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The Scottish Government is currently considering all of the recommendations made as part of the Independent Review of Audiology Services in Scotland.

We will provide an update to Parliament on next steps in due course.

The Scottish Government is providing £220,000 of support to the St Andrews Rail Link (StARLink) project through the Local Rail Development Fund (LRDF).

Responsibility for the management and delivery of the project sits with the StARLink Campaign which is required to provide a detailed options appraisal, to the Scottish Government, by the end of March 2024.

To inform the next stages of the project, this appraisal will then be considered against the Scottish Government’s investment priorities for the strategic transport network, a robust business case, affordability and other competing proposals.

Care and support for people with chest, heart and stroke conditions or long COVID is being provided across the full range of services being delivered by our NHS. This includes local primary care teams, community-based rehabilitation services and referrals for further investigation delivered in secondary care settings where needed.

The Scottish Respiratory Advisory Committee identified three initial priorities for implementation of the Respiratory Care Action Plan (2021) which were; child to adult transitions, access to data and pulmonary rehabilitation. The child to adult transitions sub-group has produced recommendations which will be shared shortly. We have recently commissioned Public Health Scotland to begin scoping work to develop a respiratory audit programme, and we are working closely with services across Scotland to deliver improvements in pulmonary rehab.

We are making progress on delivery of our Heart Disease Action Plan (2021) and have recently completed a scoping exercise with cardiac rehabilitation services to identify priority areas for improvement.

Since publication of the Stroke Improvement Plan in June, the Scottish Government has appointed a Consultant Stroke Physician as Clinical Lead for Stroke to lead on its implementation. We are developing a bundle of rehabilitation measures for inclusion in the Scottish Stroke Care Audit and are also developing measures of patient experience of rehabilitation.

We have established a £10 million long COVID Support Fund to support NHS boards to increase the capacity of existing services, develop these into more clearly defined local pathways and provide a more co-ordinated experience for people living with long COVID. We made an initial £3 million available from the fund over 2022-23, and a further £3 million is being made available from the fund over this financial year.

This is an operational matter for ScotRail. The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government provided no direct funding to the British Allergy Foundation in 2022.

Eleven Scottish Marine Regions are spatially defined under the Scottish Marine Regions Order 2015. Certain functions for marine planning for these regions can be designated to a delegate, known as Marine Planning Partnerships, through Ministerial Direction. The current National Marine Plan provides guidance to support the development of regional marine plans but specifies that the precise approach and coverage of the regional plan, will be for Marine Planning Partnerships to determine based on local priorities and taking account of existing partnerships, methodologies and alignment with other local plans.

The National Marine Plan 2 (NMP2) is in the early stages of development, working with Marine Planning Partnerships and stakeholders, it will set the context for future regional marine planning and consider options for spatially explicit planning as part of the NMP2 process.

The Scottish Government’s Health and Social Care budget is facing unprecedented pressures as we address the backlog in care and deliver the recovery and renewal of NHS services. We are also facing the most difficult financial situation since devolution, with the lingering effects of austerity, Brexit and the pandemic combining with high inflation and war in Ukraine to place extreme pressure on public finances.

Within these constraints we are committed to providing assistance with electricity costs associated with life-saving at-home equipment where possible.

Patients using home oxygen concentrators are fully reimbursed for the energy costs for running the equipment. This is managed through a national contract which includes a regular review of price changes and any adjustment required.

Please see answer to question S6W-22410 on 7 November 2023 with relation to home dialysis equipment.

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

As I set out in my statement to Parliament in May, I will begin to take forward a more focused consultation in the autumn on the detail of proposed regulations to restrict the promotion of less healthy food and drink where those are sold to the public. We have begun engaging with stakeholders as part of this process. It is important that engagement on our proposals is extensive and as inclusive as possible.

The number of deaths where malnutrition was the underlying cause in any death over the past 10 years is as follows (Table 1):

Table 1 - malnutrition (E40-E46) was the underlying cause

The Civil Contingencies Act (2004) places a statutory duty on responders to cooperate and share information.

There are several technical layers of fallback capabilities in place for communication during circumstances that challenge the usual methods of communication. However, work continues to review current arrangements and ensure they are resilient to a wide range of risks. The existing resilient telecommunications plan for Scotland is currently under review, led by Police Scotland.