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Scottish Government are taking forward a range of actions across five key outcomes: giving children the best start in life; creating a healthier food environment; better access to weight management services; leadership and reducing health inequalities.

This includes our continued support for convenience stores to increase the accessibility of fruit and vegetables in more deprived areas, supporting businesses to reformulate their products to make them healthier, and maintaining funding to community food networks, to enable them to increase access to affordable, healthier food to their communities and to promote the health benefits of nutrition and physical activity.

Specifically, regarding children, we have updated the Nutritional Requirements for Food and Drink in Schools (Scotland) Regulations, strengthening the provision of balanced and nutritious food to children.

Our Scottish Milk and Healthy Snack Scheme promotes good nutrition to support healthy physical and brain development through the provision of healthy drinks and snacks in the earliest years. We have continued provision of free vitamin D to children under three, and pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Over the last 6 years, in addition to the core funding provided to Boards to support maternal and infant nutrition, we have invested more than £10 million to promote, protect and support breastfeeding to help give children the best possible start in life. Breastfeeding rates at 6-8 weeks are now at 47%. Infant feeding statistics - Financial year 2022 to 2023 - Infant feeding statistics - Publications - Public Health Scotland the highest they have been since records began.

The public consultation on the detail of proposed regulations to restrict promotions of food and drink high in fat, sugar or salt closed on 21 May 2024. The consultation paper sought views on proposals for the implementation and enforcement of regulations.

Independent analysis of the consultation responses is underway. The feedback received will be used as part of the policy decision-making process, alongside a range of other available information and evidence to help ensure the regulations are proportionate and effective.

Legislation to restrict promotions is part of a wide range of action, set out in our Diet and Healthy Weight Delivery Plan, to improve diet and help create a food environment which better supports healthier choices.

This includes, amongst other things, ongoing support for the Healthy Living and Reformulation for Health Programmes, both of which are helping to increase the availability of healthier options. We are also working with Public Health Scotland and Food Standard Scotland to implement our Out of Home Action Plan.

The Scottish Government currently has no plans to make any code of practice (COP) for children’s food menus mandatory.

The COP is one of 11 key principles set out in the Eating Out, Eating Well (publichealthscotland.scot), currently being developed by Public Health Scotland (PHS) and Food Standards Scotland. The development of the Framework meets a key commitment set out in the Scottish Government’s 2021. Diet and healthy weight: out of home action plan - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The COP currently contains 7 actions detailed in published pilot guidance Code of practice for children’s menus: principles, actions, and top tips (publichealthscotland.scot) .Taken together with the rest of the Framework, these are designed to guide and support food businesses in providing healthier options for families with young children when eating out.

PHS has just concluded a pilot of the new Framework, including the COP, so its details are still subject to change. We are expecting it to be published in 2025.

Scottish Government officials last met Obesity Action Scotland on the 22 October 2024.

At the meeting childhood obesity was discussed as part of their on-going work to support the Diet and Healthy Weight Action Plan.

The Scottish Government has not conducted any specific analysis of the college sector’s use of their arm's-length foundations (ALFs), however, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) maintains an overview. Colleges are only permitted to donate commercially generated surpluses to ALFs, so donations will partly be dependent on colleges’ ability to raise commercial revenue.

This is a matter for NHS Lothian. The information requested is not held centrally.

The first national Good Food Nation Plan represents a fresh approach to food policy and it embeds long-term strategic transformation into decision making at both the national and local levels. The consultation draft of the national Plan set out the six overarching Good Food Nation Outcomes to achieve our ambitions for Scotland’s food system. Draft Outcomes 1 and 3 set out the high-level aspirations in relation to health and diet related inequalities:

Outcome 1 - Everyone in Scotland eats well with reliable access to safe, nutritious, affordable, sustainable, and age and culturally appropriate food.

Outcome 3 - Scotland’s food system encourages a physically and mentally healthy population, leading to a reduction in diet-related conditions.

These Outcomes will be updated and refined based on the consultation responses received before the draft Plan is laid before Parliament in 2025.

Scottish Ministers will need to have regard to the national Good Food Nation Plan when carrying out specified functions in relation to food ensuring a clear, consistent and coherent approach to food policy across policy areas and ministerial portfolios. This approach ensures connections are made between policy areas so that complex issues such as child obesity and diet-related inequalities will be considered in the context of wider food system challenges. As part of this joined up approach the Ministerial Working Group on Food supports cross-Government work to drive progress across portfolios on issues relating to food policy.

As reported in the Scottish Health Survey Supporting documents - The Scottish Health Survey 2022 – volume 1: main report - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) there has already been a significant decline in children’s consumption of non-diet soft drinks once a day or more, from 38% in 2008-2009 to 16% in 2017-2018, and to 5% in 2021-2022.

The Scottish Government recognises that there is much that still needs to be done to further reduce children’s sugary soft drinks consumption, especially in low-income areas. We continue to support the UK Government’s Soft Drink Industry Levy, recognising the positive impact this has made in reducing sugary soft drinks consumption and incentivising industry reformulation.

The Scottish Government is delivering a range of initiatives to further improve the access and affordability of healthier food and drink options, helping children, especially those in deprived areas, to develop healthier nutritional habits that will last them a lifetime. This includes continued support of the Healthy Living Programme, the Nutritional Requirements for Food and Drink in Schools (Scotland) Regulations and the Scottish Milk and Healthy Snack Scheme(SMHSS) Milk and Healthy Snack Scheme - Maternal and child health - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Effective approaches to preventing childhood obesity are focused on population-level measures, and therefore it is important that we can track progress on child healthy weight across our communities.

The universal health visiting pathway includes growth assessment of all children at several points across early childhood and supports interventions that promote healthy growth.

Public Health Scotland and Scottish Directors of Public Health established a short life working group, including expertise from local boards and PHS, to consider the Primary 1 BMI surveillance https://publichealthscotland.scot/population-health/early-years-and-young-people/child-health-data-and-intelligence/child-weight-and-growth/routine-health-review/ model and to catalyse work to improve P1 measurement data usability and coverage.

Robust data is really important not only to exhibit the effectiveness of our policies but to inform continuous improvement. We welcome Public Health Scotland and the wider public health system’s continued support on the range of data that underpins our policies.

The Scottish Government is committed to support Health and Social Care Partnerships and their local services deliver on our National Mission to save and improve lives affected by problem drug use. This includes the implementation of harm reduction initiatives including needle and syringe programmes and improved access to opioid substitution therapy (OST).

Our broad principle is that if providing safe equipment to a person is likely to reduce the risk of harm to themselves or others, there should be no question of that provision. We continue to provide direction and funding to local areas to implement the Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) standards, and Standard 4 in particular states that everyone at risk, including those who inject drugs, should be able to access a wide range of harm reduction services – for example, needles and syringes, injecting risk assessments, wound care and naloxone.

Services across Scotland have developed flexible and targeted approaches to supplying Injecting Equipment Provision (IEP) by introducing more mobile and more flexible approaches (such as IEP vans) that actively go out to areas where they know people will use them.

The Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) Standards, published on 31 May 2021 aim to improve access, choice and support to OST and to a range of linked support such as primary care, mental health treatment and advocacy for other services. Public Health Scotland reports annually on how local areas are achieving this. Its Benchmarking Reports are published each June and these include details of how access to OST and access to drug harm reduction measures are improving in local areas.