Current status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 11 November 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what funding it provides to encourage peer support in breastfeeding.
In 2023-24 the Scottish Government permanently transferred funding to Health Boards for Maternal and Infant Nutrition as part of the Outcomes Framework funding, which covers a wider range of outcomes. The published Scottish Budget for 2025-2026 includes £72.2m within the NHS Boards budget for the Outcomes Framework. It is up to Health Boards to decide how much of this funding to allocate to each outcome. In 2025-26 territorial Health Boards received an overall cash uplift of 3%.
From 2025-26 the Scottish Government is permanently transferring over £0.8 million further investment into the baseline budgets of NHS Boards to provide a sustainable basis for funding for interventions to support breastfeeding, which can include peer support, following an additional investment of over £11 million since 2018.
The scale and stability of breastfeeding peer support has been strengthened as a result of targeted multi-year funding, optimising breastfeeding peer support in communities through locally driven decision making, strong partnership working and collaborations. In particular localised approaches which are effective in addressing breastfeeding inequalities and accessibility of support, as well as the growth of coverage across the volunteer and peer support landscape to include multiple Third sector organisations and in-house NHS volunteers.