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The requested information is shown in the following table:

Table 1: Total number of paid items for morphine from calendar year 1999 to 2022.

The High Risk Medicines Framework specifies some medicines and medicines groups and at the current time this does not include Parkinson’s medication. There is also a High Risk Medicines Discussion template that is not medicine specific and can be adapted and used by local teams to meet their needs. Parkinson’s medication can be reviewed and discussed within this framework to support local teams to discuss and prioritise improvement activities. All resources are reviewed regularly and the Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) welcomes further suggestions to add to or develop resources.

All Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s resources are reviewed regularly by the clinical team supporting HIS. The high risk medicines framework has been reviewed and has been identified as a useful resource for teams to use within their local settings. These are live resources and the Scottish Patient Safety Programme team welcomes feedback or suggestions for further developments.

The following table shows Scottish Government staffing costs for Health Inequalities (HI) policy functions from 2020 to 2023, and the total over this period.

The Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) Medicines Collaborative was hibernated in 2020. Since then, the following elements have restarted:

• Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAID) Safer Care Bundle
• NSAID Communication Care Bundle
• Medicines Sick Day Rule Cards
• High Risk Medicines Framework
• High Risk Medicines Discussion Framework

Two elements which have ceased are:

• Omitted medicines, which has moved to the Excellence in Care team
• Reducing Medicines Harm Across Transitions

Medicines safety continues to be a priority across Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) and their current focus is on supporting the implementation of primary care pharmacotherapy services. This includes quality improvement work to ensure safe and timely access to medicines using resources from the acute prescribing and serial prescriptions toolkits. These toolkits have been developed in collaboration with primary care teams to ensure people have safe and timely access to medicines including regular, person-centred medication reviews. HIS also provides hands on implementation support to teams who can apply to join a seven week sprint programme. During this programme teams are supported to understand their local system and implement the tools and resources within the pharmacotherapy toolkits.

The Scottish Government nor it's partners hold any indication information, and so cannot identify patients with chronic pain who have been prescribed morphine.

Five years on from the joint agreement between Scottish Government and the British Medical Association (BMA) on the 2018 GP contract, we have made significant progress in the implementation of Primary Care Improvement Plans (PCIPs). The Vaccination Transformation Programme element of the 2018 GP contract is complete.

While the Scottish Government will seek continuous improvement of our vaccination services, I would envisage neither a return to a model of default GP provision nor local models based on optional GP participation. This is because the aim of the Vaccination Transformation Programme was to ensure that GP practices are able to focus on the work only they can do, such as complex care and diagnosing undifferentiated presentations. Vaccinations can be administered in a wide range of different settings by a wide range of healthcare professionals.

The GP profession voted as a whole in 2018 in favour of not providing vaccinations and this position remains extant. There will always be exceptions to this of course, in rural areas and where the need to vaccinate quickly is paramount. Notwithstanding these exceptions, I would not anticipate making any fundamental changes to our vaccination model which are counter to our 2018 agreement with GPs about the future of the profession.

Officials and Ministers are in regular contact with business, including some of the biggest producers, and sector organisations in relation the delivery of the Deposit Return Scheme. The lack of clarity around an Internal Market Act exclusion has regularly been raised at these meetings and causes uncertainty and inhibits planning and preparation.

As well as a press release and supporting social media on the consultation opening on 12 December 2023, ?the Scottish Government’s Marine Directorate frequently promoted the consultation, stakeholder information sessions and the extension of the consultation on its Twitter (@marinescotland) and LinkedIn channels, which have a combined following of more than 12.5K stakeholders. Please note that @marinescotland does not have an Instagram account.

The £25 million funding will be allocated to the Scottish National Investment Bank for 2023-24 to invest in line with the Bank’s Investment Strategy, and in support of a Just Transition to net zero in the region. The funding will be invested by the Bank on a commercial basis, to leverage further private investment towards accelerating a just energy transition across the North East and Moray.

The Bank has a proven track record having committed £415.1 million across 27 investments, alongside over £680 million of third party capital since 2020. Utilising the Bank’s commercial investment expertise and experience represents a key opportunity to unlock third party finance at the scale required to realise our ambition for a just transition in the region.