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The Scottish Government is expecting findings from the independent Public Health Scotland evidence review of the existing literature, studies and research on alcohol marketing and advertising to be available in Spring 2025.

The information as requested is not available.

The house improvement option enables crofters to make both minor and significant improvements to their croft house. In 2023, we introduced energy efficiency measures, allowing crofters to apply for 80% grants of up to £38k, to improve the energy performance of their property and contribute to energy cost savings.

*Figures are broken down by the Rural Payments and Inspections Division by area not by local authority area.

The Scottish Government has committed a further £34m to the culture sector next financial year. This includes an additional £20 million for Creative Scotland’s multi-year funding programme. This will enable Creative Scotland to roll-out its multi-year funding programme from April 2025 – ensuring that the highest ever number of artists and organisations across Scotland including in the Highlands and Islands region receive regular funding. The Culture Collective programme will also be restarted which will benefit Scottish communities, community organisations, individual artists and freelancers.

The Scottish Government has committed a further £700k to the National Performing Companies this financial year and will provide an additional £1m as part of the £34m increase to culture sector funding next financial year. This will take them to the highest level of funding since 2010-11. This will enable the National Performing Companies to maintain and develop their productions across Scotland.

The Scottish Government owns two bicycles, and we do not lease any bicycles.

Our bicycles are for use in campaign marketing in respect of Net Zero messages, and are not made available to staff for use on official business.

NPF4 places climate and nature at the centre of our planning system and makes clear our support for all forms of renewable, low-carbon and zero emission technologies. Potential impacts on communities and individual dwellings are important considerations in the decision-making process and all applications are subject to site-specific assessments.

Where new development proposals come forward, the planning system requires decision makers to weigh up all relevant policies, as well as relevant material considerations, in applying balanced planning judgement.

While Scottish Ministers can decide to amend the NPF or review it in full at any time, having an established and consistent policy framework enables confidence in the planning system and so we expect to exercise this power sparingly. We have no current plans to amend NPF4.

The preparation of NPF4 involved extensive engagement, including with rural interests. Legislation requires that within 10 years after publishing the framework, the Scottish Ministers are to either revise the framework, or publish an explanation of why they have decided not to revise it. When revising the framework, legislation requires that a participation statement must be published, setting out when consultation is likely to take place and with whom Ministers intend to consult, including such persons or bodies with a role in delivery of statutory outcomes. One such outcome is increasing the population of rural areas of Scotland.

We have no plans to review NPF4 at present, but any future review would meet the requirements to engage with relevant interests, including perspectives from rural areas, at the appropriate time. Regulations allowing for amendment of the NPF came into force in December 2025 and set out minimum requirements for engagement with stakeholders.

The Women’s Health Plan set out actions which aim to address women’s health inequalities by raising awareness around women’s health, improving access to health care for women across their lives, and reducing inequalities in health outcomes for women and girls.

Through the Plan we have appointed Scotland’s first Women’s Health Champion; created a Women’s Health Platform on NHS Inform, commissioned NHS Education for Scotland to create bespoke training packages on menstrual health for general practice and there is now a menopause and menstrual health workplace policy for NHS Scotland.

In addition we funded the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland to deliver our Women’s Health Plan lived experience programme. This has included webinars, videos, a toolkit and our Lived Experience Stakeholder Group to raise awareness of women’s health topics and ensure women and people with lived experience are meaningfully involved in decision making and priority setting.

Our Women’s Health Plan 2021 - 2024 Final Report on progress provides further details of our work to date.

Our ambition is that ‘women and girls enjoy the best possible health, throughout their lives’. This remains the ambition of the Scottish Government, and will continue to be our guiding principle as we consider the next phase of the Women’s Health Plan.

Within the Scottish Government policy responsibility for Health and Care Research sits with the Chief Scientist Office (CSO)

CSO is engaged with the MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project, a UK-wide initiative which aims to improve the integration of sex and gender considerations across data collection, analysis and reporting in Biomedical, Health and Care research in the UK. MESSAGE brings together stakeholders from across the UK to co-design a sex and gender policy framework for funding and regulatory organisation and supporting policy implementation across the UK research sector. Medical Science Sex & Gender Equity

The co-designed framework was launched at the end of 2024 and introduced new recommendations for scientific practice which aim to enhance the quality of UK science at each stage of the research pipeline. CSO contributed to the development of the framework and is working to align its practices with the MESSAGE recommendations.

Through the Women’s Health Plan 2021- 2024 work has been ongoing to map the data on women’s health in Scotland. We have published a ‘Review of the Data Landscape’ that sets out some of the routinely published data on women’s health currently available in Scotland and highlights key gaps. The Care and Wellbeing Dashboard, which provides access to the latest data on population health outcomes and the wider determinants of health in Scotland, will also include breakdowns by sex where this data is available.

Our ambition is that ‘women and girls enjoy the best possible health, throughout their lives’. This remains the ambition of the Scottish Government, and will continue to be our guiding principle as we consider the next phase of the Women’s Health Plan.

The National Child Sexual Exploitation Working Group published its final report on delivery of actions contained in the National Action Plan to Tackle Child Sexual Exploitation in July 2020. This sets out the range of achievements and activity to prevent and tackle child sexual exploitation delivered since the publication of the updated National Action Plan on Child Sexual Exploitation in 2016 as well as ongoing improvement and development work related to the actions in the updated plan. For further information on how the Scottish Government has continued to deliver action on child sexual abuse and exploitation since this period, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-32827 on 16 January 2025. 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