Seòmar agus comataidhean

In May 2023 we published an analysis of survey data of health boards’ arrangements for the care and support of individuals with ME/CFS, with the aim of establishing a clearer picture of variations in service provision around Scotland.

We have since gathered updated information on ME/CFS care from every health board in Scotland and published this on 20 November 2024.

Subject to approval, the 2025-26 budget includes new investment of £4.5 million to deliver new specialist support across the country for Long Covid, ME/CFS, and other similar conditions.

This important investment will support people with these conditions across Scotland, and we are asking Parliament to unite behind the Budget to ensure this funding reaches the people who need it.

From 2022 Local services have been directed to implement the Medication Assisted Treatment standards. MAT Standard 1 has an aim to ensure individuals get into treatment and have access to workers on the same day they ask for it.

The Scottish Government also provide additional funding to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships to ensure this is achievable.

We continue to monitor the impact and effectiveness of the Young Patients Family Fund (YPFF) and keep this under review.

We are committed to tackling all forms of violence against women and girls, including financial abuse, which, as a tactic of coercive control and abuse, can have lifelong impacts on victims.

Through our Delivering Equally Safe fund, we are providing approximately £600,000 over three-and-a-half years to GEMAP for their Financially Included project. This focuses on improving responses to economic abuse across the money advice and gender-based violence sectors through development and delivery of training and toolkit resources and provision of financial advice.

Alongside this, in 2024-25, the Scottish Government has allocated over £12 million for the provision of free income maximisation support, welfare and debt advice. We fund a range of mainly national advice providers including Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange Debt Charity and Advice Direct Scotland.

We recognise that a variety of solutions and delivery mechanisms are needed to effectively respond to the many different and sometimes distressing circumstances that people find themselves in.

We have responded to this need by continuing to support a multichannel funding programme providing face-to-face, online and telephone advice, ensuring that all individuals or households, whatever their situation, can access support in the way that best suits their needs.

At this time, therefore, we are do not plan to establish a new programme of specialist services but would urge anyone needing support, whatever their situation, to contact a free advice provider as soon as possible.

The Scottish Government’s commitment to fully dual the A96 was made in December 2011. A lot has happened since then, not least nearly 14 years of austerity and cost pressures under the previous UK Government, which put significant financial constraints on Scottish budgets. We also had a pandemic which meant that very little construction work was planned or undertaken for a number of years.

The position of the Scottish Government has not changed – the current favoured position is to fully dual the A96, and we are already taking forward the dualling process from Inverness to Nairn, including Nairn Bypass.

The outcomes from the A96 Corridor Review, which was undertaken as a result of the Bute House Agreement, have been published in draft for public consultation and no final decision has been made.

Feedback from members of the public and key stakeholders will be key in helping inform the Scottish Government’s final decision on how best to take forward improvements to the A96 whilst also balancing the demands of the challenging economic climate and the climate emergency, and to inform our timescales going forward.

The Scottish Empty Homes Partnership publish the number of homes that have been returned to use each year in their annual report. The annual reports for 2010 to 2024 are available from their website at: Publications | Scottish Empty Homes Partnership.

Please note that this information is not broken down by the Scottish Government’s Urban Rural Classification or local authority area.

The Scottish Government has committed to a pilot project which has been established through the Scottish Legal Aid Board up to a limit of £432,000 over a period of three years from 1 April 2023 - 31 March 2026, to support Scottish Women’s Aid for the provision of legal advice to those affected by gender-based violence and provides an early intervention service providing legal advice, intervention services to those impacted by domestic abuse. The project is being taken forward in collaboration with Edinburgh Women’s Aid and a firm of solicitors.

Between September 2023 – August 2024, 230 women have been referred into this legal service project. The majority of clients have sought help for a legal problem connected to child contact, child maintenance and divorce.

We will evaluate the pilot model once the current funding ends in March 2026 and learning lessons from projects such as these, is incredibly useful and enables us to shape and inform any future services and target funding in the places it is most needed.

We remain committed to tackling all forms of violence against women and girls, including domestic abuse, and we will continue to work closely with statutory agencies and stakeholders to ensure that victims receive the support they need.

Household estimates showing the total number of dwellings and long-term empty properties by the Scottish Government 8-fold rural classification are published on the National Records of Scotland website - [ARCHIVED CONTENT] Household and Dwelling Estimates by Urban Rural Classification (2011 Data Zone based) | National Records of Scotland. Data for council areas are available in the Data file for the publication Households and Dwellings in Scotland, 2023 (total dwellings – table 2, long-term empty properties – table 6c). The latest data are for 2023.

Please note that the links take you to the archived version of the National Records of Scotland website. A new version of the website launched this month but is not yet fully populated with content from the previous website.

Keeping children safe from online abuse and exploitation and tackling misogyny in our society are key priorities for the Scottish Government. We are committed to ensuring that robust measures are in place across Scotland to ensure our services can identify and support victims of online harm, including children and young people.

While regulation of the internet remains a reserved matter, we have engaged with both the previous and current UK Government administrations to strengthen the protections for children in the Online Safety Act. The Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise and I met with the online safety regulator Ofcom in August to discuss their strategy for online safety in Scotland. We await Ofcom’s draft guidance on protecting women and girls online, due to be published next year, and will reflect on its recent research which has highlighted the increased risk and concerns teenage girls and women face in relation to misogynistic content.

The Scottish Government also works closely with operational partners to tackle cyber-crime including Police Scotland, the National Cyber Security Centre and Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland. These agencies link to international partnership working, and we will continue to identify opportunities for international engagement as we develop our approach to the global threat of online harm and radicalism.

As part of our existing approach, we support victims of abuse linked to misogyny, including through the provision of Our Delivering Equally Safe fund. This includes an award of over £110,000 to the South West Grid for Learning to deliver advice to victims of intimate image abuse and to improve awareness of sexual exploitation – or ‘Revenge Porn’ across Scotland. The Safer Scotland website was updated earlier this year to provide information, links to support and advice for victims on reporting intimate image abuse and our ParentClub website provides information on online harms including specific advice on misogynistic content.

The Scottish Government has also established an internal policy group on Technology-Facilitated Violence against Women and Girls, in recognition of the cross-cutting nature of this issue. This work will look to coordinate and accelerate the Scottish Government’s strategic approach to tackling technology-facilitated violence against women and girls, including how we further strengthen our approach to addressing online misogyny.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-31894 on 11 December 2024. 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