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The new Palliative Care Strategy aims to ensure that everyone in Scotland, regardless of location, receives well-coordinated, timely and high-quality palliative care, care around death and bereavement support based on their needs and preferences, including support for families and carers.

We are aware of the importance of ensuring that the Strategy takes account of the differing needs of people living in rural and island areas, and of the particular challenges in these areas. Work is currently being undertaken to understand the lived experiences of users of palliative care services in rural and island settings. We have also asked our working groups, who are feeding into the Strategy, to give particular consideration to the impact that any actions they are recommending may have on rural and island areas.

The Scottish Government has published 198 Easy Read documents on the gov.scot website since January 2022. The list of the policy papers that have been published with an associated easy read version is available on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/publications.

In developing narrower proposals on alcohol marketing the Scottish Government will take account of both the potential public health benefits as well as potential impacts on industry, business and consumers. The next phase in this work will be targeted engagement early in 2024, which will include engagement with a range of stakeholders including those representing business and consumer interests.

a) The Scottish Government collect data on police recorded crimes. In 2020-21 the police recorded 30,344 crimes of drugs possession, in 2021-22 they recorded 23,747 crimes of drugs possession and in 2022-23 they recorded 22,356 crimes of drugs possession. Scottish Government also publish additional information on Drugs Seizures and Offender Characteristics . The most recent publication contains data relating to the 2020-21 and 2021-22 financial years. Table 4b of this publication (copied below) provides estimated numbers of drug possession crimes by drug classification. The data presented in this table is based on a random sample of cases recorded by the police. As this analysis is based on a sample of police records (rather than all records), the counts presented in the table are estimates. The true value may differ slightly from the findings presented below due to sampling error.

Estimated number of drug possession crimes by drug classification, 2020-21 to 2021-22

The Scottish Government (SG) is clear that tackling alcohol related harm remains a key public health priority, including in relation to children and young people. To assess trends on an ongoing basis a number of sources are considered, including this SG report and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). The SG continues to utilise, and further develop, public health surveillance data to better understand drug and alcohol trends, particularly amongst younger people.

The 2018 Alcohol Framework sets out the SG's commitment to put the voice of children and young people at the heart of developing preventive measures on alcohol harm. In line with this specific engagement, projects with children and young people have been undertaken in the development of both the continuation and new level of MUP and the public consultation on potential measures to restrict alcohol advertising and promotion in Scotland. In addition to this the SG is investing £1.5 million in Planet Youth, sometimes referred to as the Icelandic Model, which is an evidence based model for substance use prevention.

Financial planning for the significant challenges our public finances continue to face took place in advance of the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance's update on the 2023-24 in-year budget changes on 21 November.

The difficult decisions which have had to be made have allowed us to help balance the Scottish Government's budget while still progressing implementation of our mental health and wellbeing strategy from a revised direct budget of £260.3 million.

The in-year budget changes impacted on a number of planned new programmes which could not proceed as anticipated. Planned increased funding to existing programmes were also not able to be progressed.

Despite the savings made, we have continued to focus on delivery of our mental health and wellbeing strategy and recently published delivery plan, which includes commitments around mental health services and specific programmes of work around learning disability and autism, and cross-cutting trauma work.

Sheriff Jack Brown is subject to ongoing Fitness for Judicial Office Tribunal proceedings. Under Section 23(6) of the Court Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, Scottish Ministers are obliged to pay such expenses as they consider are reasonably required to be incurred to enable a tribunal to carry out its functions. The Scottish Government will publish costs of the tribunal at the conclusion of the proceedings.

This information is not held centrally.

3,297 square kilometres of Scotland’s inshore waters are permanently closed to both scallop dredging and bottom trawling, with no permanent prohibitions for creeling in place.

Scottish inshore waters are defined from the mean high water spring up to the extent of the territorial sea (12 Nautical Mile limit)

The Scottish Government remains committed to improving mental health service provision in primary care settings. The newly published Mental Health and Wellbeing Delivery Plan sets out our ambition to drive a shift in the balance of care across mental health to ensure a focus on prevention and early intervention in the community, including a focus on providing high quality mental health care in General Practice, by:

• Working collaboratively to improve access to support, assessment and treatment in primary care mental health and wellbeing services. This will include the development of multi-disciplinary teams in general practice, and maximising the role of community mental health teams, digital provision and NHS 24 to make access simpler and quicker, aligning care and quality with the Getting it Right For Everyone (GIRFE) principles. We will produce an initial report on progress, which will include equality impacts, by November 2024;
• Publish guidance on measuring and evaluating outcomes from mental health and wellbeing services in primary care by the end of 2023. This includes data indicators for protected characteristics and deprivation; and
• Continue to include primary care and community mental health as priorities within the Mental Health Outcomes Framework.

We will work with partners, including primary care stakeholders, to progress this ambition.

Additionally, as at 12 July 2022, 958.9 whole time equivalent (WTE) mental health roles have been filled using Action 15 funding, including 356.1 WTE posts in GP practices. Having met and exceeded the Action 15 commitment, the Scottish Government has continued to fund the roles that were recruited to.

By March 2023 186 WTE mental health workers had been recruited under the Primary Care Improvement Fund (PCIF). The PCIF also funds Community Link Workers (CLWs) as part of primary care multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) and, at March 2023, more than 308 WTE CLWs were in post supporting GP practices. We are investing almost £190 million (£170m plus Agenda for Change Uplifts) in the Primary Care Improvement Fund in 2023-24, for the ongoing development of primary care multi-disciplinary teams and we have committed to the PCIF being £170m plus Agenda for Change uplifts in future years.