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The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) assesses the clinical and cost effectiveness of newly licensed medicines, including medicines for advanced Parkinson’s disease, on a once for Scotland basis and publishes advice for Health Boards to consider. It is expected that Health Board Area & Drug and Therapeutics Committees (ADTCs) will consider making a SMC recommended medicine, or an equivalent, available on their local or regional formulary for routine prescribing within 90 days of SMC advice being published.

In March 2024, the SMC accepted for restricted use foslevodopa-foscarbidopa (Produodopa®) within the NHS in Scotland for treatment of advanced levodopa-responsive Parkinson’s disease with severe motor fluctuations and hyperkinesia or dyskinesia when available combinations of Parkinson medicinal products have not given satisfactory results. The SMC restriction was for use in patients not eligible for deep brain stimulation (DBS).

The Scottish Government spend with Amazon Web Services in each of the last 3 financial years is detailed in the following table:-

As published as part of the 2025-26 Budget, the NZE portfolio received Scotwind CDEL of £179.9 million in addition to £603.7 million CDEL allocation this financial year, which is targeted towards our investment in net zero priorities.

After the inaugural ScotWind Leading Round £756 million of ScotWind option fees were received.

In addition, a further £54.2 million of INTOG (Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas) revenues have now also been generated.

The Scottish government does not hold information on the number of nurseries which are closed or mothballed.

Decisions relating to local ELC provision are for local authorities to make, in consultation with the local community. Mothballing should only be for a temporary period and should be subject to regular review, at least annually, against the same requirements which led to the original decision to mothball.

The Care Inspectorate publish a monthly list of all service closures which can be found here: Changes to registration, variations and cancelled services

The annual Care Inspectorate Early Learning and Childcare Statistics publication (Early learning and childcare statistics 2023) sets out information on the availability and quality of registered daycare of children and childminding services for children and families across Scotland. This also includes data on annual service cancellations across the sector.

Although there has been increases in homelessness applications and non-compliance with statutory duties in some areas, 12 local authorities reduced the number of households in temporary accommodation in 2023-24 compared to 2022-23 and 20 councils reduced the number of children in temporary accommodation.

Increasing housing supply is key to reducing levels of homelessness. As part of our £768 million investment in affordable housing in 2025-26, we are providing targeted funding of £40 million in 2025-26 to the local authorities with the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures. 80% of this funding has been targeted to five local authorities in the central belt experiencing the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures to help increase the supply of social and affordable homes through acquisitions, including, where appropriate, properties suitable for larger families.

We continue to work with our partners to increase the delivery of more affordable homes, the majority of which will be for social rent. We are taking all possible actions to help deliver more high quality, permanent homes, providing the right homes in the right places, and ensure a settled home for everyone.

We have a strong track record in affordable housing by supporting the delivery of more than 136,000 affordable homes since 2007, with more than 97,000 of those being for social rent. We remain focused on delivering 110,000 affordable homes across Scotland by 2032 with at least 70% for social rent and 10% in our rural and island communities.

I have asked Stephen Pathirana, Chief Executive of the Scottish Public Pensions Agency (SPPA), to respond. His response is as follows:

SPPA is in the process of providing retired police officers with a remediable service statement (RSS) in order to allow them to make an informed choice of benefits in respect of their service between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022. To date more than 3,400 RSS have been sent to retired police officers. Approximately 1,850 statements are outstanding, though the majority of retired officers are already in receipt of their final salary scheme benefits, which are anticipated to be more favourable. All retired police officers are expected to receive a RSS by 31 July 2025.

In responding, I must advise that licence applications to lethally control mountain hare before March 2021 were required for the previous closed season, however following passage of the Animals and Wildlife Penalties, Protections and Powers Scotland Act mountain hares are now a protected species and licence applications are required year round.

Licences to lethally control mountain hare have been issued for the following purposes since 2012; “Preventing serious damage to growing timber”, “Conserving any area of natural habitat” and “Science, research and education”.

Information determining if the land applied to the application is public or private is not held centrally.

Scotland’s wildfire strategy is led by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) to help keep communities safe and to limit the effects of wildfires on the environment.

SFRS carry out community engagement as well as work to increase awareness through news releases and social media. The expenditure on public safety awareness therefore includes staff hours, delivering school talks, engaging with landowners and the cost of the materials themselves. The Scottish Government does not, therefore, hold data on SFRS’ expenditure.

In line with all newly commissioned audits, Scottish Government expects the Fracture Liaison Services (FLS) audit to take time to collect, analyse and develop high-quality, standardised data across NHS Boards in order to drive improvements and support clinical decision making.

Public Health Scotland is responsible for the delivery of the FLS audit and has no developed data to publish currently.