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The Scottish Government is considering the recent report by the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission on the use of electronic dog training collars and looks forward to their future consideration of wider aspects of dog training. We will consider all their findings carefully as part of our ongoing commitment to improve and enhance animal welfare.

The Scottish Government has committed to undertaking independent research to understand the impact of 20 th century policies on the Gypsy/Traveller community in Scotland. We developed specifications for two research projects to gather further information, with one focussing on archival analysis and the other on community engagement and lived experience. We successfully appointed an appropriate contractor to take forward the archival project, and are working to re-tender the community engagement and lived experience project as no compliant bids were received for this. We expect to receive initial findings from the research next year, at which point we will consider next steps and respond.

The Scottish Government’s 2021 Population Strategy contains a focus on ensuring our population is sustainably distributed; however, it does not set explicit population targets.

A range of work is ongoing across government to achieve this, for example the National Planning Framework 4, which reflects the need for planning to identify the amount of land required for future homes and to enable more balanced demographic change.

Additionally, Scottish Government is a full partner in the Glasgow City Region Deal, which seeks to deliver key regeneration and development projects across employability and transport, with aims to boost to the city region's economy.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) uses the national waiting times warehouse to collect electronic patient records. This data source can be used routinely to identify the specialty of treatment. However, although the records are designed to collect coded information on the procedure that is planned for the patient, this information is often either incomplete, lacking in essential detail and/or its accuracy cannot be assured. In addition, for patients who have completed their wait the procedure(s) that was planned may not always reflect that performed after they were admitted for treatment. The latter is not captured through the warehouse, and as such we would be unable to report accurately on ongoing waits to this level of detail.

Public Health Scotland publishes quarterly statistics relating to the number of ongoing waits, by specialty and health Board of treatment. The latest statistics for Ophthalmology in NHS Shetland are published up to 31 st March 2023, and for new outpatients, this information can be found under Table 1.1 using the link below:

https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/media/19970/newop_may23.xlsx .

Scottish Government launched the Neonatal Expenses Fund (NEF) in April 2018 to help support parents to be able to spend as much time with their babies as possible, while they were receiving care within a neonatal unit.

Scottish Government increased funding in July 2021 to form the Young Patients Family Fund (YPFF), which subsumed the NEF to create a single unified fund. This new commitment extended support to families of children and young people receiving inpatient care up to age 18.

The fund is demand-led and the Scottish Government is committed to ensuring sufficient funding to NHS Boards to support all valid YPFF claims. Budgets for both funds are as set out in the following table.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-17049 on 10 May 2023. 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 regulations for the licensing, safety and efficacy of medicines are currently reserved to the UK Government and are the responsibility of the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). For a medicine to be routinely prescribed, it firstly needs to receive a licence from the MHRA. It is the responsibility of individual companies to apply to the MHRA for a marketing authorisation (licence). The application process requires a company to provide data demonstrating the quality, safety and efficacy of the medicine.

The Scottish Government has not had any discussions with the UK Government on the licensing of testosterone for women in perimenopause or menopause. AndroFeme ® is not licensed for the treatment of symptoms of menopause in the UK. The prescribing of an unlicensed medicine is a clinical decision by prescribers directly responsible for individual patients. Both its use and the oversight of the patient’s care are the responsibility of the prescribing clinician.

Scottish Government has provided free multi-vitamins to all pregnant women, for the duration of their pregnancy, since April 2017. Annual costs are set out in the following table.

The Scottish Government welcomes the latest statistics publication from Public Health Scotland that reported a small improvement in screening uptake in the most deprived areas in comparison to last year. However, we recognise that there is still work to be done to ensure that screening uptake in the most deprived areas continues to increase.

Over 2021-22 and 2022-23, we provided £2 million towards projects that tackled inequalities within the cancer screening programmes. In 2023-24, an additional £1 million will be provided to build on this work. The Scottish Government has also helped support the development of a National Screening Equity Strategy that will consider the main causes of inequalities and will outline initial actions to address barriers and facilitate access of underserved groups. This strategy is due for publication this summer. More generally, the breast screening modernisation programme board will be taking forward the recommendations from a major review of breast screening, which will address screening uptake as a whole.

With regard to breast cancer quality performance indicators, Public Health Scotland are responsible for publication and are best placed to advise further.