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During Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2022, we welcomed the training offer that Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, has developed to ensure that our future workforce feels confident to support anyone who comes forward with concerns about disordered eating.

We were also pleased to announce additional funding for Beat which includes Beyond the Symptoms training for GPs and healthcare professionals. This supports them to identify when a patient has an eating disorder and confidently intervene early. This funding was in addition to the £5 million additional investment to support those with eating disorders in 2021-22.

More generally, our Programme of Government commits to ensuring that by 2026 each GP Practice will have access to a mental health and wellbeing service; creating 1,000 additional dedicated staff who can help grow community mental health resilience and direct social prescribing.

The latest Gateway Review into our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) was carried out in May this year. We are carefully considering the recommendations, and will share these and our response to them in due course.

The private rented sector has seen a steady increase in size over the last 20 years, more than doubling in size, with some annual fluctuations. We will continue to monitor the whole housing market using the Landlord Register along with other statistical information on a regular basis and will consider further should significant changes happen.

Individual landlords will enter and leave the sector depending on their personal and business circumstances and through the Private Residential (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016, strong protections and processes are in place for tenants in that situation.

The Scottish Landlord Registration provides data on the number of private landlord registrations, for example in relation to the number of new applications, renewals made and the number of properties these relate to, on a monthly basis.

Official statistics on the sector from the Scottish Household Survey, are released as soon as they are available. In recent years, national results from the Scottish Household Survey have been published around September following the survey year, although Covid-19 has impacted on this survey, with 2020 results published in January 2022 and 2021 results scheduled for publication in December 2022.

The Scottish Land Commission recently provided advice to the Scottish Government following the conclusion of their review of land and property taxation. It is only right that we take some time to consider the Land Commission’s recommendations in detail, and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Economy, along with the Minister for Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, will look closely at them as part of our wider approach to tax policy. While there are no immediate plans to introduce any new national taxes, the Scottish Government continue to review any evidence and assess this as part of our wider approach to tax policy.

The Scottish Government has continued to engage with representatives from retailers who sell drinks online throughout both the development of the policy for Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), and into the implementation phase that is presently underway. In addition, the Scottish Government and SEPA jointly held a workshop for retailers on 17 February 2022 to discuss takeback for containers sold online.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-08754 on 14 June 2022. 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 hold this information. Homes2Fit is an accessible housing register set up and run by Glasgow Centre for Inclusive Living (GCIL). The Scottish Government has not collected feedback or carried out an evaluation of Homes2Fit accessible housing register.

For ease of reference, the most recent estimate for whole time equivalent of GPs can be found in the General Practice Workforce Survey 2019 which estimated that there were 3,613 GP whole time equivalents (WTE) in Scotland in 2019. The GP (excluding Specialist Trainees) WTE increased from an estimated 3,520 in 2017 to an estimated 3,613 in 2019, based on 8 sessions per week being one WTE. These are the most recent available published data for GP whole time equivalent due to impacts of the pandemic on surveys.

In our helpful discussion at the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee on 29 March 2022, I undertook to look further at options for attaining and publishing whole-time equivalent data. I can confirm that I have now commissioned NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) to run this important survey afresh, and the General Practice Workforce Survey 2022 issued to practices in week commencing 30 May 2022. Further, I can confirm the Scottish Government is making arrangements for this survey to take place on an annual basis in future.

I agree that updated data are essential in understanding capacity in general practice, and I expect a full report on t T his year’s data to be published in the Autumn. I will be pleased to write to the Committee Convenor with that report when it is available.

The Scottish Perinatal Network has been tasked with examining the adoption of PlGF testing in light of the draft NICE guidance published for consultation in March this year. Project information and associated documents are publicly available on the NICE website ( Project documents | PLGF-based testing to help diagnose suspected preterm pre-eclampsia (update of DG23) | Guidance | NICE ) and we expect the finalised guidance to be published on 27 July 2022.

As part of its initial work, the Network is engaging with the clinical and scientific community to understand how the additional two tests included in the draft guidance work in practice. This work is underway and I have asked my officials to continue working with the Network to explore how we can best implement PlGF testing in Scotland.