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To avoid accusations of bias or undue influence in planning and consenting decisions, Minsters cannot undertake any discussions with developers or objectors about the merits or otherwise of forthcoming, or live applications.

Ministers may of course undertake meetings with companies, as part of everyday Scottish Government business. However, these meetings do not contain conversations about specific planning applications and are properly recorded to ensure full transparency.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) appraises newly licensed medicines for clinical and cost-effectiveness to help Health Boards determine whether a medicine should be accepted for routine use within the NHS in Scotland. Following the appraisal process, the SMC publishes advice for Health Boards in Scotland to consider. The SMC does not issue tailored guidance for specific medicines.

The Scottish Government understand the importance of sport and physical activity for women and girls in Scotland and the positive impact that has on their physical, mental, and social health. Football plays a key role in this because it has a reach into communities like no other sport, and participation levels in women and girls football are at record levels.

The Scottish Government supports the Scottish FA in making football accessible for all and believes in the power of football in bringing communities together. We are also keen to support the SWPL in promoting and improving the elite women’s game to help encourage more women and girls into the sport.

Produced in partnership with UEFA, the Scottish FA’s Accelerate Our Game strategy has been designed to a provide focus to the Scottish FA’s commitment to progress the girls’ and women’s game in Scotland. The strategy aims to harness the power of women’s football by changing perceptions and empowering people to inspire the nation, whilst developing and promoting women’s football for all, enabling current and future generations to enjoy our national game equally.

In addition, the Scottish FA leads three key programmes targeting girl’s football:

• UEFA Disney Playmakers
• KDM Soccer Centres
• SPAR Future Stars Cup Square

Furthermore, sportscotland works in partnership with all 32 local authorities to invest in and support the Active Schools Network. Active Schools aims to provide more and higher quality opportunities to take part in sport and physical activity before school, during lunchtime and after school, and to develop effective pathways between schools and sports clubs in the local community. In the 2022-23 academic year, football was the second most popular activity for girls within the Active Schools programme, with girls and young women making 379,944 visits to Active Schools football sessions.

The Scottish Government does not publish local authority level data for the items requested.

Scottish Government does, however, publish related data on language learning and teaching at a national level. The table below provides a summary of data from the biennial 1+2 languages survey, summarising provision of language teaching for the first additional language (known as “L2”) and the second additional language (known as “L3”) in 2019, 2021 and 2023.

While the Scottish Government sets the strategic policy for the NHS in Scotland, it is NHS Boards and healthcare professionals locally who have responsibility for both service delivery and ensuring people receive the right care for them, taking into account relevant guidance, local service needs and priorities for investment.

It is therefore for NHS Boards to determine what clinical interventions they offer, while giving regard to the considerations above.

The majority of Scottish health boards participated in the 2022 UK Parkinson’s Audit which measures the quality of Parkinson’s services against international best practice. This includes Patient Reported Experience Measure (PREM) data from people who use Parkinson’s services.

The 2022 Audit showed Scotland outperforming the UK in terms of future care planning, and access to essential professionals such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists.

It is for NHS Boards to make decisions and progress on the delivery of services locally, including consideration of delivering the asks proposed at the Scottish Stoma Forum in October 2023. Positive progress shared with the Scottish Government includes: agreeing that the role of a stoma forum should reflect local needs; the range of nursing support available for stoma patients is now more expansive; stoma care is included as part of the Registered Nurse core curriculum; patients can request a review of their care from their local stoma care team at any time, meaning that a formal offer of an annual review should not be required in most cases.

I am pleased to confirm that the NHS Scotland Operational Improvement Plan has published today: www.gov.scot/isbn/9781836914556

The plan focuses on the following four critical aspects to help protect the quality and safety of care, supported by the increased investment for health and social care in the 2025-26 Scottish Budget:

• improving access to treatment;
• shifting the balance of care;
• digital and technological innovation;
• prevention.

It details how the specific commitments outlined in the answer to question S6W-34287 will be delivered – building on health boards’ own delivery planning to prioritise how services will be improved across NHS Scotland. This plan will be followed by publication of a population health framework later in the spring and a health and social care service renewal framework in June.

It is the responsibility of each local authority, who operates Decriminalised Parking Enforcement to ensure their parking attendants are issuing Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) lawfully and the level of discretion that can be applied in individual situations. It is not for the Scottish Government to specify when discretion should be applied. Stringent appeals processes are also in place to assist those who feel they may have been issued a PCN unfairly.

It is the responsibility of each local authority, who operates Decriminalised Parking Enforcement, to provide guidance to ensure their parking attendants are issuing Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) lawfully and the level of discretion that can be applied in individual situations. It is not for the Scottish Government to specify when discretion should be applied. Stringent appeals processes are also in place to assist those who feel they may have been issued a PCN unfairly.

In 2024-25, we allocated over £450,000 to gynaecology from our £30 million targeted investment in planned care, delivering around 3,500 additional new outpatient appointments.

The 2025-26 Budget will provide a record £21.7 billion for Health & Social Care, including a commitment to provide £200 million to help reduce waiting times and improve capacity, and gynaecology is being targeted as a key priority area for additional funding.

Our Women’s Health Champion, Professor Anna Glasier, and I have been meeting with clinicians to better understand the challenges that currently exist within gynaecology services, to discuss innovative solutions, and to reiterate our commitment that timely access to gynaecology services is a key priority area for the Scottish Government and for the next phase of the Women’s Health Plan.

Furthermore, the Scottish Government commissioned Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) has developed a strong clinically-led Specialty Delivery Groups (SDG) for Gynaecology, which promotes multidisciplinary team working and supports local adoption of service improvement programmes. This group has supported several new and innovative pathway developments, many of which are now being successfully scaled up across Scotland, including Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT) and Patient Initiated Review (PIR).