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The Scottish Genomic Test Directory for Cancer is reviewed annually. The next update is expected to be in September 2025.

As part of the transformation programme, the entirety of the cancer test directory has been mapped to the SNOMED Clinical Terms disease ontology as part of a wider programme of data standardisation across the laboratory service.

The Scottish Government continues to support Angus Council to address the erosion issues affecting the sand dunes in Montrose through the Coastal Change Adaptation Fund.

Dredging license applications from Montrose Port Authority have been carefully considered by the Scottish Government ensuring that most dredged material is deposited within Montrose Bay and the dredged material remains in the same coastal circulation cell.

We continue to progress our Dynamic Coast project and between 2022-23 and 2025-26 Angus Council have received almost £730,000 from Scottish Government’s Coastal Change Adaptation Fund: £290,000 in direct distribution and £440,000 to fund a case study to improve the flood resilience of sand dunes at Montrose.

We sympathise with the pressure the social care sector is facing and that is one of the reasons that the 2025-26 budget includes almost £2.2 billion for social care and integration – exceeding our commitment to increase funding by 25% by almost £350 million. At £21.7 billion, the overall financial envelope for Health and Social Care also reached record levels.

However it is important to note that while the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care support policy in Scotland, it is for local authorities and health boards to work with the Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) to ensure that social care support services are in place to provide people with the appropriate support.

While agreeing budgets is the responsibility of partnerships, The Scottish Government will continue to work closely with the health and social care sector to understand key pressures and opportunities to ensure we achieve best value of money and improve the outcomes of our population.

Ministers recognise the very challenging financial landscape across health and social care but remain committed to making progress regarding the removal of non-residential charging in partnership with others.

Ongoing engagement work has made clear there is variation in non-residential care charging across the country and some groups and people are more adversely impacted. We will continue to work with others on this issue to ensure people have greater clarity on what charges apply and where they can go for support.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The selection of countries and sites for global clinical trials for new cancer treatments is dependent on a complex range of factors, including the wider regulatory environment.

The Scottish Government and the Chief Scientist Office work closely with NHS Research Scotland and with the UK National Institute for Health and Social Care Research to ensure that Scotland continues to offer the best environment for clinical research and cancer clinical trials.

The operation of Police Scotland, including the deployment of officers, is for the Chief Constable. The latest official statistics show there were 16,553 FTE police officers in Scotland on 31 March 2025. The Scottish Government supports the Chief Constable in having the flexibility to develop and utilise her workforce in a way that responds to the challenges she faces by ensuring she has the right workforce in place. In 2025-26, we are increasing investment in policing by £90 million to a record £1.64 billion to support police capacity and capability.

Numerous factors will affect heat pump installation rates, including consumer demand, installer availability, and electricity load upgrades by district network operators.

We have allocated £1.63bn of funding through our Heat in Buildings schemes this Parliamentary Session while our planned introduction of a Heat in Buildings Bill later this year will strengthen awareness and understanding about the need to change.

Registers of Scotland (RoS) is a non-Ministerial Public Body answerable to the Scottish Parliament.

Scotland’s Land Information Service (ScotLIS) was created and is maintained by RoS, providing online access to information on land and property in Scotland for both public and business users.

The costs of maintaining and enhancing ScotLIS are met by RoS from fee income generated. Potential enhancements to the service are based on the needs of users – both business and citizen. To ascertain user need, RoS is in regular dialogue with customers and periodically run dedicated user research sessions focussed on ScotLIS.

Enhancements since the service first launched have included access to a Crofting Register layer, an Aerial photography map layer, the Sasines Register indicative ownership layer, the Books of Council & Session, the Register of Judgements, the Register of Inhibitions and National Library Scotland’s Historic Maps. In addition, an option for customers to self-serve copy deeds has been introduced along with modern interfaces to enable high-volume customers of RoS data to seamlessly integrate that information with their systems.

Across Scotland, there is a high-level estimate that more than 164,000 homes have planning permission but have not yet been built. This has set the context for the 23 actions set out in the Planning and Housing Emergency Delivery Plan that we published last November. We are making good progress delivering across all of these actions, which relate to policy, delivery, capacity and efficiency.

As an example, we have been identifying and removing barriers on stalled housing sites. Everyone involved in planning has a role to play in accelerating delivery, so we have established a Short Life Working Group, involving industry partners, to address challenges such as flexibility on affordable housing provision, flooding, market viability, education and transport (road and rail). We are also working more intensively to broker solutions for individual sites where progress has stalled. This work is informing the priorities for the National Planning Hub, which is offering practical help for planning authorities to access specialist expertise, build professional skills and capacity, and support efficiency.

We have committed to continuing action on stalled housing sites and the Hub in the 2025-26 Programme for Government. We will also consult this year on mechanisms to accelerate house building and stimulate access to land with planning permission where building has not started. These are examples of the delivery focus and practical intervention we are taking to help build more of the homes Scotland needs sooner.

Our Tobacco and Vaping Framework: Roadmap to 2034 committed to tracking and reporting progress towards our 2034 target. This included work to develop further indicators, building on existing baseline data (taken from the Scottish Health Survey and the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children study) as part of the first two-year implementation plan.

As part of our ongoing analytical work on the Framework, we identified a need for more regular and more detailed data on children due to the rapidly changing landscape.

Since 2024 the Scottish Government has purchased a booster sample in the ASH SmokeFree GB Youth survey. This is an annual survey of 11-18 years olds in Great Britain that has been running since 2013. This has allowed us to achieve representativeness by age and gender for young people age 11 – 17 years living in Scotland.

Data from the Scotland booster sample provides robust and valuable information annually on patterns of use of cigarettes, vapes and novel nicotine products (including nicotine pouches).