that tickets may only be purchased in face-to-face transactions – either at ticket offices or on board a train. The Scottish Government specifies that all ScotRail trains should have a member of staff on board and therefore these concessionary fares are always available for eligible passengers.

The Scottish Government remains committed to the Scotland-Malawi relationship, with funding continuing to support programmes focused on health, inclusive education, equalities, renewable energy and climate justice, as well as financial support for civil society links between Scotland and Malawi. However, there are no plans to open any further Scottish Government international offices during this parliamentary term.

There is ongoing engagement with the Nordic countries on a wide variety of policy issues which deliver against the commitments in Scotland’s International Strategy and the Scottish Government’s Priorities for Scotland. For example: officials are working to develop opportunities for policy learning and exchange with Sweden on forestry and peatland restoration, while collaboration with Denmark is proving pivotal to informing the Scottish Government’s approach to digitisation and health reform. Scottish Government officials benefit from working closely with colleagues from Scottish Development International, who are based in the Nordic Office. Integrated working between the two teams has led to the first Space Scotland Summit which can be linked to £2 million of exports.

(a) As set out on 22 January 2024 in response to question S6W-24720, the Scottish Government has established an Expert Group to lead on scoping work to consider and provide recommendations on how Scotland will work towards reaching the targets set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to eliminate Cervical Cancer.

As well as the Expert Group itself, three subgroups have been established to support the Expert Group in considering and analysing data on specific topics (vaccination, screening and cancer treatment).

The sub groups held inaugural meetings in September, and discussions are ongoing to inform recommendations on how Scotland will progress towards Cervical Cancer elimination and when this could potentially be achieved. These recommendations will be considered by the Scottish Government.

(b) The Scottish Government recognises the importance of HPV vaccination and screening.

(i) The latest published HPV vaccination uptake data from PHS shows that pupils living in the most deprived quintiles had lower coverage of the HPV vaccine compared with pupils from the least deprived areas. We are working with Public Health Scotland (PHS) and territorial Health Boards to consider what further actions can be taken to increase vaccination uptake, support those eligible for vaccination, and to address any inequalities in accessing immunisation services. Reducing vaccine inequalities is one of the three primary objectives in PHS’s recently published Scotland's 5-Year Vaccination and Immunisation Framework and Delivery Plan.

Completion of consent forms is required to participate in school vaccination programmes. We therefore welcome the return of the PHS marketing campaign, “chat.sign.protect”, which builds on the messages of last year’s campaign to raise awareness of vaccines offered in secondary school and encourage an increase in the numbers of parents and young people giving consent to be vaccinated.

Timed to coincide with the distribution of informed consent materials to young people, the campaign aims to increase understanding of why these vaccines are important, and the seriousness of the diseases they protect against, and encourages parents and carers to take action and sign consent forms to ensure our young people receive the protection offered by immunisation.

Addressing the inequalities in HPV uptake and maximising the opportunities for young people to receive the vaccine is a primary focus of the Cervical Cancer elimination work.

(ii) The Equity in Screening Strategy, combined with an action plan, was published on 27th July 2023. The vision of the strategy is for access for all eligible individuals, across the full screening pathway. The Strategy launched alongside the Equity in Screening Network which supports the strategy by capturing local and third sector research activity and allows individuals that work across screening to share evidence, best practice and learning around screening inequalities.

Several national projects are being supported by the Inequalities Fund of £1 million. This includes changes to national IT systems to improve engagement with participants. Research and learning from past projects has shown some ways to increase access to screening and uptake, including appointment reminders and targeted follow-up with non-responders.

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 currently working on a National Treatment Specification for Alcohol and Drug Treatment in Scotland.

This document will be informed by numerous sources including the forthcoming UK Clinical Guidelines for Alcohol Treatment and the recently published Public Health Scotland review into Alcohol Brief Interventions as well as key independent reports such as Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP) report, Exploring the delivery of alcohol-related health advice in dental practice settings: A scoping review.

Officials will work closely with colleagues within Primary Care including the team of the Chief Dental Officer to ensure that the National Treatment Specification fully reflects the importance of dentistry as an integral part of Scotland’s alcohol treatment provision.