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The Scottish Government has disbursed cancer service allocations for this year to local health boards, including £4.6 million for systemic anti-cancer therapy and £11.3 million for cancer waiting times, in line with our overall strategic aim that, where possible, diagnostic tests and treatment are situated close to home and travel to specialist care is fully supported.

In addition, we are working in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support to improve the service that we offer patients in local communities through the transforming cancer care programme. It is the first programme of its kind in the United Kingdom and ensures that every patient with cancer in Scotland has access to a specialist key support worker who can assist them in accessing wider local services.

I reiterate the point that Humza Yousaf has made about the positive survey from Macmillan. I agree on the importance and effectiveness of a single point of contact to provide advice and support during a person’s cancer journey. In 2024-25, we have continued to invest in our single point of contact programme, including in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, where we have invested more than £250,000 to support people with gynaecological, prostate and lung cancer. We are working with Healthcare Improvement Scotland to review the programme to consider how we best scale the approach across Scotland.

Jackie Baillie is right to say that we have room for improvement on waiting times for cancer, and we are doing work in that regard. Some £1.2 million of the funding has been directed specifically towards diagnostics, and we continue to focus on improving timely access to cancer services, which is why our programme for government has committed to opening a further rapid cancer diagnostic service, bringing our national total to six.

The plan set out our vision of a transformation of maternity and neonatal services, and the vast majority of its recommendations have been implemented. Health boards have embedded the plan in local maternity and neonatal care, and that has been supported by national initiatives such as the young patients family fund, improvements to adverse events investigating and the national bereavement care pathway.

Work continues to establish the new model of neonatal intensive care and to deliver continuity of carer, which is highlighted as a programme for government commitment.

I thank all the people who have been involved in helping to achieve the best start vision, and we will publish a full programme report later this year.

I would like to put on record my sympathy and my condolences to all the families who have been impacted in the past year due to alcohol deaths of their loved ones.

As Sue Webber will know, decisions on funding and service provision are made at a local level by NHS Lothian and, although we have no official contact with the health board on this issue, ministers would have to consider the implications of such a move very carefully.

The Scottish Government has set out a clear definition of what counts as residential rehabilitation and has used it consistently. We are working with members of our expert residential rehabilitation development working group to assess whether the ARBD unit meets the definition and we will provide an update to the service manager in due course.

The Scottish Government is taking a number of actions to increase access to residential rehab and meet our targets. That includes providing alcohol and drug partnerships with £5 million per year for residential rehab; creating a £2 million residential rehab additional placement fund for local areas that have an increased demand for placements; and expanding residential rehab capacity by making £38 million available to eight projects across Scotland to provide 140 more beds by 2025-26.

Yes, the Scottish Government absolutely recognises that and we have asked Public Health Scotland to investigate the recent fall in numbers of referrals to alcohol and drug specialist services. We are giving funding to alcohol and drug partnerships for both alcohol and drug treatment services, because those services are integrated. We have made £112 million available to them, which is being used to ensure that they can make the right local decisions. I absolutely recognise that there has been a fall in numbers. We need to look at the reasons behind that, whether that is to do with stigma or a lack of understanding of where those services are.

The Scottish Government is currently reviewing the evaluation of the Penumbra Milestone alcohol-related brain damage—ARBD—unit that was undertaken by Dr Smith. The report highlights the improvement in cognitive function for people who were assessed in the evaluation period as well as reduced attendance rates at emergency departments. The Scottish Government will review the report’s findings and recommendations and will consider them in future policy development.

I am sure that Richard Leonard would like to correct the parliamentary record, because I have visited the Wishaw neonatal unit. I have also visited Ninewells hospital and the Queen Elizabeth university hospital and I have been gathering evidence from people across the health boards and the neonatal and maternity services that Scotland provides.

I am completely focused on ensuring that we make the right decision for the smallest and sickest babies in Scotland. I have read on numerous occasions the expert advice that we have received and I have spoken to the people who were involved in producing it, and that advice shows that reducing to three the number of intensive neonatal care units is the correct decision to support families with the smallest and sickest babies.

The Sandyford gender identity clinic is not going to be closed, as it offers a wide range of sexual health services. However, the report of the multidisciplinary team has recommended that, in the future, specialist gender identity health services for young people be provided not in an adult sexual health setting but in paediatric clinical settings.

As I referenced in my statement, under the Scottish Government’s new planning and commissioning approach to fragile services, work will take place to address the immediate fragility of gender identity healthcare for young people and develop a sustainable longer-term model in line with the recommendation that these services be delivered in a paediatric setting. As I indicated, all the reports and frameworks that we have published today have been subject to consultation with appropriate people.