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My officials engage with the pharmaceutical industry on a range of matters, including the development of new medicines, and keep me updated as required.

The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer last met with Vertex Pharmaceuticals on 6 December 2023 and continued to impress upon them the importance of offering a revised price to address the concern that the current price of the cystic fibrosis (CF) medicines covered by the multiple technology appraisal (MTA) exceeds what the NHS would consider reasonable. She also discussed the ongoing availability of clinical trial CF medicines, including when a trial is stopped.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23384 on 11 December 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.

My officials engage with the UK Government on a range of medicines-related matters, including the availability of medicines, and keep me updated as required.

Over the past five years, the Scottish Government has provided NHS Lanarkshire with the following Baseline funding, and Capital resource for NHS Estate Maintenance, which can be used at the discretion of individual NHS Health Boards:

The cumulative cost of the Fairer Council Tax Consultation is £48,039.52. This relates only to the cost of publishing the Fairer Council Tax consultation, and the cost of an independent third party to analyse the consultation responses.

The authors of this letter recognise the very real progress being made on child poverty because of Scottish Government policies, including our ‘game-changing’ Scottish Child Payment.

More than 323,000 children were benefitting Scottish Child Payment at the end of September 2023, providing support to families which is unparalleled across the UK.

We have committed to uprating Scottish Child Payment by inflation next year and will continue to do everything within the scope of our powers and limited budget to tackle child poverty, in line with our challenging targets.

The Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance will set out the Government’s spending plans in the 2024-25 Scottish Budget, which will be presented to Parliament on 19 December.

Peatland ACTION has spent £56,800 towards physical restoration costs on projects within Dumfries and Galloway in this financial year. The total capital budget (not spend as that will be available once we complete the planned activities in this financial year) for Peatland Action in current financial year is £23m, so this spend is approximately 0.24% of overall budget.

Scottish Government officials were notified about this matter by the Scottish Police Authority on the 1st November 2023. This was for information only as the governance and scrutiny of Police Scotland is for the Authority and not Ministers. No engagement with Police Scotland was required.

The Chair of the Authority has discussed this with the Chief Constable, who has apologised, and the SPA now considers the matter closed.

With regard to the assistance being provided to Police Scotland by Durham Constabulary, while this is an operational matter for the Chief Constable, it is good practice for police organisations to share their knowledge and experience. Police Scotland routinely collaborates and works in partnership with police forces across the UK, and beyond.

As part of the annual Homelessness in Scotland publication, the Scottish Government releases national statistics on the number of households assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness by former armed forces status. Table T22 in the main tables, in the supporting documents of the most recent publication, provides data from 2018-19 to 2022-23. These statistics are available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/homelessness-in-scotland-2022-23/

Additional statistics about veteran homelessness in Scotland, including the number of homelessness applications by former armed forces status, is available here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/homelessness-in-scotland-veteran-homelessness/

Note, these figures have been rounded to the nearest 5 for disclosure control purposes and totals may not sum due to rounding.

The Prior Information Notice (PIN) process is used to give advance notice of projects to the sector and then this is followed by the contract notice and contract award notice process. Publishing a PIN is not a mandatory requirement, but it can alert the market that there is an opportunity coming up within the next 12 months, allowing bidders to research and start to prepare your bid. It can also make it possible for the procurement officer to reduce the timescales needed to complete the procurement exercise.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) multiple technology assessment (MTA) final guidance is currently expected to be published on 20 March 2024.

As the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) is partnering with NICE in the assessment of these medicines, the SMC will publish recommendations aligned with the final NICE guidance thereafter for Health Boards in Scotland to consider.