Current status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 11 November 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the comment in its recent paper, Breastfeeding and infant feeding: strategic framework 2025-2030 that "our stretch aim is to reduce drop off in breastfeeding at 6-8 weeks by 10% by 2025", what progress has been made toward achieving this, and how it plans to implement each of the six strategic goals set out in the document.
We use the annual statistics published by Public Health Scotland for Infant Feeding to evidence our progress towards our stretch aim to reduce drop off in breastfeeding at 6-8 weeks by 10% by 2025. The last published statistics are for 2023-24 and show that drop-off at 6-8 weeks was at 27.3%. The commitment is for a relative drop-off in any breastfeeding, beginning with the baseline position in 2017-18 of 34.5%. We will formally update on our progress after the 2024-25 infant feeding statistics are published in November this year.
We have set out how we intend on delivering against the six strategic goals, over the next five years, in the road map within the Breastfeeding and infant feeding: strategic framework 2025-2030 and we will continue to work with Health Boards and partners to do so. Much of this work is already underway, including our commitment to Unicef UK Babyfriendly Achieving Sustainability across maternity, neonatal and community settings. A delivery plan for 2025-26 was also set out and we will report on progress of that and share our 2026-27 delivery plan by Summer 2026.