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Other than time spent on the initial scoping work, there has been no spend on the development of a National Pharmaceutical Agency.

Since its introduction in July 2020, over 3 million NHS Pharmacy First Scotland consultations have taken in place across Scotland.

In the annual Dispenser Payments and Prescription Cost Analysis publication, Public Health Scotland reported that in financial year 2021-22 alone, a total of 2,954,181 Pharmacy First consultations were undertaken with 95% providing advice on self-care or treatment at the point of contact, therefore removing the need for unnecessary visits to GP practices, Out of Hour services or Emergency Department for everyday self-limiting conditions.

Consultations using PGDs in 2021/22 accounted for 4% (119,728) with 84% (100,182) being treated by the community pharmacy instead of requiring a GP/Out of Hours appointment.

Public Health Scotland has also reported that in 2021/22, 23% of the Scottish population (1,242,801 people) accessed Pharmacy First services at least once.

Civil servants operate flexibly across a range of pharmacy policies and programmes according to the specific requirements of the work at any time. They do not, as a matter of course, record the proportion of their time that they spend working on particular matters. It is therefore not possible to say specifically how many hours were spent by civil servants involved in this work.

Independent advisers Teneo and Woodbank Marine as well as Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL) were consulted during the due diligence process.

This information will be included as part of the quarterly update to the NZET Committee by CEO of Ferguson Marine at the end of June.

This information has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre under BiB No. 64319.

There are several components to the DRS evaluation. This includes the consumer survey which is based on a three phase nationally representative sample where efforts will be made to ensure urban and rural/island areas are sufficiently accounted for within the sample design. Litter Monitoring System survey (funded by Scottish Government and developed by Zero Waste Scotland in partnership with Keep Scotland Beautiful and other stakeholders) will be used to collate litter data with the aim being to cover all Local Authority areas. Data from Management information will also be used to monitor and evaluate DRS, and this will include both national level and local authority level data. Given the recent changes and announcements the monitoring and evaluation plans for DRS may need revisiting to bring them in line with any changes made to the objectives of the scheme.

Gender reassignment surgery is a specialised field of surgery, accessed by a small number of patients each year. Given the highly specialist nature of this surgery it is carried out in the UK under a four-nations contract, managed by NHS England.

NHS Scotland monitors the number of surgical referrals to the service. Patients referred for assessment do not necessarily proceed to surgery. A patient’s surgery will not necessarily take place in the same year as the referral.

We continue to work on this issue and will provide an update to Parliament on this commitment when appropriate.

Civil servants operate flexibly across a range of policies and programmes according to the specific requirements of the work at any time. They do not, as a matter of course, record the proportion of their time that they spend working on particular matters. It is therefore not possible to say specifically how many hours were spent by civil servants involved in this work.