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The Scottish Government has no current plans to update planning guidance for local authorities on unlisted buildings and building preservation notices. Section 3 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997 already sets out that a planning authority may serve a building preservation notice if it appears to them that an unlisted building is of special architectural or historic interest and is in danger of demolition or of alteration in such a way as to affect its character as a building of such interest. It also sets out that the planning authority will request Historic Environment Scotland to consider listing the building that is subject to a building preservation notice.

There is no data available on the use of dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scans (DEXA) for the diagnosis of obesity in NHS Scotland.

While DEXA scans provide detailed body composition analysis, they are not routinely recommended for obesity diagnosis in clinical practice.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends using BMI as a practical measure of obesity. However, BMI is not a direct measure of central adiposity – the accumulation of fat around the abdominal area. BMI can overestimate and underestimate the presence of excess body fat.

In adults with a BMI below 35, measuring waist-to-height ratio and BMI, gives a better estimate of body fat. These measurements help to assess and predict health risks.

As part of the process to determine applications made under Section 36 and 37 of the Electricity Act 1989, consultees are asked by the Energy Consents Unit (ECU) to provide comment on the contents of gate checks. The purpose of a gate check is to set out how comments made by consultees and Scottish Ministers in the scoping opinion are to be addressed by the applicant and taken forward in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report, should an application be submitted. Application documents, including EIA reports, are publicly available on the ECU portal: https://www.energyconsents.scot/ApplicationSearch.aspx

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of supported accommodation places that are available.

Supported accommodation is provided by a range of providers, including local authorities, the third sector, and the independent sector. The number of places available will be known locally by partnerships or health boards.

Whilst evidence shows that people feel more able to talk openly about their mental health, we know there is more work to do in tackling stigma and discrimination in relation to complex, severe, and enduring mental illness and we all have a role to play.

This work remains a key priority for the Scottish Government, which is why our Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy sets out a vision for a Scotland, free from stigma, discrimination and inequality. This is also reflected across our strategy Delivery Plan, Suicide Prevention Strategy, Self-Harm Strategy and Mental Health Workforce Action Plan.

Key actions include:

• Providing £5 million funding over 5 years since 2021 to See Me as our key delivery partner on tackling mental health stigma and discrimination to work with a range of other partners to drive forward anti-stigma and discrimination action.
• Investing £66 million since 2021 in our Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for Adults, which includes a focus on supporting those with mental illness. We are also working with the National Rural Mental Health Forum and SAMH’s The Changing Room: Extra Time programme to reduce stigma and discrimination, including in disadvantaged areas.
• Working nationally to raise awareness and reduce mental health stigma through our Mind to Mind, Parent Club Young Scot and Aye Feel campaigns and resources for adults and young people.
• Working in partnership with Public Health Scotland and See Me to support employers to tackle mental health stigma and discrimination in the workplace and to promote mentally healthy workplaces.

Our Fisheries Management Strategy sets out actions to support the fishing fleet to modernise, and for appropriate use to be made of new and additional technology, including remote electronic monitoring (REM). As part of this the Scottish Government has already delivered on our commitment to introduce REM requirements for pelagic and scallop vessels, with legislation being passed in June 2024. The legislation can be found at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2024/165/contents/made

Our commitment to improve the inshore fisheries evidence base through the use of appropriate and proportionate onboard electronic technology monitoring on under 12 metre vessels is currently being progressed.

Further rollout of remote electronic monitoring to other fleets, including offshore trawl vessels, is under review and options will be developed alongside our Future Catching Policy.

The Scottish Government has already published the estimated financial contribution made to public spending by the voluntary Ministerial pay freeze since it was established on 1 April 2009. Between 1 April 2009 and 31 March 2025, Ministers made an estimated £2.2 million available for public spending from their own pay packets. This is public funding that would not have been available had Ministers not voluntarily decided to return a proportion of their pay. In 2024-25, Ministerial pay was 30.4% below where it would otherwise have been. From 1 April 2025, the MSP element of the pay of all Ministers except the First Minister was equalised with that of all other MSPs, while the freeze on the Ministerial element of their pay continues for a seventeenth consecutive year. In 2025-26, Ministers will make an estimated £166,000 available for public spending from their own pay packets and, as such, public funds this year will again be higher than they would have been without the pay freeze. This is the point that the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport was making.

We received an excellent response to the Inshore Fisheries Management Improvement Programme call for evidence which ran for twelve weeks from 26 November 2024. We intend to publish an analysis in due course. The responses are both numerous and voluminous and have required longer than anticipated to fully analyse and report upon. The scale of the responses has however provided a detailed insight into the views of our stakeholders on numerous aspects of inshore fisheries management. These will be invaluable as we begin to develop proposals for a new inshore fisheries management framework, which we intend to consult on in early 2026.

Offshore oil and gas licensing, as well as consenting and the associated fiscal regime, are all matters that are currently reserved to the UK Government.

The Scottish Government has been clear in our commitment to achieving net zero by 2045. Any further extraction and use of fossil fuels must be consistent with Scotland’s climate obligations and just transition commitments and we have advocated for a licencing approach that has a Climate Compatibility Checkpoint as well as taking energy security into account. It is vital that we take an evidence-based approach to the energy transition. At the heart of our approach is ensuring a just transition for Scotland’s valued and highly skilled oil and gas workforces whose skills will be critical to the success of Scotwind and other low carbon energy projects.

Calls to the 111 service can go unanswered for a variety of reasons, including callers choosing to end their call after being connected to the automated messaging service and hearing the options available to them – including an NHS 24 callback service during busier periods.

Other options include accessing self-care advice via the NHS Inform website or contacting another area of the health service which may be more appropriate to meet their needs.

We continue to support NHS 24’s ongoing work to help reduce unanswered calls, including recently revising NHS 24’s key performance indicators to better reflect and understand the current demands on the service.

This work allows the Service to capture any unmet demand, and any potential risks where callers have made multiple attempts to access 111 without success.

In addition, over the past two financial years NHS 24 has received additional funding of £28.3m to support their wider role in the re-design of unscheduled care. This has allowed the service to boost their staffing numbers with 22 WTE additional clinicians recruited this year and the Service now almost at desired capacity in terms of call handlers.