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The Scottish Government supports the Healthy Working Lives (HWL) initiative, hosted by Public Health Scotland, which offers a range of materials to support employers on all aspects of work-related health promotion and ill health prevention, return to work and workplace safety.

The Scottish Government, in partnership with Public Health Scotland and See Me, also delivers the Supporting a Mentally Healthy Workplace: National Learning Network for Employers. The network brings together employers of all sizes and across all sectors to share learning and experiences of supporting mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. Over 800 individuals are now engaged with the network.

The Scottish Government also fund Paths for All, a Scottish charity which promotes everyday walking. Paths for All run two national challenges a year in the spring and autumn. The Step Count Challenge (SCC) is a walking challenge for Scottish workplaces, which aims to encourage business to support employees to walk more to improve mental and physical health. In 2023-24, 325 workplaces took part in the spring, autumn and bespoke challenges.

Neurology trainees are provided with training in immunology and virology. The curriculum for neurology training, published by the Joint Royal Colleges of Physicians Training Board, includes Capabilities in Practice (CiPs) on managing inflammatory and infectious disorders.

These CiPs make clear expectations upon neurology trainees regarding:

• understanding of the underlying anatomy and pathophysiology of inflammatory and infectious diseases of the nervous system, including the treatments and their side effects
• ability to select, request and interpret relevant investigations including serology, genetic testing, imaging of the brain and spine, neurophysiology, tissue culture and histology in order to diagnose and manage such disorders
• ability to work with other relevant clinicians both in treating and monitoring patients and in referring them to other disciplines as appropriate.

There is robust educational Governance through NHS Education Scotland (NES) for neurology training in Scotland. NES does not consider it necessary to require neurologists to be experts in either immunology or virology, but to be able to clinically assess, investigate and manage people with neuroimmunological conditions and neuroinfectious disease using an evidence-based approach.

The Scottish Government understand the importance of sport and physical activity for women and girls in Scotland and the positive impact that has on their physical, mental, and social health, across all stages in life.

We believe there should be no barriers to participating in sport and physical activity, and we should all feel included, and able to take part and access the benefits of sport.

sportscotland’s Fit for Girls (FFG) and Young People’s Sport Panel (YPSP) tutors lead conversations and workshops on menstrual education as well work to increase awareness of the barriers to physical activity.

sportscotland’s Institute of Sport delivers tailored support services for athletes. Their internal working group, the Female Athlete Performance Group, have developed a range of resources specifically for female athletes. These are designed to support anyone working with girls and women in sport and include e-learning on the menstrual cycle in sport. These resources are available for free to all, with the ambition that all within the sporting system are comfortable having conversations about female athlete health and understand the impact on training and performance.

Across the Scottish Government, a range of staff have been or will be involved in independence work. We do not routinely record details of individual tasks carried out by civil servants, including the number of hours spent on research and compilation, as there is no business need to do this.

The Scottish Government has published the publication costs of the thirteen papers in the Building a New Scotland series, found at the following link: Building a New Scotland papers: costs - gov.scot

Preparatory work on additional material within the series has also been undertaken, adding £9,371.45. This brings the total spent on the publication of the BANS papers to £216,418.98.

The Scottish Government draft budget 2025-26 has been informed by planning forecasts provided by the Thrombectomy Advisory Group (TAG). Clinicians and third sector organisations, as well as NHS planning colleagues, are represented on the TAG and the information provided by them helps to inform decisions taken by the National Thrombectomy Programme Board.

Work is ongoing to establish how the £16 million funding announced in the Scottish budget, subject to parliamentary scrutiny, will be best used to maximise the number of patients able to benefit from thrombectomy.

The current Acceptable Use of IT Policy does not explicitly apply to Members and their staff, though all Parliament IT account holders are bound by the SPCB's Use of Resources Policy which states that resources, including IT resources, are provided to support parliamentary duties and must not be used to any significant extent for any other purposes.  A revised Acceptable Use of IT policy which will apply to Members and their staff is currently being developed for approval by the SPCB.

The SPCB strongly advises that all Members and their staff, whether paid or voluntary, complete GDPR training. Each Member, as the data controller, is ultimately responsible for their staff's compliance with UK GDPR and the SPCB provide a variety of resources to help ensure Members are well placed to meet their responsibilities.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

We have not conducted a formal cross SG review. As explained in the answer to S6W-33501 and S6W-33502 on 28 January 2025. Decisions on memberships are made by Directorates, Division and Departments following the guidance outlined in S6W-33505 on 28 January 2025 which states it must be directly relevant to the person’s current job and of relevant value to the SG. Heads of Profession will also oversee and advise on memberships based on industry and practice requirements, and their knowledge of each membership’s efficacy and value for money.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

Since 31 March 2024 three organisations have been unsuccessful in applying for support from the Victim Surcharge Fund.