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As reported by the Deputy First Minister on 21st November, the £13 million originally allocated for 2023-24 has been announced as part of the savings required to reach a balanced budget. We are now considering all options for the device commitment, including a range of delivery options and an update will be provided in due course.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-22410 on 7 November 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 role of the Scottish Government is to provide frameworks, policies, and resources to enable Scotland’s NHS Boards to deliver healthcare services. It is for NHS Boards to determine how they utilise the funding provided by the Scottish Government to meet the needs of their local populations.

It is important to note that the £19.6m funding for diabetes technology was in addition to, and not a replacement for, local budgets. We also provide baseline funding to NHS Boards and expect them to continue to fund provision locally to meet patients’ needs.

The Scottish Government awarded the Scottish HepatoPancreatoBiliary Network funding of £653,000 over two years to redesign the pancreatic and liver cancer pathways.

This pilot is the first of its kind across the UK. It aims to provide a nationally more efficient, standardised patient-centred pathway for people with pancreatic and liver cancers, with earlier diagnosis, referral and management decisions following a Realistic Medicine approach.

The funding comes to an end in March 2024 and an evaluation of the pilot’s achievements against these aims will be completed to inform decisions about future funding.

In the meantime, work continues to establish Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Services (RCDS) across NHS Scotland – interim evaluation shows that hepato-pancreato-biliary cancer is one of the most common cancers being diagnosed through the new fast-track diagnostic pathways. There are currently five RCDSs in Scotland.

The £19.6 million of additional funding for diabetes technology consisted of £5.1 million in 2020-21 and £14.5 million in 2021-22. It was allocated based on the percentage of patients with Type 1 diabetes within each given NHS Board area relative to the Scottish population. This data was taken from the Scottish Diabetes Survey 2020, which can be found here: https://www.diabetesinscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Diabetes-Scottish-Diabetes-Survey-2020.pdf .

The £5.1 million of additional funding in 2020-21 was allocated as per the breakdown below:

Scotland has the strongest rights in the UK for people experiencing homelessness and local authorities have a legal duty to provide accommodation and advice to anyone experiencing or at risk of rough sleeping.

This year we have provided £713,228 of funding to City of Edinburgh Council and £1,471,795 to Glasgow City Council for implementation of their rapid rehousing transition plans (RRTPs) which aim to support people experiencing homelessness into settled accommodation as quickly as possible, including through Housing First.

We continue to work closely with both local authorities and third sector partners to ensure emergency accommodation and support is available for people at risk of rough sleeping, including through the operation of rapid rehousing welcome centres (RRWCs) over the winter months. This year we have provided £215,471 of funding to support the operation of RRWC’s in Glasgow and Edinburgh, with £1,120,021 million of funding provided to support these services since 2020.

The Scottish Government has also made £50,000 of personalised budget funding available to frontline third sector organisations in Glasgow and Edinburgh this year. This funding allows frontline staff to meet the immediate needs of people at risk of, or experiencing, rough sleeping and provide them with support in a dignified and person-centred way.

We know that a proportion of people rough sleeping in Scotland are doing so as a result of the UK Government’s no recourse to public funds policy, which prevents people from accessing statutory homelessness assistance. We will continue to call on the UK Government to change this policy, which is pushing people into destitution and is one of the biggest barriers to eradicating rough sleeping in Scotland.

We will shortly publish the minutes of the first meeting of the Ministerial Oversight Group on Homelessness. They will be available here - Ministerial Oversight Group on Homelessness - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The Scottish Government has recently concluded an information gathering exercise on the provision of stoma care and stoma specialist nurse coverage across Scotland's 14 territorial health boards. The results of this exercise will be presented to the Scottish Executive Nurse Directors (SEND) to identify any shortfalls and inconsistencies in the level of care provided across the country and the actions that may be needed to address them.

This is a matter for the relevant commissioning body. The information requested is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government are not seeking to increase the number of plans for individual health conditions and are therefore not developing a national strategy to tackle chronic kidney disease. Rather, we are focussed on how we can best support Health Boards to deliver high quality, value-based, person-centred care for all people, irrespective of condition.