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Parliamentary business is a matter for the Scottish Parliament’s Parliamentary Bureau and the Parliament itself.

The Scottish Government’s Aviation Statement, which will be published shortly, will set out actions that the Scottish Government will take to help achieve our aviation emissions reduction targets. As noted in the Climate Change Committee’s report, aviation decarbonisation will require UK-wide co-operation and progress across all aviation emissions mitigation solutions.

The Scottish Government is not responsible for the assessment of abandoned calls to NHS 24 which is an operational matter for the Board. We monitor NHS 24 performance against a number of indicators on a weekly basis.

Calls to the 111 service can be abandoned for a variety of reasons, including callers choosing to end their call after being connected to the automated messaging service and hearing the options available to them. These include accessing self-care advice via NHS Inform, or contacting another area of the health service which may be more appropriate to meet their needs.

The Scottish Government continues to support NHS 24's ongoing work to help reduce abandoned calls, including a recent revision of NHS 24's key performance indicators to better reflect and understand the current demands on the service. This work allows the Service to capture any unmet demand, and any potential risks where callers have made multiple attempts to access 111 without success.

The Scottish Government has commissioned Public Health Scotland (PHS) to collect, collate and publish waiting times for all gender identity clinics within the NHS in Scotland. This work will standardise and make routine reporting of waiting time information for these specialist clinical services. This commission also includes collation of patient cohort data, to help inform future service delivery. This work is ongoing.

The Scottish Government also provided funding in 2021 to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to support the publication of a trans/non-binary specific report as part of a wider Health Needs Assessment it published in May 2022, in partnership with NHS Lothian and PHS. The main report can be accessed here: stor.scot.nhs.uk/bitstream/handle/11289/580332/Final Report %2831 May 2022%29.pdf?sequence=1 and the trans/non-binary specific supplementary report accessed here: Health needs assessment LGBT+ people: Transgender and non-binary supplementary report (scot.nhs.uk) .

Furthermore, the Scottish Government has provided grant funding to the University of Glasgow for a programme of research on long-term health outcomes for those accessing gender identity healthcare in Scotland, to help expand the collective evidence base for this healthcare. This work is in progress, and funding has been awarded to a number of research projects and a PhD post as part of this programme.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s Young People’s Gender Service only accepts referrals from individuals residing in Scotland.

On 18 April, in a joint statement, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian confirmed that both Boards have paused any new prescription of puberty-supressing hormones and cross-sex hormones for young people as a treatment option for gender dysphoria.

The small number of patients directly impacted by this change, and their families, were notified in advance of this statement. It is right that they were the first to hear about it, sensitively and from the services caring for them, before a public statement was made.

The National Gender Identity Healthcare Reference Group continues to meet and make progress against all the commitments set out within the referenced December 2021 Strategic Action Framework. This includes:

• Healthcare Improvement Scotland developing standards for gender identity healthcare for NHS Scotland;
• NHS Education Scotland developing a Transgender Health Knowledge and Skills framework for NHS staff;
• Public Health Scotland working with Health Boards to deliver publication of waiting times data by them; and
• Grant funding to the University of Glasgow to administer a programme of research on gender identity healthcare.

Decisions on clinical pathways are not for the Scottish Government. These decisions are for clinicians, based on the best evidence available, through the appropriate clinical governance structures.

The Scottish Government is unaware of any discussions between NHS Scotland Health Boards and the UK Government regarding the prescription of puberty-suppressing hormones as a treatment option for gender dysphoria.

The Scottish Government’s Aviation Statement, which will be published shortly, will set out actions that the Scottish Government will take to help achieve our aviation emissions reduction targets.

Additionally, we have already set out 45 recommendations for future investment in Scotland’s strategic transport network in the second Strategic Transport Projects Review, published on 8 December 2022. Within these recommendations we have considered airport access in our strategic transport planning considerations. These have been considered in the recommendations for mass or rapid transit systems for the Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen City Regions, in the form of Clyde Metro, Edinburgh and South East Scotland Mass Transit and Aberdeen Rapid Transit. These recommendations can provide a transformational change in the service provision, focusing on strategic routes and / or corridors where bus and rail provide the most effective service. This will improve access to an affordable and reliable public transport system within these City Regions.

National Planning Framework 4 is also now in effect. Policy 13, ‘Sustainable Transport’, has a clear intent ‘to encourage, promote and facilitate developments that prioritise walking, wheeling, cycling and public transport for everyday travel and reduce the need to travel unsustainably.’ It promotes the National Transport Strategy 2 and places the climate emergency at the forefront of decision making.

The Scottish Government will consider whether to buy low emission aircraft for use on the Glasgow to Campbeltown, Tiree and Barra air services, to replace the current Highlands and Islands Airports Limited owned aircraft, when such aircraft become commercially available. Our consideration will take into account such factors as the Scottish Government’s budgetary position and the reduction in emissions that available aircraft could likely deliver.

The Scottish Government is grateful for the latest advice from the Climate Change Committee. We have always been clear that meeting the legislated 2030 target – agreed by Parliament on a cross party basis - will be extremely challenging, and may not be feasible. Scotland is already half way to net zero and continues to decarbonise faster than the UK average.

On the 18th of April, Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Net Zero and Energy, outlined plans for a package to accelerate our actions to achieve net zero by 2045, which include a timeline for implementing demand management, to help us achieve our much needed target to reduce car usage.

We will carefully consider the report’s recommendations and provide a Scottish Government response in due course.