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It is a matter for Health Boards to consider the implementation of any new medicine to meet the needs of their local population. However, in response to concerns raised regarding access to givinostat in Scotland, the Cabinet Secretary has met with the four health boards who provide regional services across Scotland for children and adults with neuromuscular disorders, including Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). He has asked them to set out their timelines and approaches to the families who have children with DMD, and this is now underway. In addition, the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer (CPO) has been assured that the consultants have reviewed all those who eligible to ensure fair and equitable access across Scotland.

Funding is provided to Local Authorities by means of a block grant to allow them to allocate the total financial resources available to them, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on additional support needs.

Scottish Government and COSLA work in partnership on additional support needs through the Additional Support for Learning Project Board. The new Education and Childcare Assurance Board provides a further opportunity for jointly agreeing priorities and joint working in this context.

The medicines regulatory body, the MHRA, has issued regulatory action on labelling of topical steroids with their potencies, so that prescribers and patients can have informed discussions about the length of treatment of these products and associated risks and benefits.

Local authorities retain the statutory responsibility for the delivery of education in Scotland. Decisions around the delivery of additional needs support and the minimum levels of staff to meet local level needs are matters for education authorities.

We have 17,046 pupil support assistants in Scotland – the second highest level on record and an increase of nearly 1,800 since 2020. This is a direct result of our continued investment of £15m each year to help them respond to the individual needs of children and young people and maintains our record levels of investment in these staff.

Spending on additional support for learning by local authorities reached a record high of over £1bn in 2023-24

We have continued to invest £15m per year since 2019-20 and provide over £11m of funding, to directly support pupils with complex additional support needs and services to children and families.

The 2025-26 budget sets out a further £29m of additional investment, specifically for ASN for local and national programmes to support the recruitment and retention of the ASN workforce.

We are also providing £186.5m to councils this year to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels and maximise the number of teaching posts available.

Scottish Government and COSLA work in partnership on additional support needs through the Additional Support for Learning Project Board. The new Education and Childcare Assurance Board provides a further opportunity for jointly agreeing priorities and joint working in this context.

It is a matter for individual Health Boards to consider the implementation of any new medicine to meet the needs of their local population, and they are responsible for funding new medicines from their local medicines budgets. However, the Scottish Government has committed to investing rebates from the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines, Pricing Access and Growth (VPAG) to fund the New Medicines Fund (NMF), which provides additional top-up funding to territorial Health Boards to support the cost of introducing new medicines. Since 2014-15, £906 million has been made available to Health Boards through this fund. In addition, a national process is in place, administered by National Services Scotland National Procurement (NP), to review early access programmes on a ‘once for Scotland’ basis on behalf of Scottish Health Boards.

In partnership with NHS Scotland colleagues, the Scottish Government are developing tools to support GP practices to proactively identify people on topical steroids so that their treatment can be reviewed.

The Scottish Government collects and publishes data on the total number of diversion from prosecution cases commenced for people aged under 18, this is published in the Justice Social Work Statistics in Scotland: 2023-24 - Part 1.

Over the past five years a total of 3,444 diversion from prosecution cases were started for individuals under 18. However, information on the specific alleged offence in each case is not available.

Scottish Government recognises that diagnosing brain cancer can be challenging as symptoms are wide-ranging and often vague, contributing to presentations in emergency settings. We continue to work with primary care to improve the earlier diagnosis of brain cancers.

A clinical review of the Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer has just concluded to help ensure the right person is on the right pathway at the right time. For the first time, the review has ensured the inclusion of a nationally agreed non-specific symptoms referral guideline, as well as an update to the guidance for urgent referral for suspected brain tumours. Publication of the reviewed guidelines is expected this month.

A new primary care cancer education platform, Gateway C, was launched in April 2024. Gateway C provides tailored information to support earlier cancer diagnosis and enable effective decision-making. This platform is accessible to all primary care clinicians and includes a brain tumour course specifically aimed at assisting the effective assessment and management of patients with a potential brain tumour.

A new National Headache Pathway has also been published by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery. This pathway, based on presentation at General Practice, clearly lists red flag symptoms that indicate the need for urgent and/or emergency assessment to exclude a secondary cause, such as a brain tumour.

NHS Boards continue to undertake improvement work to ensure that women diagnosed with ovarian cancer can access surgery. The Scottish Government continues to seek regular updates on progress and to work with them to improve overall care for patients with ovarian cancer regardless of where they live.

Further to this, Scottish Government has provided £106 million planned care funding in 2025/26 across NHS Scotland, with £14.23 million of this directed towards Cancer Waiting Times.

This is all part of our programme to drive up productivity and tackle waiting lists, supported by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD). Together, our actions will further enable NHS Scotland to maximise capacity, build greater resilience and deliver year-on-year reductions in the number of patients who have waited too long for treatment.