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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.

The Scottish Government has commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to develop a set of maternity standards, designed to drive improvements in care at a local level and support consistency of service design and delivery across Scotland. This process has started, and we expect the standards to be completed in late 2025.

In addition, we welcomed the announcement from Healthcare Improvement Scotland in 2024 that they would initiate inspections of maternity services as part of the Safe Care Inspection process. These inspections started in late January 2025.

Our Best Start programme described a range of measures to improve care, the vast majority of which are now in place. We continue to work closely with NHS Boards, clinical leaders, the third sector and national partners to share learning, respond to emerging evidence and identify opportunities for continuous improvement at the national level.

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.

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.

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).

The Women’s Health Plan sets out that healthcare for women should be holistic, inclusive, respectful, centred around the individual and responsive to their needs and choices.

In 2023, we carried out research on ‘Women's experiences of discrimination and the impact on health ’ so that we can better understand the lived experience of women and girls in Scotland and the discrimination they have experienced when seeking healthcare.

Through the Women’s Health Platform on NHS Inform we have created resources that can be used by women and girls and healthcare professionals to support shared decision making and a patient centred approach. This includes symptom questionnaires on menopause and menstrual health and clinical tools such as the Endometriosis Care Pathway and the Heavy Menstrual Bleeding Pathway to support informed discussions and provide better understanding of the next steps on a healthcare journey.

We have also funded the development of educational resources to support health professionals to learn more about menstrual health, endometriosis and menopause, the symptoms and treatment options.

The Scottish Government is committed to increasing the availability of safe and effective medicines that people in Scotland would benefit from. The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) assesses the clinical and cost effectiveness of newly licensed medicines on a once for Scotland basis and publishes advice for Health Boards to consider. It is expected that Health Board Area & Drug and Therapeutics Committees (ADTCs) will consider making a SMC recommended medicine, or an equivalent, available on their local or regional formulary for routine prescribing within 90 days of SMC advice being published.

Health Boards are expected to apply common principles and processes in the introduction of newly licensed medicines to facilitate consistency of approach to local decision-making. The decision to prescribe a medicine, and which medicine to prescribe, is entirely for the clinician in charge of a person’s care, having considered their clinical condition, their safety, and any relevant clinical guidance.

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 health and wellbeing of women at work is a key element of the Scottish Government’s approach to Fair Work, including supporting women experiencing symptoms of menopause.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on the number of women who leave the workforce due to experiencing menopause. However, UK research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development - Menopause in the workplace: Employee experiences - published in 2023, that of the over 1,500 women experiencing symptoms of menopause surveyed, 17% were considering leaving due to a lack of support in relation to their symptoms. Also, research from 2022 by the Fawcett Society on Menopause in the workplace in the UK indicated that one in ten women who worked during the menopause left their jobs due to their symptoms.

We are taking action towards supporting those experiencing symptoms of menopause in the workplace - please refer to recently answered question reference S6W-35367 on 12 March 2025 for further information.

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

The Scottish Government is committed to improving health and reducing health inequalities, and supporting our more vulnerable communities, which can include our former coalfield communities.

We know that poverty and unemployment are key drivers of ill health and health inequalities. That is why, we continue to support the health of Scotland’s population through a number of measures including:

• allocating around £3 billion a year since 2022-23 to tackle poverty;
• initiatives to promote healthy lifestyles through tobacco control, preventing alcohol related harm, promoting healthy eating and physical activity; and
• the creation of a Population Health Framework to take a preventative approach in which we address health problems at the root as well as build a Scotland in which our places and communities can positively support health and wellbeing.

In addition, we deliver significant investment through a range programmes to support economic growth and regenerate communities, which contribute to addressing underlying poverty by creating jobs and employment opportunities. Our regeneration programmes are delivered through established relationships with local government and communities, focussing investment in areas of priority need including former coalfield communities. These programmes include our Investing in Communities Fund, which is being delivered over 2023-24 to 2025-26 with an annual budget of circa £9m. It is currently supporting 20 projects in coalfield communities investing nearly £3.5 million to date.