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The Scottish Government has not made an assessment of any long-term economic benefits of replacing methadone with Buvidal for eligible patients

The Scottish Government does intend to update its policies to reflect the 2025 recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. This Government is pressing ahead with the policy development to ensure that proposals can be brought forward to Parliament at the earliest opportunity, subject to the outcome of the 2026 elections.

The Scottish Government has launched the Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Risk Factors programme to improve CVD outcomes with an aim to ‘reduce avoidable CVD death by 20% in 20 years’. The focus is on improving the identification and management of key risk factors which are; high blood pressure, high cholesterol, raised blood sugars, obesity and smoking.

We have also established a new GP enhanced service from the 2025-26 Reform Fund to support 100,000 patients who are at risk of developing CVD.

Our Population Health Framework, soon to be published in partnership with COSLA, will support the creation of environments that positively supports health and wellbeing. It will focus on prevention and tackling the building blocks of health—including good early years and education, fair work and income, healthy places, equitable healthcare, and the broader social and economic drivers of ill health.

The Scottish Government withdrew the Scottish Good Practice Statement (SGPS) on 28 May 2025, leaving NICE Guideline NG206 as the default clinical guidance on ME/CFS. This will help provide clarity to NHS Boards as providers of care for people in their area with ME/CFS.

Work is ongoing to determine how the additional £4.5 million announced in the 2025-26 budget to deliver new specialist support for ME/CFS, long COVID and other similar conditions will be allocated to NHS boards, what conditions it will cover and the services it will prioritise. We want this money to have maximum impact and are working closely and carefully with boards across Scotland to allocate it as quickly and effectively as possible.

In 2025-26, applications will be assessed on their ability to support the ambitions set out in Scotland’s Destination Scotland – inward attraction of international students, staff, and researchers - Scotland's international education strategy - gov.scot and a separate strand will be assessed against Community Learning and Development priorities.

Projects within this criterion are able to provide opportunities for both staff mobility and vocational training exchanges.

Since SEEP began in 2003, opportunities have been provided for staff mobility and vocational training. Further information on funded projects can be found at: Scottish Education Exchange Programme: - Test and Learn: funded projects - gov.scot.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

In the last five years, the SPS has made payments to prisoners to settle cases related to “slopping out”. In the last five financial years, there has been a total of three cases settled relating to “slopping out” which were settled in Financial Year 2020-21. The total cost of these three cases was £12,000. There have been no further cases settled relating to “slopping out” since 2020-21.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-38250 on 17 June 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

The Safe Delivery of Care in acute settings maternity inspections were introduced to ensure that all service users in maternity services receive the highest standard of care, as well as to identify opportunities for learning for all NHS Boards. NHS Boards are expected to address the requirements identified by Healthcare Improvement Scotland during inspections as a priority and within the timescales set out in their Improvement Action Plan. We expect that all NHS Boards will consider the findings in these reports and my officials continue to work with maternity service leaders to ensure that the findings are communicated effectively and to identify any national level actions required to improve care.

We remain committed to continuous improvement in maternity services across Scotland. As part of this, we have commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to develop a set of maternity standards designed to drive improvements in care at a local level, expected to publish in Spring 2026. In parallel, our Scottish Patient Safety Perinatal Improvement Programme continues to work with maternity services across Scotland to drive improvements in care for mothers and babies.

As part of our’ Best Start’ Programme we published the new Pathway of Maternity Care in February 2025. This Pathway illustrates compassionate, individualised, person-centred core maternity care that all women and their babies should receive.

The Scottish Government’s supplementary Financial Memorandum, to reflect the scaled-back care reform proposals for the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill, was published on the Health, Social Care & Sport Committee’s website on 25 March 2025.

The Scottish Government notes the emergency composite motion from the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

The motion calls for updates to be made to the Equality Act 2010 with respect to the protected characteristic groups as defined in the 2010 Act. As the Equality Act 2010 is a mainly reserved piece of legislation any updates to protected characteristics under the Act would have to be brought forward by the UK Government.

The Scottish Government believes in equality and fairness for all. Our 2025-26 Programme for Government includes a commitment to create safe spaces for the LGBTQI+ community - funding work that tackles discrimination and upholds the human rights of this group, including through the Equality and Human Rights Fund, and progressing actions within the Non-Binary Equality Action Plan.