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The Scottish Government expects all NHS Boards in Scotland to adhere to current guidelines and follow best practice when providing psychosocial care for people with chronic kidney disease.

We published our new Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy on 29 June 2023. The Strategy sets out a long-term vision, and a set of outcomes, for the mental health and wellbeing of the population. We will subsequently publish a Delivery Plan in the Autumn to set out the work we will do over the coming years to make progress towards those outcomes and set out how we will measure that progress.

This will include consideration on how the Strategy will set ambitions and actions to support people living with long term conditions like chronic kidney disease. One of our key outcomes for the Strategy is to ensure people with mental health conditions, including those with co-existing health conditions, experience improved quality and length of life, free from stigma and discrimination

In order to achieve this, we will work with partners to develop actions that will see improved provision of services and support to people with long-term physical health conditions for their mental health and wellbeing.

The legal obligation to provide public library services within Scotland lies with the local authorities, who have a statutory duty to secure the provision of adequate library facilities for all people resident in their area, taking into account local needs.

The Scottish Government supports the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), who provides leadership and advice to Scottish Ministers, local authorities, and the wider libraries sector, with annual funding of £665,000. This includes £450,000 for the Public Library Improvement Fund (PLIF) and is on top of the Scottish Government’s general revenue funding to local authorities.

Examples of PLIF support in rural communities includes Digi Bytes and Takeaways in Moray, which is enabling Moray Libraries to support families during the current cost-of-living crisis and encouraging children and parents to engage with STEM in the early years; and Sensory Exploration in Orkney, in which a mobile interactive floor projector allows for sensory sessions to take place with a variety of age-groups. The project aims to enhance the library’s digital offering and widen access to a technology designed to improve the mental and physical wellbeing of those interacting with it.

Our latest figures show that a total of 3,047 vouchers have been paid out at an average cost of £1,858.99 per voucher. This consists of 1,079 interim vouchers at an average of £389.24 per voucher, and 1,968 main vouchers at an average of £2,884.81 per voucher.

Given the reserved nature of telecoms legislation, it is the responsibility of the UK Government to ensure that people across Scotland can access reliable broadband. Despite this, the Scottish Government has had to step in and our R100 programme is currently delivering gigabit-capable, full fibre connections across Scotland. We want to push coverage as far as possible via the three R100 contracts and, so far, Openreach have connected over 6,700 additional premises, over and above those contracted at no extra cost to the Scottish Government.

The UK Government’s Project Gigabit should be a vehicle to connect any remaining premises but, to this point, UK Ministers have yet to commit a sufficient level of funding to deliver coverage across all parts of Scotland. We continue to urge them to do so.

The New Scots Refugee Integration Delivery Project includes a workstream on research and evaluation. This entails working with New Scots partners and external evaluators to carry out project monitoring, research work and an evaluation of the New Scots Strategy 2018-2022. This evaluation report is due to be published in August 2023.

The New Scots refugee integration strategy has been developed and is led in partnership by the Scottish Government, COSLA and Scottish Refugee Council. The current strategy was published in 2018.

All partners have committed to refreshing the strategy and to ensuring that it continues to be shaped by refugees and people seeking asylum, as well as those with expertise supporting them. We are currently developing professional and lived experience engagement events, which will take place throughout Scotland this Autumn to inform the next iteration of the Strategy. Publication of the strategy itself will follow after these events have taken place to ensure the views of those the strategy seeks to serve are properly reflected.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-20183 on 14 August 2023. 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

The Scottish Government does not collect data on the number of children and young people who have a nicotine addiction.

However, it monitors smoking and vaping prevalence in these groups, drawing on surveys like the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) Scotland study; the Health and Wellbeing Census ; and the Smoking Toolkit Study (STS).

For example, from the Health and Wellbeing Census , undertaken for the first time by Local Authorities in Scotland between October 2021 and June 2022 among secondary school pupils in Scotland (S2 around age 13 and S4 around age 15). This shows that:

• 2.7% of pupils said they were regular smokers. Prevalence was higher in S4 (4.3%) than in S2 (1.6%).
• 6.7% of pupils said they vaped regularly (once a week or more). Prevalence was higher in S4 (10.1%) than in S2 (4.3%).

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-20183 on‎ 14 August 2023. 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

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-20183 on‎ 14 August 2023. 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